Only boots NOOBS

[AndrewS]

Could you explain that a bit clearer please "first Pi"? "old one"?

I have two PIs. So My first/old/good one is the one I acquired six months ago, in which everything -every SD, with whatever partition table I esoterically create, with whatever distro, whatever custom distro made- Just Works.

And my new one, which seems to be only happy by booting Noobs (but no luck with a second boot due to partition change I guess, but in truth it could be anything).

Yeah, that's exactly what I understood to be the case.
I was just confused when you said: "After booting my first PI with this card, I try to boot the old one and it doesn't even show the pretty colorful screen, without any change on its partition table." - does that mean that you now have an SD card that doesn't boot on either Pi?

[ceene]

I was just confused when you said: "After booting my first PI with this card, I try to boot the old one and it doesn't even show the pretty colorful screen, without any change on its partition table." - does that mean that you now have an SD card that doesn't boot on either Pi?

Sorry, no, that was a mistake (I mentally associated old=bad). My first, old, good PI, boots everything at all, even an SD card that has been modified by the non working one or whatever: she's always happy and so I am with it. The new one... only freshly flashed Noob. Tomorrow (12 hours or so) I'll format an SD with gparted and try again, but I am hopeless now.

Thank you all!

[darrengi]

I was just confused when you said: "After booting my first PI with this card, I try to boot the old one and it doesn't even show the pretty colorful screen, without any change on its partition table." - does that mean that you now have an SD card that doesn't boot on either Pi?

Sorry, no, that was a mistake (I mentally associated old=bad). My first, old, good PI, boots everything at all, even an SD card that has been modified by the non working one or whatever: she's always happy and so I am with it. The new one... only freshly flashed Noob. Tomorrow (12 hours or so) I'll format an SD with gparted and try again, but I am hopeless now.

Thank you all!

Hey ceene - I'm going to throw something wild out there (being a newbie and all, but sometimes the silliest ideas can lead to a break through)... but you're not running the NEW Pi using different hardware config? Or are you just doing a drop-in of the Pi into existing OLD Pi environment?

Ie, you're not using different power supplies (perhaps NEW Pi is running on a lower amperage supply that could be causing stability issues?) as an example?

Cheers...

[gsh]

OK, Just as a test can you copy recovery.elf from partition 1 to partition's 5, 7 and 9 overwriting start.elf on each of those.

I just want to make sure it's not that the OSes have old versions of the firmware for some reason...


(Just to note, recovery.elf in p1 should be identical to start.elf in each of the installation's FAT partition if it isn't then that could be the cause of a problem)....

Gordon

[ceene]

Hi all

I've tried, I think, everything that I've read here, with your help, everything I've thought of myself and a few other things no human being should try just for his own sanity.

I've tried gparted, I've tried moving files around, I've tried changing SD cards, power supplies. The only thing I haven't tried is an akelarre.

So, I'm calling RS to have it returned and changed for another unit. It's not reasonable that one PI unit behaves perfectly and the other one isn't able to boot any (save one) of the images available on the internet or self built. I don't know what it is, but I firmly believe this unit has a defect.

Thank you all for your help, I hope to see you soon and tell you about my hopefully new working device.

Regards!

[Jameswgm]

Tried both NOOBS 1.3 Full and Lite on brand new Sandisk Ultra Class 10 16GB, both give me a blank screen after successful reporting of OS install. Re installed twice and still no joy.

[kiko]

Hey guys,

Someone has this issue with a 16g sdcard different from SanDisk 16GB Ultra? From http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewt ... 2&p=429741 looks like SanDisk 16GB Extreme works fine.

[McMason]

I'm having this problem, too, with a SanDisk Ultra 32GB MicroSD HC I. I imaged the SD card with the latest NOOBS (downloaded from RPi.org a couple days ago), completed install of Raspbian (just the one OS), waited for the device to reboot, but it never came back. When I power cycle the RPi, I get just the red power led, and no video on HDMI. I can repeat this process, by putting the SD card back into the computer, re-imaging it with noobs, and repeating the Raspbian installation. I tried this with both the online and offline noobs images, with same results.

I bought this SD card specifically to use with my RPi, so it would be great if we could figure out the problem. Happy to provide any diagnostic info you'd like, so long as u can give me directions.

Here's the one I picked up on Amazon a few days ago, that I'm having the problem with. Maybe if you order the same one you can reproduce it, too.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/r.html?R=3ERRB ... 1_ST1_dp_1

[underthesun]

Hi

I am having the same problems with NOOBS 1.3. Did a Noobs 1.3 lite install of Raspbmc and OpenElec on a Transend 4GB Class 6 card. I think its the one that came with the Maplin starter kit and had been using it with with Raspbmc on is own from Noobs 1.1 for several month with no problems. Installation all went fine and can boot into Raspbmc but not OpenElec. If I can help I will try. Let me know if I can supply any file contents. I am familiar with Putty and have a linux machine (Puppy linux) so I can edit the SD cards files if required. A couple of relevant ones are below:

config.txt
Nb I put line breaks in as there was none in the original

Code: Select all

arm_freq=800

force_turbo=1

gpu_mem=128

disable_overscan=1

start_file=start_x.elf

fixup_file=fixup_x.dat


# NOOBS Auto-generated Settings:
hdmi_force_hotplug=1
config_hdmi_boost=4
overscan_left=24
overscan_right=24
overscan_top=16
overscan_bottom=16
disable_overscan=0

# Bought codecs 2013-09-30:
decode_MPG2=0x.........(taken out the real stuff)
decode_WVC1=0x.........(taken out the real stuff)

cmdline.txt
Nb as original with no line breaks

Code: Select all

dwc_otg.lpm_enable=0 root=/dev/mmcblk0p8 rootfstype=ext4 noatime quiet rootwait loglevel=1 persistent-logs sdhci-bcm2708.enable_llm=1 dwc_otg.microframe_schedule=1 dwc_otg.fiq_fix_enable=1 

Nb I still having the "'A difference between /boot/config.txt and addon settings w.. Do you want to update /boot/config.txt from addon?'" problem with Raspbmc so I am still having keep pressing "No".

Mike

[psimmons]

I'm experiencing the same problem with a Sandisk Ultra 16GB. Installs fine then goes to blank screen. Everything is fine with another SD card (Transcend Class 10 8GB)

Any ideas of problem yet?

[underthesun]

My partition table on my 4GB card in case that helps is attached:

Mike

[underthesun]

Just added a file called autoboot.txt to the first partition (the recovery partition) with a line saying:

boot_partition=5
Result: Nothing happens.

Changed it to boot_partition=7
Result: boots into Raspbmc just fine

So I guess boot_partition=5 is the OpenElec partition and it not working just like it doesn't work from the NOOBS OS menu?

Mike

[underthesun]

Just looking at os_config.json

Code: Select all

{
 "description" : "An XBMC media center distribution for Raspberry Pi",
 "flavour" : "RaspBMC",
 "imagefolder" : "/settings/os/RaspBMC",
 "keyboard" : "gb",
 "language" : "en",
 "partitions" : [
"/dev/mmcblk0p7",
"/dev/mmcblk0p8"
 ],
 "release_date" : "2013-08-20",
 "videomode" : 0
}

Should there be section for the OpenELEC that I installed as well?

Mike

[FTrevorGowen]

Just looking at os_config.json

Code: Select all

{
 "description" : "An XBMC media center distribution for Raspberry Pi",
 "flavour" : "RaspBMC",
 "imagefolder" : "/settings/os/RaspBMC",
 "keyboard" : "gb",
 "language" : "en",
 "partitions" : [
"/dev/mmcblk0p7",
"/dev/mmcblk0p8"
 ],
 "release_date" : "2013-08-20",
 "videomode" : 0
}

Should there be section for the OpenELEC that I installed as well?

Mike

Just popped my NOOBS 1.3 SDHC into a card reader and looked at a couple of ".json" files. The above looks about right compared to mine for Raspbian. I also have RiscOS installed, however, and there is an additional entry** for that in the "installed_os.json" file in the "SETTINGS" partition if you can see that. (I'm using Ubuntu linux on my netbook to do this).
Trev.
**As well as the Raspbian one.

[underthesun]

Just looking at os_config.json

Code: Select all

{
 "description" : "An XBMC media center distribution for Raspberry Pi",
 "flavour" : "RaspBMC",
 "imagefolder" : "/settings/os/RaspBMC",
 "keyboard" : "gb",
 "language" : "en",
 "partitions" : [
"/dev/mmcblk0p7",
"/dev/mmcblk0p8"
 ],
 "release_date" : "2013-08-20",
 "videomode" : 0
}

Should there be section for the OpenELEC that I installed as well?

Mike

Just popped my NOOBS 1.3 SDHC into a card reader and looked at a couple of ".json" files. The above looks about right compared to mine for Raspbian. I also have RiscOS installed, however, and there is an additional entry** for that in the "installed_os.json" file in the "SETTINGS" partition if you can see that. (I'm using Ubuntu linux on my netbook to do this).
Trev.
**As well as the Raspbian one.

Thanks for that clue. I've had a look at my installed_os.json and it looks okay as far as I can tell:

Code: Select all

[
 {
  "description" : "OpenELEC is a fast and userfriendly XBMC Mediacenter distribution.",
  "folder" : "/settings/os/OpenELEC",
  "icon" : "/settings/os/OpenELEC/icon.png",
  "name" : "OpenELEC",
  "partitions" : [
"/dev/mmcblk0p5",
"/dev/mmcblk0p6"
  ],
  "release_date" : "2013-09-14"
 },
 {
  "description" : "An XBMC media center distribution for Raspberry Pi",
  "folder" : "/settings/os/RaspBMC",
  "icon" : "/settings/os/RaspBMC/icon.png",
  "name" : "RaspBMC",
  "partitions" : [
"/dev/mmcblk0p7",
"/dev/mmcblk0p8"
  ],
  "release_date" : "2013-08-20"
 }
]

Had a look at noobs.conf in the same place:

Code: Select all

[General]
default_partition_to_boot=7
display_mode=0
keyboard_layout=gb
language=en

Looks ok as well. Hopefully someone knows why OpenELEC doesn't boot from the NOOBS 1.3 lite installation

Mike

[rdb]

So all of these files and partition maps look okay to me.

Could you remove the "quiet" entry from the cmdline.txt file in OpenELEC's boot partition and try booting directly into it by adding the autoboot.txt as before?

If you could let me know exactly what happens (including what the LEDs are doing) that would be very helpful.

[toja83]

Hi,

I am totally new to Raspberry (have programmed one in a project before).
I downloaded NOOBS to get started quickly, but also have the same problem as all others here.

I get into NOOBS without any problem, connected to my tv via hdmi, with working keyboard and mouse.
Mouse lights up red underneath when it works (but I also know it works as I use it in NOOBS).

After installing Raspbian and pressed okay on the "installation ok" message the screen dies + keyboard and mouse lights turn of.

After rebooting my Pi, I get the Pi logo (with the "press shift key for..." text), then it dies again. Same thing, display lost signal and keyboard and mouse dies. The Red light on the Pi is still turned on.

Would be great if anyone find an answer to this.

As everyone else wrote their SD card, here is what I have:
SanDisk Ultra HC 32Gb class 10

[ChristianGeek]

Same problem as toja83 with a SanDisk Ultra 16GB, except on boot I get the rainbow splash screen then straight to the NOOBS OS selection screen.

[McMason]

Update:
Still no luck booting into Raspbian, when installing via NOOBS. However, I've been able to get up and running. Details below.

I tried bypassing NOOBS (and the rest of the recommended setup process). Instead, I downloaded the latest raspbian image, wiped my SD card, and applied the image to the SD card using PiFiller ( http://ivanx.com/raspberrypi/ ). After inserting the SD card back into my Pi and booting, Raspbian's setup screen came up!

I'd prefer to use NOOBS, but if anyone reading this just wants to get Raspbian to come up, this may be worth a try.

[underthesun]

So all of these files and partition maps look okay to me.

Could you remove the "quiet" entry from the cmdline.txt file in OpenELEC's boot partition and try booting directly into it by adding the autoboot.txt as before?

If you could let me know exactly what happens (including what the LEDs are doing) that would be very helpful.

Ok removed the "quiet" entry from the cmdline.txt file on the OpenELEC's boot partition (changed on my linux machine in sdc5). Put card back in the Pi and booted. Nothing appear on my monitor except for it to report "no signal". The Pi red LED is on continuously and the green LED next door to it flashes in bursts of 4 flashes. Hope that helps in diagnosing the problem? Let me know if there are other things I can do.

Mike

[underthesun]

I've got my dual booting of Raspbmc and OpenEEC from the NOOBS 1.3 lite install to work now!

I tried set a boot flag on sdc5 partition (the OpenELEC boot partition) as no boot flag were present. This did NOT do anything. So I remove the boot flag.

In on sdc5 there was a org_config.txt as well as a config.txt. I switched these (and I renamed autoboot.txt on sdc1 the recovery partition to something else to get back the OS menu screen) and hey presto it booted into OpenELEC (and its done an update after configuring the network).

So what happened? I am not exactly sure but this is the sequence as far as I can remember. When I added my codec keys to the config.txt file I may have made a mistake. I made a copy of the original calling is org_config.txt as a backup. I was working on Raspbmc at the time but may have edited the config.txt on sdc5 (the OpenELEC boot partition) by mistake as I did not realise which partition was which.

I am not 100% sure on my sequence above but I have a second Raspberry Pi which has NOOBS 1.1 on it so single boot to Raspbmc at the moment so will upgrade this to 1.3 so I have the dual boot options of Raspbmc and OpenELEC. So I can check what happens. Won't be exactly the same though as I don't have the codec keys for the second Pi.

Mike

[rdb]

Could we have an audit of exactly who has a problem and what their problem is?

Please post below with just that information along with what steps you have taken to try to fix it.

Unless I can clearly understand the issue, I can't fix it. Lots of "me too" posts are unhelpful when the causes are often different (such as underthesun's issue with corrupting his config.txt file when adding his license codes).

[rdb]

Could everyone confirm that the issue seems to be restricted to just Sandisk Ultra cards?

Does following identical set-up steps on a different card work correctly?

[More Pi Please]

The problem only happened once for me on a Transcend Class 10 8GB.

Formatted, copied noobs stuff, blank screen.

Re formatted, re copied, then worked.

[ziolupo]

Same problem with a SanDisk microSDHC Ultra 32GB (SDSDQUA-032GU46A).