Chromebooks, by definition, ship with Google’s Chrome OS software pre-installed. But they’re basically full-fledged laptop computers that just happen to ship with Google’s software pre-installed. Folks have been booting Linux on Chromebooks for much of the past decade. And more recently some users have found ways to boot Windows on many Chromebooks with Intel processors.
Now you can install Windows on some AMD-powered Chromebooks as well. Just not very many of them… yet.
Redditor Coolstarorg has posted instructions for dual booting Chrome OS and Windows 10 or 11 on a handful of Chromebooks with AMD processors. While the goal is to add support for a wide range of Chromebooks, so far only three models are supported:
- HP Chromebook 14b (BERKNIP)
- HP Chromebook Pro C645 Enterprise (BERKNIP)
- Lenovo Yoga C13 (MORPHIUS)
The list is short largely because of three things: there aren’t all that many AMD-powered Chromebooks yet, only models with Athlon 3105Ce, Ryzen 3 3250E, Ryzen 5 3500C, and Ryzen 7 3700C chips are support, and at the moment eMMC storage isn’t supported yet, which means that you’ll need Chromebook with an SSD.
Coolstarorg also notes that fingerprint readers aren’t yet supported under Windows.
But if you really want to run Windows on a Chromebook, have a supported model, and don’t want to install it in a virtual machine, it’s nice to have the option. Just note that you’ll need to run a series of scripts that repartition your computer’s storage, update the device’s UEFI firmware, and then install drivers to support Windows.
You can find instructions and download links at Coolstar.org/chromebook/windows-install.html.
via xda-developers