[trick420]

I think I have the same problem. I installed Coreboot and now I can't do anything. It's black from the start and I can't even reach the screen to choose to boot from USB to install OpenELEC or even restore the stock firmware. I don't have a display-port cable to try that either. My only idea right now is to try to restore the stock firmware but i'd need to do it blind with someone telling me exactly what to type.

I'm still working on this, but best I can tell what is happening is that the connected display is not responding in time/correctly, so the VGA BIOS is switching to the other connection type, and obviously not finding anything, but doesn't go back to the original connection.

I certainly don't think you need to restore the stock firmware; you just need to find a monitor that "behaves" well enough for you to get OE installed

I agree with what Matt says. If you don't have a displayport cable and two monitors your best bet is to try to find another monitor. You can also try timing the key presses right after boot. I have successfully turned on power and pressed [esc] once, then the number '2' and it has booted, even though I see nothing on the screen. I would try that and see what you get. May take a few tries though.

[dettrittus]

I'm still working on this, but best I can tell what is happening is that the connected display is not responding in time/correctly, so the VGA BIOS is switching to the other connection type, and obviously not finding anything, but doesn't go back to the original connection.

I certainly don't think you need to restore the stock firmware; you just need to find a monitor that "behaves" well enough for you to get OE installed

I agree with what Matt says. If you don't have a displayport cable and two monitors your best bet is to try to find another monitor. You can also try timing the key presses right after boot. I have successfully turned on power and pressed [esc] once, then the number '2' and it has booted, even though I see nothing on the screen. I would try that and see what you get. May take a few tries though.

Thank you guys for your help. I tried 2 monitors and 1 TV. I also tried [esc] then [2] a lot of times. I'll try at the office tomorrow. If it fails i'll buy a display port cable and try that. I'll report.

Edit: I tried [esc] + [2] a few more times and it finally worked. Thanks again. I won't touch anything until the issue is resolved.

[Matt Devo]

All, I apologize. Was finally been able to replicate the issue here, and it was due to a change made in trying to get video working on the i3/i7 ChromeBox which ultimately was not part of the solution. It was an updated VGA BIOS file that caused the SeaBIOS boot menu screen to show only on the DisplayPort output, and since I was testing almost exclusively using DP here, I didn't catch it.

Script updated to v2.9 with fixed files for both standalone and dual boot. If you flashed a prior version and have no video, you'll need to boot a ChromiumOS USB stick by blindly hitting ESC then 2, then running the latest version of the script to update. I know it's a pain and the timing is tricky, but I promise it can be done. Basically, power on, then hit ESC, pause a sec, then hit 2, pause a sec, and repeat until you see the ChromiumOS splash screen.

[Smobbo]

All, I apologize. Was finally been able to replicate the issue here, and it was due to a change made in trying to get video working on the i3/i7 ChromeBox which ultimately was not part of the solution. It was an updated VGA BIOS file that caused the SeaBIOS boot menu screen to show only on the DisplayPort output, and since I was testing almost exclusively using DP here, I didn't catch it.

Script updated to v2.9 with fixed files for both standalone and dual boot. If you flashed a prior version and have no video, you'll need to boot a ChromiumOS USB stick by blindly hitting ESC then 2, then running the latest version of the script to update. I know it's a pain and the timing is tricky, but I promise it can be done. Basically, power on, then hit ESC, pause a sec, then hit 2, pause a sec, and repeat until you see the ChromiumOS splash screen.

Thank you for the extremely quick resolvement and replies! Whenever there is an issue it is resolved within a few days thanks to you and everyone testing and trying ! The community and especially Matt really makes this box a great buy !

[ziffyj]

I flashed my Celeron Chromebox last night ( Did steps 5 and 6 successfully and rebooted), but was hooked up over HDMI, so I got no output to the TV. Brought it into the office today and connected via displayport and SeaBIOS comes right up. However, it immediately boots to hard disk without giving me any option to select my bootable USB drive. It just stays on the "Booting from hard drive..." message. I have tried plugging in the keyboard in different usb ports, hammering ESC, nothing.

Is there some trick I'm missing? The EZ script seemed to have run perfectly (thanks Matt)...

[trick420]

All, I apologize. Was finally been able to replicate the issue here, and it was due to a change made in trying to get video working on the i3/i7 ChromeBox which ultimately was not part of the solution. It was an updated VGA BIOS file that caused the SeaBIOS boot menu screen to show only on the DisplayPort output, and since I was testing almost exclusively using DP here, I didn't catch it.

Script updated to v2.9 with fixed files for both standalone and dual boot. If you flashed a prior version and have no video, you'll need to boot a ChromiumOS USB stick by blindly hitting ESC then 2, then running the latest version of the script to update. I know it's a pain and the timing is tricky, but I promise it can be done. Basically, power on, then hit ESC, pause a sec, then hit 2, pause a sec, and repeat until you see the ChromiumOS splash screen.

Yep! That did the trick Matt! Thanks for the fast work!

I flashed my Celeron Chromebox last night ( Did steps 5 and 6 successfully and rebooted), but was hooked up over HDMI, so I got no output to the TV. Brought it into the office today and connected via displayport and SeaBIOS comes right up. However, it immediately boots to hard disk without giving me any option to select my bootable USB drive. It just stays on the "Booting from hard drive..." message. I have tried plugging in the keyboard in different usb ports, hammering ESC, nothing.

Is there some trick I'm missing? The EZ script seemed to have run perfectly (thanks Matt)...

I had the same issue with my system and found that I had a wonky USB drive. You aren't offered the option to choose the boot device because the Chromebox doesn't see the thumb drive as a valid device. I went out and bought a couple new drives, created a fresh USB install manually (follow the directions at openelec.tv) and it worked fine after that.

Jeff

[ziffyj]

I had the same issue with my system and found that I had a wonky USB drive. You aren't offered the option to choose the boot device because the Chromebox doesn't see the thumb drive as a valid device. I went out and bought a couple new drives, created a fresh USB install manually (follow the directions at openelec.tv) and it worked fine after that.

OK, thanks. I had an old 16GB drive laying around so I tried that, but I'll find an 8GB and give that a try.

UPDATE: Had to try a couple of drives until it found one that it liked. Ended up using an old 1GB drive, but it the chromebox recognized it right away and I was able to install OpenElec successfully. Thanks for the tip!

[teki4u]

Ok so finally i made a video of my Ubuntu setup after several days of having to deal with problems here and there. So far so good.

The Quality of the video is kind of low but im just showing up you see how it runs, next time i'll use something better

[denrock]

Hey Matt


So yesterday I updated the firmware to the then current 2.8. I thought it seemed faster when I booted up after that… which I realized it was faster as it didn’t appear to be going to the boot menu screen for the 5 seconds to give you a chance to hit escape to choose a drive.

So, today I noticed you updated the firmware again so I was going to flash the latest version, but I cannot get to the boot menu (I was actually concerned about this happening after the flash yesterday). It instantly goes into openelec. I don’t seem to be able to choose any other drive… it just goes right into openelec then xbmc…. even if i’m holding down the escape key when I turn on the unit.

So did you change that 5 second time out or did something go wrong when I updated to 2.8 yesterday? It seems like it went fine since xbmc works okay, but I guess not? Am I the only one who had this issue? Thanks.

[Matt Devo]

Hey Matt


So yesterday I updated the firmware to the then current 2.8. I thought it seemed faster when I booted up after that… which I realized it was faster as it didn’t appear to be going to the boot menu screen for the 5 seconds to give you a chance to hit escape to choose a drive.

So, today I noticed you updated the firmware again so I was going to flash the latest version, but I cannot get to the boot menu (I was actually concerned about this happening after the flash yesterday). It instantly goes into openelec. I don’t seem to be able to choose any other drive… it just goes right into openelec then xbmc…. even if i’m holding down the escape key when I turn on the unit.

So did you change that 5 second time out or did something go wrong when I updated to 2.8 yesterday? It seems like it went fine since xbmc works okay, but I guess not? Am I the only one who had this issue? Thanks.

2.9 resolved the issue of not seeing any boot text at all when using HDMI. If that's your issue, you'll need to hit ESC then 2 and time it correctly to boot from your USB stick.

If you are seeing the boot text, just don't have the opportunity to press ESC for the boot menu, it's because your USB stick is not being detected as bootable, so the boot menu timeout (5s) gets skipped and it boots directly to the internal HDD. Try another USB stick, or try re-partitioning as described in the wiki

[denrock]

Hey Matt


So yesterday I updated the firmware to the then current 2.8. I thought it seemed faster when I booted up after that… which I realized it was faster as it didn’t appear to be going to the boot menu screen for the 5 seconds to give you a chance to hit escape to choose a drive.

So, today I noticed you updated the firmware again so I was going to flash the latest version, but I cannot get to the boot menu (I was actually concerned about this happening after the flash yesterday). It instantly goes into openelec. I don’t seem to be able to choose any other drive… it just goes right into openelec then xbmc…. even if i’m holding down the escape key when I turn on the unit.

So did you change that 5 second time out or did something go wrong when I updated to 2.8 yesterday? It seems like it went fine since xbmc works okay, but I guess not? Am I the only one who had this issue? Thanks.

2.9 resolved the issue of not seeing any boot text at all when using HDMI. If that's your issue, you'll need to hit ESC then 2 and time it correctly to boot from your USB stick.

If you are seeing the boot text, just don't have the opportunity to press ESC for the boot menu, it's because your USB stick is not being detected as bootable, so the boot menu timeout (5s) gets skipped and it boots directly to the internal HDD. Try another USB stick, or try re-partitioning as described in the wiki

Hey Matt,

Ah, okay, so basically I screwed myself by updating to the 2.8 firmware yesterday? Because for the last couple of weeks everything was working fine and I would always have that boot screen option pop up for 5 seconds. I'll give the ESC and 2 a try and hopefully that'll work. Thanks for the fast reply. Eric

[necronomicon]

Hi Matt,

I recently got my Asus Chromebox, and tried the script today (v2.9)... I decided to use the dual boot option with OpenELEC, the script run flawlessly (both stages, then writing firmware to change delay, etc.).... but once I boot into OpenELEC I get stuck at "Booting from Hard Disk...". I saw some posts that suggested changing USB drives, but in my case (dual boot) I'm not using a USB stick.

Any advise on what I should try next? Thanks!

[Matt Devo]

Hi Matt,

I recently got my Asus Chromebox, and tried the script today (v2.9)... I decided to use the dual boot option with OpenELEC, the script run flawlessly (both stages, then writing firmware to change delay, etc.).... but once I boot into OpenELEC I get stuck at "Booting from Hard Disk...". I saw some posts that suggested changing USB drives, but in my case (dual boot) I'm not using a USB stick.

Any advise on what I should try next? Thanks!

I'm really surprised that there are still issues with the OE dual boot setup, but apparently there's some abnormal condition that I'm not properly catching/handling. While we could try to troubleshoot, the easiest thing would be for you to do a factory reset as outlined in section 1.3 of the wiki, then re-running the script (2x, just like before). If you still have issues afterwards, you can hit me up on google chat/hangouts and we'll get to the bottom of it

[necronomicon]

Hi Matt,

I recently got my Asus Chromebox, and tried the script today (v2.9)... I decided to use the dual boot option with OpenELEC, the script run flawlessly (both stages, then writing firmware to change delay, etc.).... but once I boot into OpenELEC I get stuck at "Booting from Hard Disk...". I saw some posts that suggested changing USB drives, but in my case (dual boot) I'm not using a USB stick.

Any advise on what I should try next? Thanks!

I'm really surprised that there are still issues with the OE dual boot setup, but apparently there's some abnormal condition that I'm not properly catching/handling. While we could try to troubleshoot, the easiest thing would be for you to do a factory reset as outlined in section 1.3 of the wiki, then re-running the script (2x, just like before). If you still have issues afterwards, you can hit me up on google chat/hangouts and we'll get to the bottom of it

Will try and report back.

Update: After performing a factory reset and repeating the process, the problem seems to be gone and OpenELEC is booting properly. The only thing that I did differently was that this time I did not follow the steps on "Set Boot Options" (since I assumed the boot delay was still present in the firmware), so I just did step #1 twice (partition, then install), but no step #3.

[Matt Devo]

Will try and report back.

Update: After performing a factory reset and repeating the process, the problem seems to be gone and OpenELEC is booting properly. The only thing that I did differently was that this time I did not follow the steps on "Set Boot Options" (since I assumed the boot delay was still present in the firmware), so I just did step #1 twice (partition, then install), but no step #3.

you know, I've seen posts that say that setting the boot flags can sometimes corrupt the legacy BIOS, but never seen anyone actually report that happening. I suppose in the future the first thing to have people try would be the legacy BIOS update option (#4) in the script, before going thru the hassle of doing a reset/reload