Guide: Factory Reset a Chromebook: Tips and Tutorial
Factory reset your Chromebook is never fun, but sometimes it’s a necessary troubleshooting step and a fresh start when we sell or give away our computer. It is necessary from time to time to reset your device, either to troubleshoot (the device has become too slow, has a connectivity problem, etc.) or because we are upgrading or selling our device and our personal information. The good news is that it is fairly easy toup from a Chromebook and reset it to factory settings. And because everything is linked to your Google account, once you log back into your account, you can access every app, extension, file and folder associated with your Google profile. But how exactly do you reset your Chromebook? Well, as with most of the features on Google’s affordable laptop OS, restoring your Chromebook to its default state is almost effortless. There is even a keyboard shortcut for the process. But before we get into that, let’s get through some data setup and back again first up your Chromebook.
Backing Up Your Chromebook
Before resetting your device, you want to make a backupup of your data to avoid losing important files. The Chromebook runs on Chrome OS, an operating system based on Linux. It is stable and works well. That said, the Chromebook isn’t really meant to store a lot of data. Since most of your files are stored in the cloud with Google Drive, there isn’t much to do up within a Chromebook. Still, most of us occasionally keep a local document, photo collection, and similar files on our devices, and it’s worth taking a few minutes to dive into your local storage to see what’s on the device is saved.
From the desktop of your Chromebook, tap the small circle icon in the lower left corner of your screen or click Search button on your Chromebook’s keyboard. When you click on the little circle icon at the bottom left of your screen, the Chromebook launcher will load. Here you can load your file browser from the list of your recent applications or, if you haven’t opened the file browser in a while, by clicking the “All apps” icon at the bottom of the launcher and the “Files” App. Once loaded into Files, you will see a traditional file browser that can display your various folders and content library. On the left side of the browser, you will see several menus, including your Google Drive account and your Downloads folder. These are the two main parts of your Chromebook by default, but you may have added additional services or folders to your laptop. In the case of our test Chromebook, we only have our Google Drive account and our Downloads folder, which contains several screenshots and a few miscellaneous downloads from Chrome. Not all files in our Downloads folder are essential, but the files we want to keep must be supported up- otherwise we will lose them forever if we reset the Chromebook to factory settings.
There are two ways to go back up these files:
Remember that for photo or video files, you can also use Google Photos to upload your content. Photos use your Google Drive storage or may replace your files with slightly lower quality versions that don’t count towards your storage.
How to Factory Reset a Chromebook
After you’ve taken your files and storage off your Chromebook and put them on another drive or storage service, it’s time to reset your Chromebook. And as usual with Google products, there are a couple of different ways to reset a Chromebook.
Reset your Chromebook with keyboard shortcuts
Conveniently, all Chromebooks include a keyboard shortcut to reset your device quickly and easily. It can be helpful to use the keyboard shortcut approach if you’re having trouble using or accessing your Chromebook’s settings.
Start by signing out of your Chromebook by tapping the system information panel in the lower-right corner of your Chromebook’s screen. In this panel you will find a ton of different power options, including the ability to log out of your device by clicking on ‘Sign Out’ button at the top of the panel.
After logging out of your account, hold down Ctrl + Alt + Shift + R. This shortcut will load a screen that says “Reset this Chrome device,” alongside a helpful explanation of what Chrome calls “powerwashing.” Powerwashing your device is just another way of saying “factory reset”, so rest assured, this is the menu we’re looking for. Click on the “Powerwash” button- or, when prompted, click on ‘Restart’ button, let your device reboot and then click “Powerwash” to start the reset process. Google may then ask you to confirm your choice to power the device. If you still want to proceed with the reset, accept the prompt. After about a minute, your Chromebook will reboot to the default Chrome OS “Welcome!” screen and you can reset your device. The account you sign in with becomes the “owner” of the Chromebook. If you want to sell your appliance, simply switch off the machine to use it with the new owner. The new owner can then link an account to his Chromebook.
Reset your Chromebook via Settings
As we mentioned above, you don’t need to sign out of your device to trigger a Chrome OS powerwash, also known as a factory reset. You can also access the factory reset option from your settings menu, and it’s just as easy as described above with the shortcut method.
Tap the system information panel in the lower-right corner of your Chromebook’s screen, just like above, but instead of logging out, tap the settings gear icon to load it into Chrome OS’s settings menu. Most of the settings are hidden behind Google’s ‘Advanced’ label at the bottom of the settings, so go ahead and scroll down to the bottom of their menu.
Click on “Advanced”, and you will see the settings menu expand. At the very bottom of the settings list, you will find two reset options:
Reset: This will return your settings to their default state, but will not erase or erase your Chromebook’s storage drive and accounts. Powerwash (factory reset): This will delete all your accounts, extensions and apps from your Chromebook and restore it to their original, ready-to-use state.
As you can imagine, we are looking for the “Powerwash” setting. Tapping on that menu will load a menu asking you to reboot your Chromebook first, just like we saw above with the shortcut method. After your device has rebooted, return to the menu to power your device. Tap “Powerwash”, confirm your selection with Google, and that’s it: just like we saw above, your machine will reboot after about a minute and you’ll be greeted by Chrome’s “Welcome!” Screen.
Final Thoughts
In general, factory resetting (powerwashing) a Chromebook is easier than factory resetting many devices and computers. And because Google’s operating system is so intertwined with cloud services, support up the files on your device – no matter how few or how many – only take a minute or two of your time. Since people tend to save a lot more files directly to a PC or Mac, they have to back upup making these machines up would usually take much longer than backupup up a Chromebook. There is no need to back upup from or transferring applications or extensions as everything will be reloaded when you first boot and log in the machine. And even a factory reset takes less time than an iOS or Android device.
Factory Reset a Chromebook: Tips and Tutorial: benefits
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