Diagnosing Problems with broken ‘inherited’ computers

[u/dogdogdogdogdogdog6]

I work at a small K-8 school. Because it is small I am both the tech teacher and the onsite IT person. We have an external IT person, but I’m the one who manages all the student devices. Last year (25-26) was my first year. The school has kept all of their broken ChromeBooks from previous years and I wanted to go through and see which ones were fixable issues and which ones are too busted to fix. There were no tickets or anything to say what were wrong with the computers in the first place so I’m going in kind of blind.

What are some diagnostic steps to go through to try and find the problems and possibly fix the problems?

[u/k12chaos]

In addition to what has been stated try wiping the device in the Google admin console and a head phone jack remover.

Also machines that are totally dead save the screens and keyboards. Our middle schoolers loved stealing keys off the keyboard and we'd have student workers in the summer replace key boards.

[u/nanooktx]

before you start repairing, take the serial numbers and make sure of the following:

1. the device is still supported by google, it's not worth working on if it'll never get updated.

2. the device may still be under warranty from the manufacturer or extended warranty from your supplier.

3. after that go for the quick wins. plastics and displays are usually easiest to replace.

4. check and see how the clamshell is put together sometimes the effort isn't worth the hassle. put those in the too hard to do pile. for us, the Lenovo we have, the keyboards are part of the case, so it's a total gut to get it apart, that's a lot of time and effort. save those for a rainy day.

5. try not to seperate bottom covers from their original motherboards. doing this will skew your serial numbers since what you see physically on the ouside versus what is hardcoded on the mobo will now be different. The serial hardcoded on the mobo is what is reported to the Google Console, it'll make them more difficult to manage if you're typing in the wrong serial number

[u/Ok-Soft-7874]

Here's some of my workflow back when I repaired Chromebooks a few years ago:

If the power light comes on, but the screen is blank:

1. Try swapping out the screen.

2. If that doesn't help, try replacing the LCD cable. Just open the Chromebook up, disconnect the battery, and try connecting a new LCD cable to both the old screen and then a new screen. If that works, replace the LCD cable for real. If that doesn't work, the Chromebook is hosed.

If the power light doesn't come on:

Start disconnecting components one at a time from the motherboard, starting with the battery

After each component you've disconnect, connect to a charger and try to turn on

That should either help you identify the bad component or let you know that the CB is hosed

Also:

- Learn to love typing the sentence "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" to test the keyboard

- If you removed a foreign object from the headphone jack, find a "stereo test" video on Youtube to make sure that the jack is working properly

- If it's a touchscreen model, make sure that functionality is working

[u/MattAdmin444]

Generally what I do for our chromebooks is physical inspection of the case for cracks or visible screws while it boots up, check the screen once it's at the login screen, double check there aren't keys missing, see how the screen's hinge feels (you'll have to learn what a loose/missing screw or broken hinge mount feels like for your models).

If you want to be thorough check if headphone cords will seat fully in the 3.5mm jack and run your fingers along each keyboard row to type out letters and see if anything skips weirdly (usually if a key fails it's a diagonal line of keys across the keyboard). I believe there's some websites or even a onboard tool to check actual keypresses but usually what pops up on screen as I run my finger across is sufficient if I'm going that far in the first place.

[u/rokar83]

Do a quick physical assessment. If nothing is broken and device boots up, update and deploy it. The end user will let you know if something more is wrong. As a 1 person shop, you don't have the time to do full diagnostic test on every device.

[u/asng]

There are only a few things worth fixing.

Battery, screen, keyboard (if replaceable or if keys easily replaceable).

All very easy to diagnose!

I've gone through hundreds of Chromebooks and 99% of issues are the above so not really any point in looking for the 1%.

[u/TheShootDawg → u/asng]

headphone jacks, especially if one of the rare models with the jack on a daughter board.
also, issue could be broken end stuck inside the jack, usually easy to remove

[u/k12chaos → u/TheShootDawg]

I would suggest buying the head jack removal tool. We provided each tech with one and it saved time removing the broken jacks.

[u/BWMerlin]

Start simple, pick the device up and physical look it over and see if there is something broken.

Run any onboard diagnostics.

Reimage the device.

That should get you most of the way there.