“Re-imaging” A Chromebook Is Incredibly Easy

You forgot to enroll your Chromebook in the management console or the Chromebook is just acting weird.  How do you get it back to a nominal state quickly?  Chromebooks make this process incredibly easy (Google calls it wiping the device).

1. Press Esc +  + Power and the screen displays a yellow exclamation point.
2. Press Ctrl + D to reboot and begin dev mode
3. Press Enter and the screen displays a red exclamation point.
4. Press Ctrl + D. The Chromebook deletes its local data, returning to its initial state. The deletion takes approximately 5-10 minutes.
5. Press the spacebar
6. then press Enter to return to verified mode.
   If Forced re-enrollment is enabled for the device you are attempting to wipe, the deletion process is shortened and the device will reboot into stable mode without needing to complete this step.
7. Enroll the Chromebook before signing in to it.

The older process involved creating a USB recovery drive and plugging that in, but now you can just do it right from the machine.

Re-imaging is a common solution to get a computer back into circulation.  You won’t find the root cause of an issue doing this, but it is a great way to get the user back up and running in no time.