How to turn a redundant old laptop into a functional Chromebook for free

[Barracker]

If your children are struggling sharing devices in lockdown schooling and you can't afford new laptops, this may be some help.

This is something I did myself last lockdown, and it worked brilliantly.

As a result two ancient old windows XP laptops that hadn't been used in years and had been gathering dust in a cupboard are now functioning perfectly as Chromebooks for my children, who are using them for lockdown schooling.

The laptops in question became redundant years ago when Windows XP stopped being supported. One had somehow lost its battery too. I started with the crappiest laptop knowing if I somehow turned it into a brick it was no great loss, the thing was a write off to begin with. Before I began the laptop still worked, sort of, slowly, but couldn't be safely connected to the internet after Microsoft support ceased for Windows XP/Windows 7 because of the risk of viruses.

I'm still pretty chuffed that this worked so well. The laptops are amazingly zippy now and safe to connect to the internet. The software seems to be very 'lightweight' so it works well on elderly laptops with not great specifications.
I am not in any way techy. It's important I stress this! But I managed. So I'd say if you are able to follow some fairly straightforward instructions AND are ok with the idea of writing off an ancient laptop if this fails, then you have nothing to lose.

You'll need:

1. Crappy old redundant Windows laptop
2. A normal useful laptop (you'll use this to begin with to download the free software)
3. An 8GB USB stick

It may take one or two hours, depending on the speed of your internet, and how many times you stop for a cuppa wondering whether you're bonkers to attempt it.

Using your decent computer, you are going to download some software onto the USB stick which turns it into an magic installer gizmo.
Then you plug the magic stick into the crappy laptop and it installs some clever software called "Cloudready" which is a Chromium operating system, so it has all the Google web apps, like Gmail, Chromium browser, Calendar, Keep notes etc.

What you end up with is pretty much a Chromebook, albeit possibly one with cracks and scratches and a missing battery, in our case. (It works fine plugged in, obviously, and ensures my son sits properly at the kitchen table where I can keep an eye on him)

Don't forget to back up and save any old photos or files first before you wipe your old laptop, obviously!

The company who make the "Cloudready" software are called Everware, and since I did this in the spring they are now owned by Google, so this is all properly above board.

Here is the link to the instructions, and the minimum spec requirements for your laptop etc.

CloudReady Home Edition Instructions

I really hope this helps someone who, like me, couldn't afford new laptops for the children in lockdown, but possibly has old laptops lying around, or can be gifted someone's unwanted laptop that can then be repurposed.

Good Luck!

Bumping this because it seems like a brilliant idea, and sounds really helpful!

Bumping again albeit late at night as is so useful.

Will bump again tomorrow

Thank you op!

Placemarking. If this worked OP, I will buy you drinks. 😂

fab will try in the morn

Let me know how you get on!

Thanks OP, that's brilliant! I've offered an old tablet to someone I know who's struggling with one laptop and three children but I also have an ancient Windows laptop hiding under the bed. I'll try this and if it works, she can have that as well.

For slightly newer laptops it might also be worth wiping them and reloading windows 10 on to them.
Ours was about 7 years old, had been upgraded to windows 10 it was really slow. I took to wiping it a reloading Windows 10, basically following the instructions on the Microsoft website.

We'd bought a new one for us, and I thought I'd try the Windows 10 idea for the old one if that didn't work my plan was to try convert to chromebook.

We have two laptops lurking that won't run Teams...I wonder if this would work on them (they do run Windows10, they're just incredibly slow & don't like Teams calls 🙄)

Great idea and clear instructions, thanks op

Thanks for the advice op.

Do chat threads still get auto deleted after 90 days? I wonder if we could flag this to mumsnet to move it after 90 days so it still stays available on the site. It obviously makes sense to stay on chat for a while though to get it seen by more people.

@SparklePiggy

Thanks for the advice op.

Do chat threads still get auto deleted after 90 days? I wonder if we could flag this to mumsnet to move it after 90 days so it still stays available on the site. It obviously makes sense to stay on chat for a while though to get it seen by more people.

Chat hasn't been deleted for 90days for ages, there's a 90day and 30day sections.

Bumping . Great advice

@lucysmam

We have two laptops lurking that won't run Teams...I wonder if this would work on them (they do run Windows10, they're just incredibly slow & don't like Teams calls 🙄)

I'd certainly try reloading windows, while I haven't tried teams, its definitely much faster than it was before. It took a few hours to do it.

We also switched to office 365, instead of a full office package that had been bought as a deal that we never used half of.

I will give this a go later, thanks OP

Thankyou for sharing OP.

We are going to try sorting out my old laptop today if reinstalling windows doesn't work (again) perhaps this is the way forwards!!

Going to try this today

Great idea! DH is going to dust off an ancient laptop and give it a go later. Thank you

Place marking to try later, thank you!

Thanks! I've got an old barely working machine so will see if I can do this!

Just a suggestion - if you do this but you don't need it, you could offer the machine to your children's schools to distribute to a family without.

Trying this today thank you!!

I was looking into this in the first lockdown but you can't make them 'kids' chromebooks and have power over screen time limits and blocking / allowing websites so i didn't.

Do you know if that's been added now? The google family controls look great for real chromebooks.

I did a clean install of windows 10 on both our old laptops and can use Microsoft family which is a bit shit but does allow you to remotely restrict screen time and websites.

Somehow managed to lose the windows license for one of them in the process 🙄 so I can't customise it at all to remove fancy graphics which would speed it up - there is a list of changes you can make like disable animations.

Hi everyone,
An even better approach is to use linux Ubuntu. It is totally free, simple and has access to a huge swath of free software. For office apps open office works really well and is totally comparable with Microsoft office. I hate google chrome with a passion but well done op helping people put old devices to use.

I was looking into this in the first lockdown but you can't make them 'kids' chromebooks and have power over screen time limits and blocking / allowing websites so i didn't.
Do you know if that's been added now? The google family controls look great for real chromebooks.

This is a good point. The Chromebook you end up with cannot be controlled via the "Google Family Link" app. However, you can still put parental controls on it directly, block YouTube, use Chrome safesearch etc.
My children both use the laptops only at the kitchen table. They are their 'schoolwork' laptops and as such they need them for several hours and to visit whichever websites school has said to visit. I know the restrictions I placed work because more than once I've been summoned to 'allow' a YouTube video that has to be watched for a lesson, or a website etc.

For fun stuff and playing they have a device with time limits and remote parental controls via an app.