Why You Shouldn’t “fix” Your Old Chromecast With a Factory Reset, According to Google
According to a lengthy thread on Reddit , a mysterious bug is affecting a variety of older Chromecast devices, specifically the second-generation Chromecast and Chromecast Audio that were released in September 2015. If you encounter this issue, do not try to factory reset your device.
The bug began appearing within the last 24 hours, rendering affected devices virtually unusable. One of the error messages reads: “Untrusted device: [name] cannot be verified. This may be caused by outdated device firmware.”
Further user investigation revealed that this is a server-side issue, so the problem is on Google’s side. There appears to be an issue with expired security certificates, causing corrupted Chromecast keys to be incorrectly identified as unsafe to connect to.
This means that Chromecast owners can’t do anything for now except sit back and wait, with no streaming audio or video to keep them entertained. Various troubleshooting steps were taken, including reconnecting to Wi-Fi and performing a factory reset, but no easy workaround was found.
In fact, according to the latest information from Google, you should not reset your device to factory settings, even if it is the obvious first solution to such a problem. We’re still not sure what exactly happened, but the official Google account has already responded in the original Reddit thread.
What Google says
According to the latest information from Google : “We are aware of an emerging issue affecting Chromecast 2nd generation and Chromecast Audio devices and are working on a fix. Don’t factory reset your device – we’ll keep you posted when a fix is released. If you have already factory reset your device, we will provide instructions on how to set up your device as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience.”
Details are a bit thin, but at least there is recognition. It sounds like the restore process will be more difficult for those users who have already (understandably) attempted a factory reset, but Google will apparently be able to get all of those devices back online eventually.
There is a fairly complex workaround you can try, and it’s detailed on Reddit, but unless you’re particularly urgent to get back to work, I’d recommend holding off for now and waiting for Google to release a fix. While there is no timeline for fixing the problem, at least we know it is being worked on.
Given that the bug did not affect later Chromecast devices, including the Chromecast Ultra, there was some concern that Google may have quietly killed off its older devices, which are now approaching their 10th anniversary, but it appears that is no longer the case.
The Chromecast line of devices as a whole has been discontinued, so we won’t be getting streaming keys anymore in the future, but Google hasn’t said anything about ending support for existing hardware just yet. Chromecast functionality is still available on TVs with Google TV, as well as Google TV Streamer .