[Matt Devo]

wow, I step away for a few hours...

*Excuse the formatting of the text, I typed it in Notepad first.

So the scenario was this:

1.) Chromebox in a dual boot state with stock firmware
2.) Chromebox was set to boot LibreELEC immediatley, no 30s wait
3.) Chromebox had been restored using Googles Recovery Utility(it said it was successful) <------that is where the problems started

yeah, this is where you hosed yourself. There's always a short delay where you could have hit [CTRL+D] to boot ChromeOS, run the script, and flashed the firmware - easy peasy.

4.) ESC key's did not work on any keyboard to get to boot selection menu
6.) When it tried to boot the partition where LibreELEC was installed it just went to a blank screen, no keys worked, nothing.
7.) I didn't have another 1.8" SSD to try and use.

well, when you ran the ChromeOS recovery, it repartitioned/reformated the SSD, so bye-bye LibreELEC. And it also overwrote the Legacy Boot firmware with the stock version, which has non-functional USB ports (so no keyboard/mouse etc).
PS - it's a m.2 SATA 2242 SSD, not a 1.8" SATA drive

5.) ChromeOS did not boot as it says the owner has disabled ChromeoS boot in developer mode"

never seen that before

1.) The Ctrl+U took a lot of searching to find, now I've searched specifially for it, I can find stuff on it, but when I was researching the issues I was having, I could hardly find anything, only 1 post in a forum that mentioned Ctrl+U.

because it's only useful for booting ChromeOS/ChromiumOS on USB, and lots of idiot bloggers thought setting the flag was needed to boot USB devices in Legacy Boot mode, and it's normally isn't enabled (you just got lucky it was)

2.) Before all of this, I could not find a single post or thread or anything about how to actually switch from a dual boot, to a single boot, I'm talking about a small guide, I'm sure that would have saved me this issue, I think the way you would do it now is, just boot of a USB Chromium/Ubuntu, go to a R/W'able location and download/run Matt's E-Z Script which will allow you to flash the coreboot firmware.

no, you just boot ChromeOS (CTRL+D) and run the script from there.

3.) In a few places it's mentioned that before you restore to factory "so be sure to reset them back to the 'ChromeOS + 30s default'", but I could not find anything that actually told me how to do it, on the same page further down it does mentioned that "The default OS and boot timeout are set using the 'Set Boot Options' feature of the EZ Setup Script" which I didn't see so that was my fault, at the same time I didn't know how to boot USB so I would have had to figure that out first.

again, you would just boot ChromeOS and run the script

6.) At the time I could not see anywhere that said if the coreboot firmware flash also updates SeaBIOS, which I did eventually find on the original kodi.wiki Chromebox page "http://kodi.wiki/view/chromebox", the answer is yes.

I'm not sure how to present this more clearly. Suggestions?

7.) I'm starting to see that the information I needed is out there but scattered in different locations, the Chromebox guide on kodi.wiki is comprehensive but I think it could do with some touch ups when it mentiones something you need/can do, for instance, under "2.3 Perform a Factory Reset", it says "so be sure to reset them back to the 'ChromeOS + 30s default'", that could do with a caption or something next to it that says something like "See 3.2 Dual Boot OS Selection for how to do this"

I can be more explicit in stating that one should boot ChromeOS to do this.

Hey Mr. Chromebox,

I think I'm bricked. I'd be surprised if anyone can help me out of this one.

I bought the Lenovo Chromebox a couple weeks ago on sale. Yesterday I followed the directions in the OP to do a standalone setup. I removed the write-protect screw, put the Chromebox into developer mode, and kicked off the Kodi E-Z Setup script. I selected the custom coreboot firmware but neglected to do the ChromeOS backup. I didn't have a flash drive with me at the time.

It said the installation was successful and then I chose to shutdown the device. When I started it up, it no longer output video. I tried about three different monitors and a couple TVs with a handful of various HDMI and DisplayPort cables. No luck. When you press the power button the device immediately shuts off. It doesn't seem to be getting very far in the boot process.

Please advise. Thank you for the help.

I've not seen one of these boxes actually bricked from flashing via my script, but there's always a first time. Shoot me an email at mrchromebox at gmail and I'll be happy to take a look

@tjfluharty

That sounds like a bad or wrong firmware flash, if when you press the power button it immediatly powers off then I think the only case a backup of the original firmware would be helpful is if you can reflash the rom chip where the firmware is stored, but that's a lot of work, since it says it was successful, I think it flashed the wrong firmware, I could be wrong.

I'm not sure how the script would flash the wrong firmware unless you'd done something to spoof the firmware-embedded info from which it determines the device being used. In this sort of situation, it's one of two things - a bad flash, or a failure of the video BIOS to detect a connected display (which hangs the VBIOS init and the entire boot process)