Name: Old Chromebook? Here’s How to Still Use It in 2025
Uploaded: 2025-12-30T08:35:22.000Z
Duration: 3 min 3 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

I have an old HP Chromebook it says cannot upgrade the version anymore.

It's got an old processor, but it still works fine.

How do I get the Chromebook to boot to a usb?

Is it still usable, but just can't upgrade?

Unfortunately, at some point in time, all Chromebooks make it to what's called end of life.

And end of life means that Google are no longer going to support that particular device.

Google have been criticized for the short period of time with which they support devices and that if a Chromebook stops receiving security updates, that makes the device vulnerable after maybe as short as just five years from that device finishing its production run.

I don't have a great solution or pointers for that.

It's unfortunately one of the things that has made Google receive criticism, and

I would say probably a slower update to Chromebooks and Chrome devices than they would have liked.

Google's made this decision because it's difficult to support older machines and make sure things still work and make sure that the new security updates and the new features that you're rolling out will go out to those older machines.

Can you flash a Chromebook and specifically an older Chromebook with a newer copy of a different operating system?

I have been asked on the channel, can you flash it with Chrome os?

it might not be supported by Google, especially those with the automatic expression.

Okay, so in this case it looks like it's not gonna.

It's probably not gonna solve this one, unfortunately for this person.

if you've got an older machine, I would say all you can really do is use it, but

maybe not for anything that's super sensitive.

I probably wouldn't use it for your crypto or for your banking.

Just in case there's some kind of security vulnerability that means that the machine is subject to attack.

If you want to use it for Media center and plug it into your tv, okay, it's probably okay for that.

You want to use it for your kids to watch YouTube on.

Or someone should, I don't know, play some online games or video calls with grandma, or using Google Meet, using services that are inherently encrypted and not likely to be exposing your personal information, that's probably okay.

Would I use it for all of my emails logged in on the couch?

Maybe not after it's been many years after the security updates, but that's it.

There are not many vulnerabilities for Chrome devices in general these days.

Still, most times that people get hacked is because they clicked on a bad link and they voluntarily put their information in to a dodgy website or in some other way they were socially engineered.

Even though it might not be perfect practice to use an old machine that doesn't have updates, it's still fairly low risk.

If you liked this video, we've got plenty more on the channel covering this topic and much, much more.