Google's media streaming offerings got a rather important bump in the form of the Chromecast with Google TV last year. Unlike its predecessors, the dongle is based on Android TV and has plenty of things going for it, including its remote and $50 price tag. Unfortunately, it's not all been smooth sailing. A lot of users have recently reported a bug that's randomly asking them to reset the device as "data may be corrupted."

The issue has been highlighted by affected users on various platforms, including Twitter, Reddit, and even on Google's own forums. It crops up randomly and renders the remote control useless, making it difficult for users to get around it.

There's no official word on what's causing the boot screen to pop up for users, but we suspect that a botched system update could've caused this. Since the device does automatic "seamless" updates, this can happen without any input from the user.

Don't worry, there's an easy fix

If you come across this error, the most natural thing to do is try to navigate the interface using the remote. However, that won't be possible since the device is in recovery mode, and you'll have to make use of the single button that's situated on the back of the dongle — a herculean task if your TV is wall-mounted and the Chromecast is hidden behind it.

You can see the button in the image above.

A single press of this button lets you cycle through the options, whereas a long press will let you select one. It's recommended to click on "Try again" if you come across this error. This should reboot the device and solve the problem. But if this doesn't work out for you, you will have to resort to performing a factory data reset, which is the only other option on the screen.

New firmware's arriving to help

While that reset trick works, it would be better if we weren't running into this problem in the first place — and luckily for us, Google's on top of things. We reached out to try and learn a little bit more about this issue, and were told by a spokesperson that the company is not only aware of the issue, but has already developed a fix and is in the process of rolling it out.

Indeed, there's a new firmware update for the Chromecast with Google TV that has just appeared, promising (among other changes) fixes to not only make that scary-looking recovery screen appear a lot less frequently, but also to change the instructions it gives to help make things a little clearer for your average user.

Google says the update should hit users over the course of the next two days.

UPDATE: 2021/02/08 1:46pm PST BY STEPHEN SCHENCK

New firmware

Added Google's response and details on new firmware release.

Source: Chromecast Help