NOOBS refusing to move onto the pi

[FeatCashew]

I have had my pi for about a year, and three times now I have just quit because the OPERATING SYSTEM NOOBS WON'T UPLOAD ONTO THE PI. I have tried doing everything, I've followed countless guides, and all of them look simple. I format the sd card, then I expand the zip file, then I copy it over to the sd card, and put it in the pi. seems simple enough. I GUESS NOT BECAUSE NO MATTER WHAT I DO IT DOESN'T WORK. my monitor (which I bought along with a keyboard and mouse JUST FOR THE PI) SAYS NO SIGNAL. At the moment I am entirely considering hitting this piece of crap with a hammer. It was a waste of money. Does anybody know what could be going on?

[fruitoftheloom]

I have had my pi for about a year, and three times now I have just quit because the OPERATING SYSTEM NOOBS WON'T UPLOAD ONTO THE PI. I have tried doing everything, I've followed countless guides, and all of them look simple. I format the sd card, then I expand the zip file, then I copy it over to the sd card, and put it in the pi. seems simple enough. I GUESS NOT BECAUSE NO MATTER WHAT I DO IT DOESN'T WORK. my monitor (which I bought along with a keyboard and mouse JUST FOR THE PI) SAYS NO SIGNAL. At the moment I am entirely considering hitting this piece of crap with a hammer. It was a waste of money. Does anybody know what could be going on?

There is now Pi Imager:

https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/

https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/raspbe ... g-utility/


Though your SD Card Reader should be SDXC compliant

[drgeoff]

I have had my pi for about a year, and three times now I have just quit because the OPERATING SYSTEM NOOBS WON'T UPLOAD ONTO THE PI. I have tried doing everything, I've followed countless guides, and all of them look simple. I format the sd card, then I expand the zip file, then I copy it over to the sd card, and put it in the pi. seems simple enough. I GUESS NOT BECAUSE NO MATTER WHAT I DO IT DOESN'T WORK. my monitor (which I bought along with a keyboard and mouse JUST FOR THE PI) SAYS NO SIGNAL. At the moment I am entirely considering hitting this piece of crap with a hammer. It was a waste of money. Does anybody know what could be going on?

There is now Pi Imager:

https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/

https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/raspbe ... g-utility/


Though your SD Card Reader should be SDXC compliant

The OP is attempting to use NOOBS. Pointing him/her towards Pi Imager is only half the story.

[fruitoftheloom]

I have had my pi for about a year, and three times now I have just quit because the OPERATING SYSTEM NOOBS WON'T UPLOAD ONTO THE PI. I have tried doing everything, I've followed countless guides, and all of them look simple. I format the sd card, then I expand the zip file, then I copy it over to the sd card, and put it in the pi. seems simple enough. I GUESS NOT BECAUSE NO MATTER WHAT I DO IT DOESN'T WORK. my monitor (which I bought along with a keyboard and mouse JUST FOR THE PI) SAYS NO SIGNAL. At the moment I am entirely considering hitting this piece of crap with a hammer. It was a waste of money. Does anybody know what could be going on?

There is now Pi Imager:

https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/

https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/raspbe ... g-utility/


Though your SD Card Reader should be SDXC compliant

The OP is attempting to use NOOBS. Pointing him/her towards Pi Imager is only half the story.

Well then you offer to give a solution to the OPs issue

[DougieLawson]

I have had my pi for about a year, and three times now I have just quit because the OPERATING SYSTEM NOOBS WON'T UPLOAD ONTO THE PI. I have tried doing everything, I've followed countless guides, and all of them look simple.

NOOBS is NOT an OS (per se) it's a tiny system that presents a menu and lets you choose which OS to install, without jumping through some strange hoops it needs a TV/monitor, keyboard and mouse to operate NOOBS.

What have you tried?
What out-of-date guides are you using?
How big is your SDCard? Do you know for sure that it's not a Chinese fake?

It is simple, but NOOBS is a busted flush if you only want to get Raspbian Buster running use Fruity's imager.
There's up to date, current instructions for that on page 6 of https://magpi.raspberrypi.org/issues/92/pdf

If you want multiple OSes then look at replacing NOOBS with the enhanced version: PINN.
viewtopic.php?f=63&t=142574
https://github.com/procount/pinn there's lots of documentation there on how both NOOBS and PINN work.

If you want to stick with NOOBS then there are official instructions on page 42 of https://raspberrypi.org/magpi-issues/MagPi51.pdf

[mahjongg]

I have had my pi for about a year, and three times now I have just quit because the OPERATING SYSTEM NOOBS WON'T UPLOAD ONTO THE PI. I have tried doing everything, I've followed countless guides, and all of them look simple. I format the sd card, then I expand the zip file, then I copy it over to the sd card, and put it in the pi. seems simple enough. I GUESS NOT BECAUSE NO MATTER WHAT I DO IT DOESN'T WORK. my monitor (which I bought along with a keyboard and mouse JUST FOR THE PI) SAYS NO SIGNAL. At the moment I am entirely considering hitting this piece of crap with a hammer. It was a waste of money. Does anybody know what could be going on?

If your SD-card is larger than 32GB, then it won't work with NOOBS, because it is not normally formatted FAT32, and the RPI needs FAT32 to boot from.

[GlowInTheDark]

It (*) does work; you just have to jump through some additional hoops to get it to work.

(*) "It" being setting up and booting NOOBS off of an SD card of size > 32Gb.

[mahjongg]

It (*) does work; you just have to jump through some additional hoops to get it to work.

(*) "It" being setting up and booting NOOBS off of an SD card of size > 32Gb.

Yes, but these extra jumps through hoops defy the purpose of NOOBS as making installation of Raspbian simple and safe.

Now (with these hoops) there will again be many things that can go wrong, and a much better solution will be to use a 16GB card, (not a 32GB card as that itself can be problematic with some older card-writers) or by simply discarding NOOBS, and use the latest installation tool you can find here:
https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/

and use it to install the raspbian image you can find here:
https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspbian/

that is now the simplest safe way to install Raspbian, on a card of any size isn't a problem.

[procount]

IMHO, if someone insists on using NOOBS on a card >=32GB in size of any size, then the easiest, foolproof method of installing it is:
1. Switch to using PINN-lite
2. Install the image version of PINN-lite using RPI Imager (see viewtopic.php?f=63&t=142574&start=975#p1638508) or Etcher.

(I wonder if the first time OP will come back...?)

[GlowInTheDark]

Is there really any point to using NOOBS/PINN if you go the "install it as an image" route?

I mean, the whole point of NOOBS/PINN is to be able to do your very first, initial Raspberry install purely from a normal Windows PC, without having to install some wacky third party "imaging" software (that could do who knows what to your main house PC).

Once you've gotten past that hurdle (which should be just once for each RPi user), then there are, of course, other, easier ways to do it (that avoid ever having to install any wacky third party "imaging" sofware).

[procount]

Is there really any point to using NOOBS/PINN if you go the "install it as an image" route?

NOOBS - debatable. RPF don't provide an image for it anyway.
PINN - Absolutely! Times have changed.

The size of SD cards has increased dramatically since the 2GB SD cards I used on my first Pi 1B and the cost has come down dramatically as well. So it's not unusual for beginners to buy a 32GB or larger SD card and find that they have to jump through a number of hoops to format it as FAT32 just to install NOOBS. Using an image completely eliminates those issues.
Tools like Etcher or RPi Imager did not exist when NOOBS was developed, so NOOBS was a major enabler for beginners to get OSes on their RPi. But these tools have made it a lot easier these days.

the whole point of NOOBS/PINN is to be able to do your very first, initial Raspberry install purely from a normal Windows PC

That may ONCE have been the main point, but certainly not the ONLY point. Don't forget they are also used as multi-boot managers, and PINN is now much more than just that.

PINN is more of an OS administration tool allowing you to manage your OSes on the Pi itself, including:

• installing multiple OSes
• customising an OS installation
• choosing an OS at boot
• built-in backup, restore and replacement of OSes
• password recovery
• disk checking
• card cloning
• a backup recovery shell you can use to fix any other problems when your main OS won't boot
• probably a few more I've forgotten.

More than that, it provides a showcase of wide range of different OSes that users can browse through and try out.
So if you think PINN is just a "use it once and throw it away tool", you should take another look.
I have it installed on nearly all of my SD cards, but then I would, wouldn't I!
Installing my PINN Etcher image just takes a few clicks using the RPi Imager.