Raspberry Pi Forums

So, I successfully hooked up my Pi and got the monitor to display stuff. I initially was able to start downloading Raspbian, but I got an error during the download and it automatically cancelled. Now, there are no options to download Raspbian or any other systems under the "Select OS to boot" menu. If I move the OS menu, there is a picture of a raspberry and a caption saying "For recovery mode, hold shift." There are also menus asking for language and keyboard, but clicking on them and pressing 1 and 9 on the keyboard yield no result. Unplugging the HDMI cable and holding shift doesn't help. I tried rewriting the MicroSD, but that had no effect (In fact, the green light that says the card is being read continues to blink even when I take the card out). If anyone has ideas on how to fix this, I would really appreciate it. Thank you!

To reinstall NOOBS you need to properly reformat the card, which you can't do using the Windows format utility.

Download and install the SD Card Formatter from the SD Association.
Plug your SD card into a card reader or the SD card slot on your Windows PC and run the SD Card Formatter.
Click on Option and turn Format Size Adjustment ON.
Make SURE you have the correct drive letter for your SD card selected (seriously, double check that, and then check it again)!
Format the card.

If the card is 32GB or less in capacity, then you are done and you can reinstall NOOBS.


If the card is 64GB or more, then you will need to use another tool, because cards larger than 32GB are formatted with the exFAT file system, and NOOBS requires FAT32.

Download GUI Format (fat32formatter) from Ridgecrop Consultants.
This is a stand-alone program, so just run guiformat.exe (you don't need to install it).
Again, make SURE you have the correct drive letter for your SD card selected (seriously, double check that, and then check it again)!
Format the card.

Now your 64GB or larger card will be FAT32 and you can install NOOBS.


After saying all that, if your end goal is to have Raspbian, then you are better-off just writing one of the image files to your card. The Raspbian images contain their own file systems, so you don't have to worry about reformatting or filesystems, because all of that will be replaced by the file system contained in the image file. So you can just write the image to the card, regardless of what was previously installed.

If you want the full Desktop/GUI version of Raspbian, download the Raspbian Jessie with Pixel image.
If you want the lightweight minimal (no Desktop/GUI) version, download Raspbian Jessie Lite.
https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspbian/

Also download and install Etcher (this writes the Raspbian image to the SD card).

Extract the .img file from the Raspbian .zip download with 7-Zip or WinRAR.

Run Etcher, and from there it is pretty self-explanatory, just follow the prompts, and when it asks you to select a drive, you know what to do (Yup, double-check that again). When Etcher has finished writing and verifying the card it will safely eject it, so you can just grab the card and plug it into your Raspberry pi.

Thank you! It's working now!