In April 2021, I purchased a Lenovo Thinkpad 13 Chromebook from eBay for less than $100.00. My goal with this device when I bought it was to remove Chrome OS from it completely and replace its factory OS with a light-weight Linux distro. To do this, I had to open up the machine and remove its write protect screw from the motherboard. I also had to replace the default BIOS with a third party option, in my case, one known as MrChromebox. I was successful in my endeavor, enjoying Lubuntu on the device for the better part of a year. What I wanted to do now is restore the device to its original Chrome OS installation.

Step 1

The first part of this project was creating a bootable recovery disk on a USB drive. This part of the article was written from a make-shift Chromebox running Chrome OS Flex, so access to the Chromebook Recovery Utility was swift.

Within the recovery utility, I followed the prompts to select my specific Chromebook model and directed the tool to flash the OS onto my inserted USB drive. I used a PNY 16GB USB 3.0 for this project. (Here is a non-sponsored link to a set of 32 GB sticks.)

Step 2

The pivotal step here was to restore the device's original BIOS. As mentioned before, my Linux distro of choice on this hardy little machine has been Lubuntu because of its simple system requirements and size.

This project became more complicated from here because the two sets of instructions I was following (HowtoGeek and Medium) simply gave the script I needed to input in order to trigger the menu for reverting to factory BIOS. However, inputting that line of code only produced the same issue, telling me there were not files in the directories I was attempting to access.

My working assumption now is that something with running that command in Lubuntu was not allowing it to reach everything it needed to. My next step was to refer a second USB drive and install the latest version of Ubuntu onto it. Running that OS live from the USB, which was not the best experience given I put it on a USB 2.0 stick and ran it from a USB 2.0 port. Nevertheless, I accessed the terminal in this temporary Ubuntu instance from the Thinkpad 13 Chromebook, and the command worked right away.

From the following options, I was able to revert the machine’s BIOS back to factory settings. Even though I did not have it backed up to a USB drive, this command offered to retrieve those necessary files for me. Very helpful!

Step 3

Before long, I was able to reboot the system and remove the Ubuntu drive to thankfully be greeted by the white screen and black text of a Chrome OS-like environment. After being prompted, I inserted the drive holding the Chromebook recovery.

A few moments passed as the progress bar inches forward. Upon completion, I was prompted again to remove the USB drive for a reboot. This reboot produced the very familiar Chrome OS verification screen —- a welcome sight. The only issue here was that when I pressed SPACE to re-enable OS verification, it could not do so because of GBB flags which were still triggered thanks to the third-party firmware setting.

Unfortunately, I did not account for the unrelentingly audible beep codes, much to the understandable announce of my girlfriend and probably my apartment neighbors (sorry to all involved). Additionally, it had been more than a moment or two since I last encountered this verification screen and did not remember that I simply needed to use the combination CTRL + D to bypass into the Chrome OS boot. My rediscovery of this key factor did not occur until a Google search following multiple error beeps. Finally, the real deal Chrome OS booted without issue, leaving me only in need of running one last script.

Step 4

Running this command was easy enough: I just needed to open the Chrome OS terminal using CTRL, ALT + T. Because I did not have enough hiccups along the way thus far, one last curveball arced my way in the form of the terminal shell not opening in a new browser window as expected. In fact, that key combination produced nothing.

It turned out that somehow at some point, I had removed two vital Chrome extensions for this process: Secure Shell and Crosh Window. After a quick download, I was back in business and was finally able to run the command to switch all boot settings back to factory default, essentially returning my Lenovo Thinkpad 13 Chromebook to a default, legit Chromebook. (Simply without the Write Protection screw on the motherboard.)

All in all, this project was a success, and I am writing this very sentence from the legendary ThinkPad keyboard gracing this little 13" Chromebook.