Pi won't boot, red LED on

[skylar]

Hi all,

After a couple month's of use my Pi stopped booting. Its symptoms are similar to the ones described in the troubleshooting guide in the elinux wiki:

http://elinux.org/R-Pi_Troubleshooting# ... on_display

I've tried a bunch of stuff mentioned there:

1. Reinstalling Raspbian and installing NOOBS on the SD card, latest and greatest of each
2. Verifying that all the files are present in the root of the SD card filesystem (bootcode.bin, fixup.dat, start.elf), the latter two of which I had to download from the Raspberry Pi github site
3. Unplugging all the USB peripherals, leaving only power and HDMI
4. Trying different 5V adapters
5. Checked for cracking around the SD slot
6. Used a pin to verify the spring in each of the contacts in the SD slot
7. Waited a week to see if the polyfuse might be the issue

All for naught, sadly. Unfortunately, I don't have a spare Pi or SD card, but the SD card does work fine when hooked up to the SD card reader/writer on my laptop.

Any other ideas, or am I looking at a likely borked Pi?

Thanks in advance for any help!

Skylar

[mahjongg]

all possible answers are already given here: http://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewt ... 28&t=58151

[skylar]

all possible answers are already given here: http://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewt ... 28&t=58151

Thanks, I missed that sticky. I've tried #2-#6. I'm lacking a voltmeter right now, so can't try #1, and have only one SD card reader, so can't try #7. The SD card itself is a branded one so I'm going to guess it's OK.

Unfortunately, it's looking like the Pi itself is the issue...

Thanks again,

Skylar

[mahjongg]

all possible answers are already given here: http://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewt ... 28&t=58151

Thanks, I missed that sticky. I've tried #2-#6. I'm lacking a voltmeter right now, so can't try #1, and have only one SD card reader, so can't try #7. The SD card itself is a branded one so I'm going to guess it's OK.

Unfortunately, it's looking like the Pi itself is the issue...

Thanks again,

Skylar

That's simply very-very unlikely. As it worked at the factory. Almost all the threads where someone complained he could not get his PI to boot, in the end it did, for example by changing the SD-card, or the power supply (cable). Reports are that of all the returned as defective PI's 97% were not defective. You should simply tackle the problem in a systematic way. I know its hard because without booting you have almost no feedback. Its far easier when you know someone else with a PI, and can test your card on his PI to see if its bootable or not.

Of course you are free to return the PI as defective. But what if the replacement also doesn't boot?

[DeeJay]

Everything you have tried depends on you correctly creating a bootable SD card using a possibly unproven SD card reader/writer.

I've tried ... Reinstalling Raspbian and installing NOOBS on the SD card, latest and greatest of each

Is it completely clear to you that the methods for directly installing Raspbian from a .img file and for installing NOOBS are different and mutually incompatible? They are documented here http://www.raspberrypi.org/documentatio ... /README.md and here http://www.raspberrypi.org/help/noobs-setup/

For a very quick and 'lightweight' test that you are creating a bootable SD card I suggest downloading and copying the NOOBS 'lite' (network-only) installer. (Only to test that the RPi will boot, not necessarily to use it as an installation tool.) If you copy those files onto the SD card correctly you should be able to see, at the 'top' level of the card (ie. not contained in any folder) 2 subfolders [ os and defaults ] and 9 other files. You don't need to make any changes to these files - they work as released.

[skylar]

all possible answers are already given here: http://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewt ... 28&t=58151

Thanks, I missed that sticky. I've tried #2-#6. I'm lacking a voltmeter right now, so can't try #1, and have only one SD card reader, so can't try #7. The SD card itself is a branded one so I'm going to guess it's OK.

Unfortunately, it's looking like the Pi itself is the issue...

Thanks again,

Skylar

That's simply very-very unlikely. As it worked at the factory. Almost all the threads where someone complained he could not get his PI to boot, in the end it did, for example by changing the SD-card, or the power supply (cable). Reports are that of all the returned as defective PI's 97% were not defective. You should simply tackle the problem in a systematic way. I know its hard because without booting you have almost no feedback. Its far easier when you know someone else with a PI, and can test your card on his PI to see if its bootable or not.

Of course you are free to return the PI as defective. But what if the replacement also doesn't boot?

This is a good point, and that 97% figure makes me feel better. I'll see if I can track someone down with a Pi I can test my SD card on.

Thanks,

Skylar

[skylar]

Everything you have tried depends on you correctly creating a bootable SD card using a possibly unproven SD card reader/writer.

I've tried ... Reinstalling Raspbian and installing NOOBS on the SD card, latest and greatest of each

Is it completely clear to you that the methods for directly installing Raspbian from a .img file and for installing NOOBS are different and mutually incompatible? They are documented here http://www.raspberrypi.org/documentatio ... /README.md and here http://www.raspberrypi.org/help/noobs-setup/

For a very quick and 'lightweight' test that you are creating a bootable SD card I suggest downloading and copying the NOOBS 'lite' (network-only) installer. (Only to test that the RPi will boot, not necessarily to use it as an installation tool.) If you copy those files onto the SD card correctly you should be able to see, at the 'top' level of the card (ie. not contained in any folder) 2 subfolders [ os and defaults ] and 9 other files. You don't need to make any changes to these files - they work as released.

Yep, I'm clear on the difference. I just tried the lite installer, and put these files in the root of the FAT filesystem on the SD card:

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 17824 Apr 28 16:45 bootcode.bin
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 269 Apr 28 16:45 BUILD-DATA
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 65536 Nov 7 2013 defaults
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2249 Apr 28 16:45 INSTRUCTIONS-README.txt
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 65536 Nov 7 2013 os
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 71 Apr 28 16:45 recovery.cmdline
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 507256 Apr 28 16:45 recovery.elf
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 0 Apr 28 16:45 RECOVERY_FILES_DO_NOT_EDIT
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2097344 Apr 28 16:45 recovery.img
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 20547203 Apr 28 16:45 recovery.rfs
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 9728 Apr 28 16:45 riscos-boot.bin

Sadly, still no joy...

Skylar

[hampi]

I had an interesting experiment about one week ago

http://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewt ... 28&t=77840

Basically I could get the RPiA to boot by keeping my finger pressed on SD card socket soldered contacts (not on the card itself). In radio circuits this kind of behaviour would not surprise anybody, but that is not what you expect from a digital circuit.

Before putting your finger there make sure to discharge any static electricity from your body since that will kill the SoC. Actually the tiny 47 ohm resistors on the board between the socket and SoC are probably there to give some protection against ESD (but they might have other side effects too).

[skylar]

I've been busy for months and didn't have a chance to work on my Pi. I finally had a chance to return to it, and I'd like to thank everyone for keeping me focused on the SD card. It turns out that the write protect tab was broken, which for some reason my SD card reader did not mind, but the Pi did. A new SD card fixed the problem.

[mahjongg]

the pi doesn't look (in fact doesn't have the ability to look) at the write protect tab, so it was just a broken card.