Monday, March 7, 2011

Cr-48 Recovery SD Cards are shipping!

I'm happy to announce that Cr-48 Recovery SD Cards are in and ready to ship ahead of schedule. You can order yours with the online form. Payment is taken by PayPal so you're free to use your credit card or checking account securely. I've also added options for Priority and Express USPS delivery if you want your card in a hurry.
The Cr-48 Recovery SD Card

Each card has been tested on a Cr-48 and shown to restore it to a clean Chrome OS install (yep, that means I recovered my Cr-48 many, many times over the weekend). I have a limited number of cards ready to go so order fast. In the next few days, I plan to offer a video walk-through of the recovery process with the SD Cards.

25 comments:

  1. You, Sir, are providing a valuable service. Thank You.

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  2. New Dev update!

    Chrome OS 0.11.227.0 (Official Build) dev-channel x86-mario
    Google Chrome 11.0.690.0
    More Info

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  3. Is the image limited to a CR-48 model or can any netbook run it?

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  4. @Jeff: The image is specific to the Cr-48, it will not run on other netbooks.

    Jay

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  5. I've filled out the form and ordered one. Will this restore it to a completely "factory" state? Like I'm going to be possibly installing ubuntu as a dual boot. Will this remove ubuntu when it does the recovery?

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  6. @Shinji257: It will do a complete recovery to factory state. Basically the only scenario in which it would not recover is if you flashed the regular PC BIOS (Luigi) onto the machine, in that case you'd need to revert back to the stock Chrome OS firmware then run the recovery.

    But if you're just following my Easy Ubuntu Install instructions, the SD Card will be able to undo all of that and get your Cr-48 back to defaults.

    Jay

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  7. Ok. Sounds great to me. I just sent you the payment so you should see it in a few minutes. :p

    You just saved me some work making mine up.

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  8. How does this differ from a USB image? Kind of new to the CR-48 thing since mine never worked when I got it. Flashing with USB hasn't been working for me, so I'm trying to find anything that will fix my problem.

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  9. @snekse: If your Cr-48 has never worked then there's two possibilities: 1) Chrome OS was not installed properly to the drive. 2) The hardware is bad.

    The SD Cards work identical to the USB cards, I just chose SD Cards because they're easier to ship. The SD Card would give you a known working recovery method, if it fails then you have a hardware issue.

    Can you offer any more details on your Cr-48's state? Does it boot at all? Do you see anything on the screen? What happens when you try to recover?

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  10. When I first got it, it booted normally and I went through the registration type stuff. It indicated that there was an update available, so I let it update. Afterward, it showed mt the recovery screen. I put a recovery image on a USB drive using the Linux instructions. When I put the USB drive into the CR-48, it goes through the recovery process and looks like it completes normally. It indicates that the machine will restart in 2 minutes, but when it does, it just displays the recovery screen again.

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  11. @snekse: It sounds like your laptop has the developer mode switch enabled. You can press CTRL+D at the recovery screen or just wait 30 seconds and the Cr-48 will boot. To turn of dev mode, take the battery out and near the gold battery contact pins you'll see a switch (possibly covered by a piece of black tape). Flip the switch so that it is away from the gold contacts, this will put you back in regular mode and you won't see the recovery prompt every time you boot.

    Jay

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  12. The screen didn't give me the dev mode warning, and I changed it to dev mode this morning just to make sure. Tried flashing the OS in dev mode, but that didn't solve the problem either. Completely at a loss. Was going to buy your SD card, but it doesn't sound like that's going to help me. Is there any way you know of to get at the log files?

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  13. Just wanted to follow up. From what I described, do you think an SD card would help, or am I screwed?

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  14. snekse: Try pressing ALT+F3 (which is labelled as the refresh button on the Cr-48) as soon as the recovery black screen comes up. It should give you more detail as to what's going on. Keep an eye for any errors and post them here.

    Jay

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  15. @snekse: also, if you have a Linux machine, put the recovery drive in it and mount partition 1 (probably /dev/sdb1 or such). There should be a recovery.log file on there. You can email it to me (email address is on my jhltechservices.com website).

    Jay

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  16. So if we were to flash the BIOS and get Windows installed on here, we would have to flash the normal BIOS back before we could use this? Just planning ahead. Also, where would you be able to find the original BIOS?

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  17. I like the sticker you used for the SD Cards. Think you'd be willing to put up an image of it so those of us with our own recovery SD Cards can print it out to use?

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  18. Hi Jay, Is it still possible to order an SD card? Thanks!!

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  19. I'd sure like to order one of these. The form/spreadsheet at the link requires credentials I don't have.

    Suggestions?

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  20. @susan: sorry about that, the form link should be working for you now.

    Jay

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  21. Hi Jay. Really interested in this sd card, but the form appears to be broken.

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  22. I need to order a card too! but the form link doesn't work. Please contact and let me know how to get one of these! This is a great service, so please don't stop :)

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  23. I need a card how can i get one you can email me at redrocker@echoes.net

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  24. I would like a card. Please email me at jlklein@gmail.com

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