Elite Dragonfly Chromebook as a personal device

[RobinD42]

I just bought a HP Elite Dragonfly Chromebook (i7, 16GB, from an HP reseller) for use as a personal device. While in the setup I got to the point where it is asking about the Enterprise enrollment, and there is a button labeled "Use as a personal device". Unfortunately that button appears to be disabled or broken, as nothing happens when I click on it, or try to activate it other ways. It seems that there is no way to set up this machine as a personal device. It looks like others are having this problem as well, and that it seems to have changed with the most recent firmware update. See https://support.google.com/chromebook/thread/177663420

Does anybody know if this is a known bug that will be fixed in a firmware update? Will it be soon? Or is this this device intended to only be usable with an Enterprise account?

[DayDay2 · Accepted solution]

Hey I ran into the same problem and after days of looking into it I finally got the dragonfly to work. The problem of not being able to click the "personal use button" is a bug for the newest version of chrome OS. my way around this was to use the Chromebook recovery utility which loads an older version of Chrome OS on to a flash drive. from there press esc+refresh+power to get to that main recovery menu. click recover from external disc then plug in the flash drive that you should have set up in the recovery utility. From there your chromebook will restart and now be able to be put into personal use. just make sure to update the Chromebook once you get past the initial setup.

[RobinD42]

I tried going that route but it didn't work for me. I think the version of chrome os that the recovery tool was giving me was the same one with the bug. I ended up doing a different workaround however. I had a friend with a Google workspace account do the initial setup on the dragonfly, move it to the Beta channel, and then we could do a powerwash and proceed normally with the setup using the personal use  button. It required a bunch of changes in the admin console to allow those things to be done to a managed device, so it was by no means an easy solution.

Once the recovery tool starts offering a newer build I may try it again, as I had intended to keep this device on the stable channel. (My other chromebook is on the beta channel.)

[VikingMN]

DayDay2 - Did you confirm with Google that this was a bug in Chrome OS?  I contacted Google One Support and all they told me was they couldn't help me because the issue was happening as part of device setup and they pointed the blame towards HP.  I'm concerned this device was only meant for Enterprise use and if that's the case I'm hesitant to do any kind of workaround.