Lenovo ideapad 5i flex stuck in recovery loop

Support General Device Support
1

System Details

  • Device: TAEKO lenovo flex 5
  • OS: ChromeOs / linux
  • Firmware Type: RW_LEGACY
  • Firmware Version: ?
  • Internal storage type: [SATA, NVMe, eMMC, UFS] (if applicable)

Summary of the Issue

so i flashed a copy of ubuntu onto my lenovo ideapad i5 flex using RW_LEGACY and that worked fine, but i wanted to put windows on there instead, so i bought a ccd board in order to disable the WP enforced by the CR50 chip on my board (this was the only way) and in order to turn on closed case debugging on the board, i had to open up chrome os instead of ubuntu.

in hindsight i probably shouldnt have done this, but i attempted to turn off developer mode (so i could turn it back on) and get back to the chrome os boot, but i realized as i was doing it that the ubuntu installation probably wiped my entire disk and so the chromeboook wouldnt know where to find the chrome os boot.

it then got stuck in a loop of telling me that “Your device is finishing an update. This may take 1-2 minutes. Please do not turn off your device.” and then the screen would go blank and the fan would whirr up and abruptly stop and go back to the text, so i opened up the recovery screen using esc+refresh+power like i had done a million times and installed a recovery image onto my usb, but it told me that “no valid recovery image was detected” i tried a few different models but nothing seemed to work.

tldr: i tried to activate ccd and failed and the recovery usb was not being picked up.

im just wondering if anyone else has come across this issue and how did they fix it.

the above image is also not mine but it is exactly what im seeing

Steps to Reproduce

  1. use RW_LEGACY to get a linux distro

  2. attempt to disable developer mode from the boot screen

Expected Behavior

i suppose it was sort of my fault but i thought rw_legacy left chromeos on the computer, so ig i thought it would open chromeos back up.

2

you need to perform a ChromeOS recovery using the correct image, there’s no other way to get ChromeOS back on your device

3

yes i know but when i try to download the recovery image using the recovery tool, t says that the partition table is corrupted and then when i format it, my Chromebook wont pick up the image.

4

what is “it”?

you don’t format the recovery USB. The recovery image is exactly that, a disk image. it contains the entire partition table etc, when it is written to USB is replaces everything that is on there. Whether you formatted it or not before makes zero difference. Doing so is a waste of time.