CHELL: "EC software sync unable to determine active EC image"

Support
1

I have an HP Chromebook 13 G1 (CHELL). I removed the write protect screw, got a shell by pressing CTRL+ALT+F2 on the login screen, then started the MrChromebox firmware utility.

I chose the Full ROM firmware option, then got to the firmware backup step. I tried multiple different USB keys formatted by Linux and Windows; fat32 and ext4 filesystems; GPT and MBR partition types–the script didn’t like any of them. Finally, I decided to reboot into ChromeOS and partition/format a USB key there. ChromeOS ought to be able to use a USB device it created, right?

I had assumed that no changes had been made to the system.

After rebooting, I was greeted with “Please insert a recovery USB stick or SD card.” I created a USB recovery stick, ran the process, and it failed with an unexpected error. I tried again, same thing. And again.

I’ve tried:

  • Hard resets (refresh + power)
  • Disconnecting the battery and AC to clear all volatile storage
  • Previous versions of the CHELL stock firmware
  • Different physical USB recovery keys

This is the message that appears when I press tab on the recovery screen:

HWID: CHELL C25-C50-D6A-A4L
recovery_reason: 0x23 / 0x00 EC software sync unable to determine active EC image
VbSD.flags: 0x00003dc14
VbNv.raw: 60 30 00 00 00 02 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 1f
dev_boot_usb: 0
dev_boot_legacy: 0
dev_default_boot: 0
dev_boot_signed_only: 0
dev_boot_fastboot_full_cap: 0
TPM: fwver=0x00010001 kernver=0x00010001
gbb.flags: 0x00000000
gbb.rootkey: a3343405a7a6b7738139024d21c00803930f5f49
gbb.recovery_key: 51af43d15d30e5b43881848d259f806582a09955
read-only firmware id: Google_Chel1.7820.215.0
active firmware id: Google_Chel1.7820.215.0

Any suggestions?

2

you mean older recovery images? I’m not sure how you’d be flashing the firmware

presumably the device is in developer mode, which means it will run unsigned recovery images. I would just modify the recovery image on the USB to flash my firmware for you (rather than performing a ChromeOS recovery). While admittedly not the easiest path forward, it’s easier than directly flashing the WSON-8 flash chip on the board.

3

Right. I was trying to see if an older restore image could get me to where I could run the firmware utility again.

I’ll try that, thanks.

4

Seems like a good use of RecoMod