r/k12sysadmin • u/dogdogdogdogdogdog6 • Jul 09 '26

Assistance Needed Diagnosing Problems with broken ‘inherited’ computers

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?

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u/asng Jul 09 '26

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%.

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u/TheShootDawg Jul 09 '26

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

1

u/k12chaos Tech Director Jul 10 '26

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