Help, my Pi is not booting.

[pulsee]

Hello,

I got my first Pi last weekend, been fiddling about with it ever since. I just can't get it to boot. The only thing that ever happens in the PWR Led turns full red, and the ACT Led blinks green once. And I get a very nice decorative Rainbow splash screen that just sticks around.

What have I tried so far?

I started of with Raspbmc ,Integral 4GB C10 (Came with the Pi) and 5V 1.5A PSU (Came with the Pi) - PWR Led ON, ACT Led Blinks once, Rainbow on screen.

Raspbmc ,Integral 4GB (Came with the Pi) and 5V 2A PSU - PWR Led ON, ACT Led Blinks once, Rainbow on screen.

Raspbmc, Kingston 16GB and 5V 2A PSU - PWR Led ON, ACT Led Blinks once, Rainbow on screen.

OpenELEC,Integral 4GB (Came with the Pi) and 5V 2A PSU - PWR Led ON, ACT Led Blinks once, Rainbow on screen.

OpenELEC, Kingston 16GB and 5V 2A PSU - PWR Led ON, ACT Led Blinks once, Rainbow on screen.

NOOBS1.2.1,Integral 4GB (Came with the Pi) and 5V 2A PSU - PWR Led ON, ACT Led Blinks once, Rainbow on screen.

NOOBS1.2.1, Kingston 16GB and 5V 2A PSU - PWR Led ON, ACT Led Blinks once, Rainbow on screen.

I think you get the idea so far, no matter what OS I write to the SD Card or what SD Card I use or what PSU I use all I have seen on my screen so far is a Rainbow splash screen.

Also measured the V over TP1-TP2 it was a solid 5.1V.

Please help! Searched these forums for the past 3 days, tried all possible solutions but nothing so far. What did I miss?

Thanks in advance!

[DeeJay]

tried all possible solutions but nothing so far. What did I miss?

You missed telling us how you created the SD cards with installations of Raspbmc, OpenElec and NOOBS.

That's potentially important because the last one uses a different creation mechanism to the first two.

[pulsee]

Thanks for your answer.

I created the raspbmc SD Card with the downloadable .exe from raspbmc. OpenELEC by the way described here(http://squirrelhosting.co.uk/hosting-bl ... o.php?id=9) and Noobs by extracting the Noobs.zip directly to the SD Card.

[DeeJay]

I don't have a simple answer for you. The good news is that you know the display is connected, and that something is being read from the SD card. (Because both of those things must be in place to get the rainbow splash screen.)

I have very little experience of raspbmc and openelec, so I'll concentrate on NOOBS which I have used a bit more and is normally simple and reliable.

A fellow forum member, @FTrevorGowen, has made available some screenshots of what a correctly-written NOOBS SD card looks like. See NOOBSInstall. Can you compare your NOOBS installation with that? Before the NOOBS installer is booted for the first time there should be one fat-formatted partition occupying the whole of the card, containing 2 folders (images and slides) and 8 other files at the top (root) of the disk. That's all. Specifically, no top-level folder containing the other files and folders.

Another factor possibly common to all your attempts is the SD card reader and PC (I assume PC because you mention a .exe) used to create the bootable cards? Some people have reported difficulty using built-in SD card slots in some laptops. Is that what you are using? Could you retry using a usb plug-in external SD card reader?

[pulsee]

Hi Deejay,

All the files that are in the screenshot are on my SD Card, but with noobs I don't even get a splash screen at the moment. I have used several different SD Card readers so far, built in ones and USB.

I ordered a pre-installed NOOBS SD Card from pi-fun.com just to test if there is something wrong with pi, or if I am doing something wrong. But what can I do wrong with extracting a .zip directly onto the SD Card?

[DeeJay]

what can I do wrong with extracting a .zip directly onto the SD Card?

Some people have created an SD card that has this structure -

[NOOBS 1.2.1 folder] containing -
..[images folder]
..[slides folder]
..files - 8 of them

As discussed, and shown in the website we've referenced, that is not correct and is certain not to work.

[pulsee]

I am not extracting it onto the SD Card as a folder.

[bitsik]

Hi,
I have the same problem, how did you solve yours?

cheers.

[DeeJay]

Hi,
I have the same problem, how did you solve yours?

cheers.

The poster of the original query has not logged in for 6 weeks, so is unlikely to answer your question.

I suggest you look at this posting in the Troubleshooting section.

[Phill Rymer]

I copied my image to documents using win rar in office 2010 I opened the file I then pressed select all and then used the copy files option selected copy to external drive the files copied are listed below
defaults
os
bootcode
build data
instructions read me
recovery file do not edit
recover cmd line
recover
recover elf
recover rfe
ricos boot
worked first time don't forget to use sd formatter first though

[maxpointy]

With mine it was displaying the rainbow screen, restarting, rainbow, etc, to infinitum. Bought two different SD cards before I thought about the power supply, the Pii requires more than the standard 0.8VDC of a typical phone charger, plugged it into my computer with a miniUSB and it worked like a charm.