A mysterious bug is affecting quite a few older Chromecast units, as per a prolonged thread on Reddit—particularly, the second-generation Chromecast and the Chromecast Audio, which each launched in September 2015. Should you’ve been affected, maintain off on making an attempt a manufacturing unit reset of your system.
The bug has began showing over the past 24 hours, rendering affected units just about unusable. One of many error messages reported reads as follows: “Untrusted system: [name] couldn’t be verified. This might be attributable to outdated system firmware.”
Additional investigation from customers means that it is a server-side downside—so the problem is at Google’s finish. It appears as if there have been issues with expired safety certifications, so the Chromecast dongles which have been hit are being incorrectly recognized as unsafe to connect with.
Which means there’s nothing Chromecast house owners can do in the interim, aside from to take a seat tight and wait it out, with none streaming audio or video to entertain them within the meantime. Varied troubleshooting steps have been taken, together with reconnecting to wifi and operating a manufacturing unit reset, however no simple workaround has been discovered.
The truth is, as per the newest info from Google, manufacturing unit resetting your system is one thing you should not do—even when it is the apparent first repair to strive with an issue like this. We’re nonetheless undecided precisely what’s occurred, however an official Google account has now responded on the unique Reddit thread.
What Google says
As per the newest info from Google: “We’re conscious of an rising difficulty impacting Chromecast 2nd-gen and Chromecast Audio units and are engaged on a repair. Don’t manufacturing unit reset your system – we are going to hold you all up to date when the repair rolls out. When you’ve got already manufacturing unit reset your system, we are going to present directions to set your system again up as quickly as attainable. Thanks on your persistence.”
It’s kind of gentle on particulars, however not less than the acknowledgement is there. It sounds as if the restoration course of goes to be extra sophisticated for these customers who’ve already (and understandably) tried a manufacturing unit reset, however apparently Google goes to have the ability to get all of those units again on-line ultimately.
There’s a slightly sophisticated workaround you possibly can strive that is detailed on Reddit, however except it is particularly pressing so that you can get again up and operating, I would suggest sitting tight for now and ready for Google to difficulty a repair. Whereas no timeline has been specified for when the problem is likely to be resolved, not less than we all know that is being labored on.
On condition that the bug hasn’t hit more moderen Chromecasts, together with the Chromecast Extremely, there was some concern that Google might need quietly killed off its older units, now they’re approaching their tenth birthdays—however that not appears to be the case.
The Chromecast system line as a complete has now been discontinued, so we cannot get any extra streaming dongles sooner or later, however Google hasn’t stated something but about pulling assist for present {hardware}. Chromecast performance continues to be accessible in televisions operating Google TV, in addition to the Google TV Streamer.
