[tk2k]

So I'm in a bad place here with my Asus Chromebox..

Everything was going well until I did the firmware change and reboot - it booted via the bootloader once and began to boot from the hdd instead of the usb drive. rebooted, and now it's stuck on a blank screen with the fan spinning. Won't seem to respond to keyboard commands. recovery tool usb image isn't working either. Please advise.

power off, disconnect power, wait 10s, plug back in. The recovery function/USB media isn't valid once you flash the custom firmware. Now you just need to boot a USB installer for whatever OS you want to run.

So this didn't work at all, what ended up working was removing the SSD, and then it booted right into my openelec install medium. hot-plugged the SSD in and could install correctly.