How I installed ChromeOS Flex in 30 minutes

RV_ · August 6, 2022

Here is another way to revive old hardware. If your machine is 64 bit the requirements are in the full article, and are pretty low. Best of all you can load and run it from a USB drive and not wipe your computer and those instructions are in the article.

I have not tried this as I am happy with both my Windows 11 machine and my Windows 10 machines. I do caution you, as does the article, to back up anything you want to keep before doing even the supposedly safe test from a USB Flash drive. I may pick up a cheapie to experiment on once I sell all my current systems I just upgraded from, that are still very top shelf performance-wise, just not 11th gen systems.

So if you have a good candidate try it and let us know how it went.

Excerpt:

"Want to easily give your old PC a new life? Here's how to do it with Google's ChromeOS Flex.

One of my favorite old PCs is a Dell Inspiron One 2320. This all-in-one (AIO) computer with a 2.4Ghz Intel Pentium Dual Core i5 processor, 6GBs of RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GT525M, and a 320GB hard drive is a great machine… for 2012. Ten years later? Not so much.

But this one-time Windows 7 PC still has a good 23-inch HD display. What it can't do is run Windows 10 well, and let's not even talk about Windows 11. I could run Linux on it, but I already have lots of Linux PCs, so I tried something different: I decided to install Google ChromeOS Flex on it.

Also: How I revived three ancient computers with ChromeOS Flex

I had left Windows 7 on this machine, which was a dedicated accounting system. I'd disconnected it from the internet, though, since running Windows 7 on an internet-connected PC is just asking to be hacked. Like most old Windows PCs, it had slowed to the point where it was essentially useless. Just booting it up would take -- I kid you not -- three minutes.

But ChromeOS Flex, which is at heart a Linux system, can run on low-powered computers. How low can it go? According to Google, ChromeOS Flex's minimum requirements are:

Intel or AMD x86-64-bit compatible device (it won't work with 32-bit processors)
RAM: 4 GB
Internal storage: 16 GB
Bootable from a USB drive
BIOS: Full administrator access (you'll need to boot from the ChromeOS Flex USB installer and make some adjustments in the BIOS if you run into issues)

It boils down to the fact that if you have a PC that was built in 2010 or later, it should work. It might work with even older components if you're feeling adventurous. If, however, you're running a box with Intel GMA 500, 600, 3600, or 3650 graphics hardware, you're asking for trouble.

If you want to be reasonably sure it will work on your old computer, you can check to see if it's listed on Google's ChromeOS Flex Certified models list. My Inspiron One 2320? Nope, I was taking the life of my computer in my hands. I was okay with that.

Before you follow in my tracks, there are a few things you should keep in mind. First, moving your PC from Windows, macOS, or whatever to ChromeOS Flex is a one-way trip. Everything -- applications, photos of mom, your QuickBooks files -- on your old drive is going to get vaporized. If you want to keep anything, back up your important files to another computer, cloud storage, or a Network-Attached Storage (NAS). Otherwise, kiss it all goodbye."

Or back them up to an external hard drive or SSD. And if you have one big enough you can use Control Panel/"Backup and Restore (Windows 7)" and make a full system image and boot USB rescue flash drive and later restore it as it was. But for something that old, I'd have it all backed up to one of my storage drives anyway so no loss. I have enough Drive docks and storage drives to do system images on all of mine, in fact have a dedicated external USB 3.1 1TB HDD or 2TB SSD dedicated to each of our Windows machines.

OK more and the rest of the directions in the article here:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-i-installed-chromeos-flex-in-30-minutes/?ftag=TRE-03-10aaa6b&bhid={%24external_id}&mid={%24MESSAGE_ID}&cid={%24contact_id}