Sunday, March 16, 2014

Install Chrome OS into EeeKeyboard

The end of Windows XP is approaching. Microsoft has declared the withdrawal of supporting this OS. Many users have to make a decision whether they abandon their old PCs.

One of the choices which is a little aggressive is to install Chrome OS. Chrome is an open source OS powered by Google. This OS itself is available for free. You can get it here, for instance.

I have some PCs whose OS is still Windows XP. One is EeeKeyboard by ASUS. It equips a small touch screen aside the keyboard. The CPU is Atom. To be honest, it did not work very well. It frequently froze. I thought that overwriting it with Windows 7 would be reckless. Therefore, I tried Chrome.


First, I got a Chrome image via this site.

Vanilla is one of Chrome OS, which can be booted on a USB memory. I wrote the image into a USB memory stick with WIN32 Disk Imager.

I changed the setting of the BIOS in EeeKeyboard, to specify the external storage as boot device. Then, Chrome OS started easily.

Unfortunately, however, Chrome could not recognize any network adapter. Any WiFi signals were not detected. I connected LAN cable, to fail. I had to get a USB WiFi adapter connected. USB devices were working, as well as an optical mouse.


Booting was successful. I installed Chrome OS into the internal SSD with command terminal. I opened the terminal with Ctrl+Alt+T. Type "install", password "facepunch", then, "y". Chrome said "cross your finger" why?


Finally, I rebooted it successfully. This is my second Chrome PC, followed by this one.


Touch panel was not working. To begin, it is too small to utilize. Of course, EeeKeyboard equips D-sub 15pins and HDMI monitor connectors. You can mirror the display with pushing Ctrl+F4.

The flash was working well. But the sound was troubled.

Anyway, how to use it?

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