Acer Chromebook Spin 713 CP713-2W error: Chrome OS is missing or damaged

Fruju
Fruju Member Posts: 1 New User
edited October 2023 in Chromebooks

I have one of these "recertified" Acer Chromebook, manufacturer date 2020/06/29, but I bought it early September 2020.

In the past week, it has shut down spontaneously. And when restarted, it limps along and eventually shows "Chrome OS is missing or damaged. Please remove all connected devices and start recovery."

I know there have been other posts about this, and I've gone through burning a USB pen drive with the Chrome Recovery Utility image.

But for the life of me, I can't work out how to make it boot into recovery mode.

Most of the Google instructions say "Hold down Esc, Refresh key (F3) and the Power key". Well, the Acer Spin CP713 doesn't have a power key. It only has the power button on the side.

In addition, no matter what I do, I can't get it to "shut down" once it's in this mode. I can hold down the Power button on the side for over a minute, and it still won't turn off. The only way I can get the screen to turn off is to close the lid.

When I reopen the lid, the fan starts up immediately and eventually the same "Chrome OS is missing or damaged" message reappears.

What magical incantation do I need to do to get it to actually boot into full Recovery Mode where I can insert the USB drive and have it read to try and restore. Are there any other diagnostic modes that I can use?

What am I missing?

[Edited the thread to add issue detail]

Answers

  • billsey
    billsey ACE Posts: 34,246 Trailblazer
    edited October 2023

    There are a bunch of different CP713-2W models, with the primary differences between them language and storage. They came with a 64GB eMMC drive, a 128GB eMMC drive, a 128GB NVMe SSD or a 256GB NVMe SSD. The eMMC drives have a fairly short lifetime, they only allow a certain amount of writes before failing, but at three years old it would be early for one of those to fail. Note that eMMC drives are soldered to the motherboard, so not really replaceable. The SSDs last much longer and typically the laptop reaches it's end of life before the drive does. The typical symptoms from a failed eMMC is just what you are seeing, the OS fails to load and can't go through the recovery cycle, because the recovery isn't able to write to the drive. The fix for those, short of junking it and starting over with a new one, is to drop an NVMe drive in and put the OS on it instead.

    Click on "Like" if you find my answer useful or click on "Yes" if it answers your question.
  • gabester
    gabester Member Posts: 2 New User
    edited November 2023

    I have a CP713-2W-3311 with 64GB eMMC manufactured in November 2020, bought and put into service in May 2021. It received moderate usage, maybe 2-3 hours a day with most of that google docs writing, reading a couple websites, and watching YouTube. Never much stored on it. One day in the following August 2022 it just crapped out as described above, "ChromeOS is damaged or missing". I refreshed it with a USB drive. It crapped out again within a month. Then a few days. I managed to get ahold of someone at Acer support, got an RMA and repaired under warranty and they supposedly repaired it, but apparently all they did is the same thing I had been doing, simply reload ChromeOS. It went bad within two weeks of its return to me. One interesting bit - if I never log in a user but just use it as a guest it will work for quite some time - days or even weeks. So that's what I've been doing.

    Unfortunately for this model there's no NVMe connector, and while there's a position where you might be able to solder one in, that's well beyond my abilities and who knows if the necessary controller is present on the motherboard.

    I'd gladly pay to get this repaired, if it were a modest amount, but I think I need to pay $35 just to talk to someone in their support who will tell me to reload the OS from another USB stick. It's pretty disappointing because clearly they have a batch of defective eMMC chips based on the reports I've read.

  • gabester
    gabester Member Posts: 2 New User

    Interestingly I just stumbled across thread by googling acer chromebook defective emmc

    In looking at some other results, I came across this page https://community.acer.com/en/kb/articles/8427-use-crosh-diagnostics-to-troubleshoot-hardware-problems-on-chrome-os-devices and just ran storage_test_1 which returned <This feature is not supported> then ran storage_test_2 and returned no errors. I'm presuming this means my eMMC is NOT bad, but there is some other issue that renders "Chrome OS is missing or damaged" after I log in a google account.

  • billsey
    billsey ACE Posts: 34,246 Trailblazer

    I believe if you change that Google search to use any other laptop manufacturers name other than Acer, you will get the same results. eMMC drives are really cheap, which helps drive the full model cost down, and that's what Chromebook consumers want. Cheap as possible. Pretty much all eMMC designs fail much faster that normal SSDs…

    That CROSH test likely doesn't do an exhaustive test of the drive, so only let's you know that it's not running into issues with what it does test. It likely doesn't verify writes to existing OS files or content of the files…

    Click on "Like" if you find my answer useful or click on "Yes" if it answers your question.
  • TonySpin
    TonySpin Member Posts: 3 New User

    This discussion on "ChromeOS is damaged or missing" has been revolving around the eMMC drives as the primary problem. In my case, I replaced my SSD drive because my 713 had all the reoccurring issues that were described in connection with the eMMC drives. My 713 recovered, and ran well for a few weeks of moderate daily use. I figured I was good to go, and it even passed all the diagnostics. Unfortunately, it crashed again today with the same "ChromeOS is damaged or missing" message. I am not adverse to sending it to Acer repair service but feel they will just recover it and send it back to me. How can I assure they actually fix it for real?

  • billsey
    billsey ACE Posts: 34,246 Trailblazer

    Are you sure you are no longer using the eMMC drive for anything? If you are running completely off the new M.2 SSD then the issue shouldn't be present…

    Click on "Like" if you find my answer useful or click on "Yes" if it answers your question.
  • jacqrobert
    jacqrobert Member Posts: 1 New User

    Have a read of

    https://www.reddit.com/r/chromeos/comments/xtl60o/acer_spin_713_2w_keeps_losing_the_os_help/?sort=new

    The CP713-2W with a manufacturing date of late 2020 suffers from a fundamental flaw with its onboard memory. Unfortunately this is soldered on and is not easy to replace (do not confuse with the SSD - this problem has nothing to do with the SSD/flash storage).

    These things are failing in their dozens (we have hundreds at our company). Some units have been back to Acer for repair FOUR TIMES but all they do is swap the main board for another one which exhibits the same problem. They worked with Google and tried to come up with a software fix in Chrome M116 but it made no difference as far as we are concerned.

    I urge you to find a named Acer contact in your country and complain. Do not settle for anything other than having this manufacturing issue addressed at Acer's cost. In certain countries you will have the backup of consumer law behind you which states that a product must be fit for purpose. They have confirmed to me via email that the issue is with the SK Hynix memory that is on the motherboard. Apparently some of our devices were sent back to Taiwan for diagnosis and investigation to confirm this.

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