Raspberry Pi Won't Boot, Red Power Light Only

[soenderg]

I have the same. Red PWR, very dim green OK. No boot. Mine never booted. It was like that when I unboxed it yesterday.

I use a 1200 mA mobile charger and tried both with or without my SD card, which is an 8GB micro SD in an SD converter.

I tried leaving it off over night, but that didn't change anything.

I might have touched the silver cap at first plugin, but could that really be so fragile? And is there any more solid information about that problem?

Cheers,

Anders

[msemtd]

My solution was to get a good quality full-size SD card - I got a Kingston 8Gb class 4 for £4 GBP - I then discovered that my Micro SD card also worked OK when I used a different Micro SD adapter! You may have similar success.

[oinquer]

Hi everyone.
I had this problem today and thought i was doomed.....
but after reading the suggestions i changed the SD, to no avail .... and after that changed the SD adapter...since i have a microsd with an sd adapter.
ITS ALIVE!
SD adapter to the garbage bin.

Try the SD card first or the adapter if youre using one.

[contractorwolf]

Update:
I also had the Rpi that stopped booting and would only show the red LED with the Green LED just barely on. I didnt give up and started from scratch again and am now up and running. Here is what I did.

Went back to Best Buy and got a brand new $8 SD card and a $9 USB power supply (smallest I've seen yet!). See them both here:


I used win32 diskimager and was able to write the image to the new SD without problem. Plugged in a mouse and keyboard and HDMI and it booted right up. Green light happily flashing (instead of just barely on as before). I had really almost given up, Im happy to say but its fully working again. I did just make sure that I bought the Adafruit case to make sure its protected now, since its only $14:
https://www.adafruit.com/products/859

[Gazzaizmee]

Having the very same red light problem and after reading a number of related posts it seems to me that the most common cause is the SD Card itself.
I am running a Samsung Wave charger - 5v 0.7 A and a Sandisk 32gb and 8gb micro sd in a SD Adapter card.
Initially installing Debian Squeeze over a FAT32 formatted card proved unsuccessful giving the red light only problem. I reformatted the same card to NTFS, used Win32 disk Imager to install Squeeze again , fired up the pi and hey it worked straight away !
Might be a problem where FAT 32 is not recognising more than 4gb? I don't know but the NTFS format works for both the 8gb and 32gb cards I used.

[stevex]

Got my new Pi today and had this exact problem. Everything checked out OK and almost in desperation I tried putting the new bootcode.bin from https://github.com/raspberrypi/firmware ... otcode.bin
on to one of the SD cards I was trying with Debain.
It now boots!

[Noidea]

Got my new Pi today and had this exact problem. Everything checked out OK and almost in desperation I tried putting the new bootcode.bin from https://github.com/raspberrypi/firmware ... otcode.bin
on to one of the SD cards I was trying with Debain.
It now boots!

Had exactly the same. Sort of...

Two different SanDisk cards were just not being recognised. Changed the bootcode.bin and start.elf and it now boots to the splash screen then runs about 10 lines of code before stopping. Not sure what's wrong now, but at least I now the RPi works.

[pine]

My red led prob was a little different: I'd bought 2 identical 4GB SD cards, did all the steps to write the img to one of them, and hey presto, Pi boots first time off card 1. After playing about for a while, decided to expand the partitions on the card, but first decided to make a second card, in case I screw up. All the same steps, but Pi booteth not. Re-wrote img, re-downloaded img, reformatted but disk still sulks. Find this thread - am appalled at the number and variety of probs folk are experiencing - and decide to follow the stevex approach. Not really knowing what I was doing with github, I think I downloaded all the rpifirmware (100+MB!). Unzipped the file, copied boot.bin (17k!) onto SD card 2, and it boots. Several times now. And card 1 continues to do so. Two thoughts:

1. I was lucky SD card 1 booted with the original file. If I'd put card 2 in first ... shudder! For once the toast landed butter-side up!

2. It should just not be this flaky. Sir Clive S. is probably applauding loudly at the general confusion.

Many thanks to stevex for the tip on downloading improved boot.bin. I didn't need any other file from the 100MB zip (no doubt they'll come in useful.)

Now those partitions ..... perhaps tomorrow!

P

[mnbf9rca]

I can successfully reproduce this:

• 1. Using 4GB SDHC Class 4 Ultra II, flash with the archlinuxarm-13-06-2012.img image
  2. Pi boots successfully
  3. Replace elf with smaller one to free up some memory as i dont want a GUI
  • 3.1. cd /boot
    3.2. mv start.elf orig-start.elf
    3.3. cp arm224_start.elf start.elf
  4. Run pacman -Suy and wait for it to finish. Note that it recognises that a different ELF is in use:

  (55/58) upgrading raspberrypi-firmware [######################] 100%
  >>>Replacing /boot/start.elf with /boot/arm224_start.elf

  5. When i reboot it doesn't work i.e. i get colour pallet only. Reimaging the card and it works again.

[mnbf9rca]

actually i can reproduce this by imaging my machine with the archlinuxarm-13-06-2012 image, then running rpi-update (https://github.com/Hexxeh/rpi-update). When it reboots, it wont start and i just get the colour pallet. i'll try a new SD card when they arrive.

[jiver]

Same problem: RPI 'suddenly' won't boot using SD card & power combo previously working for weeks.

SOLVED using ajstarks's solution for SD Cards that have been mounted on Mac OS (which mine had, to make a backup image). Specifically, removed the ._.Trashes .Trashes/, .fseventsd/, and cruft that OS X put on the card, and all is well

Thanks, that's a relief!

I too had the persistent red light problem. Note that I was loading my images from Mac OS X and the SD card failed to load. After checking the (brand new) SD card on Windows, I discovered and removed the extra ".dot" files that Mac OS X leaves on the disk. After manually removing these with Windows,

IT WORKS!

[jiver]

Following up on my previous post. My celebration was premature. The next morning the problem had returned, even without the OS X 'dot' files present on the SD Cards.

[quote="jiver"]Same problem: RPI 'suddenly' won't boot using SD card & power combo previously working for weeks.

SD Cards are both on approved list, and USB power supply is 2.6 A, with voltage at 5.05 V. Using raspian, updated with July 28 (v 328039) firmwares. OK led blinks a few times on startup then it appears to hang.

All I can add is that this has only happened (all three three times, that is) after the pi has been unplugged, and then was off for a number of hours (>8). While I had it running, or only briefly shut if off, there was never a problem. The first two times, removing the "OS X" dot files from the SD card (apparently) solved the situation. This last time, not.

[gilles23]

I had the same problem and found the solution on this wiki page: http://elinux.org/R-Pi_Troubleshooting

There is a bug in the distributed version of bootcode.bin which causes problems with some sdcards. Try this version: https://github.com/raspberrypi/firmware ... otcode.bin

Simply download this file (click "View Raw") and replace the bootcode.bin that is on the SD card (drag and drop the file with Mac OS X Finder)

[PietPompies]

Hope this can help somebody. My Raspberry Pi had the same problem out the box. After carefull inspection of the SD memory card holder on the Raspberry Pi PC board, I found that the pitch of the contacts was to shallow. I clipped the ends of the contacts out and sure enough some solder balls fell out with the contact ends. After I clipped the contacts back the pitch looked higher aswell. I then inserted the SD memory card and everything started to work. I suspect that with the solder reflow process some solder gets into the small holes where the contacts are fitted and affects the pitch of the contacts. This will also explain why some Raspberry Pis will work for a while and suddenly stop. The memory card is not making proper contact. Hope this helps somebody.

[mnbf9rca]

What do you mean you "clipped the ends of the contacts out"?

[PietPompies]

What do you mean you "clipped the ends of the contacts out"?

I will try and explain with photos. The solder falls into the little holes and keeps the contacts down. The contacts cannot rise to the proper height. The photos also show one contact being done but I had to do all of them.Remember to clip the contacts back in.

DSC00663.JPG (39.82 KiB) Viewed 19296 times

DSC00664.JPG (37.99 KiB) Viewed 19296 times

DSC00667.JPG (39.16 KiB) Viewed 19296 times

[mnbf9rca]

very clear - thanks! i'll give that a go, although i think there are many causes with similar symptoms; for me, for example, reformatting the same SD card back restores "service".

[permaband]

Oh deary. My pi had been up 10 days running fine using a good switching PSU that I have tested seperately and found no fault with @ 5v.

I logged on to my forum today (hosted on the pi) and got a blank page. No 404, not timing out, just a blank page. Huh. Tried ssh, times out.

Plugged monitor in to pi via HDMI and checked to see what was happening. No hdmi output.

Hard reset pi.

Cycled power, now just get red power light. The green OK led flashes quickly about 4-5 times then.. nothing.

Removed/reattached all periphs. Left for 1 hr for fuses to cycle (if thats the issue). Still dead.

SDCARD in PC shows no issues.

It was working fine, at some point in the night it has 'died'. Can't revive it, not even with a fresh sdcard image. The problem seems to be hardware.

[PaulCheffus]

Cycled power, now just get red power light. The green OK led flashes quickly about 4-5 times then.. nothing.

Hi

What the flashing means
http://elinux.org/R-Pi_Troubleshooting# ... ic_pattern

Might be worth copying the files from here back to the boot partition using whatever computer you used to create the image.
http://elinux.org/R-Pi_Troubleshooting# ... g_firmware

Cheers

Paul

[permaband]

Cycled power, now just get red power light. The green OK led flashes quickly about 4-5 times then.. nothing.

Hi

What the flashing means
http://elinux.org/R-Pi_Troubleshooting# ... ic_pattern

Might be worth copying the files from here back to the boot partition using whatever computer you used to create the image.
http://elinux.org/R-Pi_Troubleshooting# ... g_firmware

Cheers

Paul

Ahhh awesome. So maybe somehow its corrupted itself/the sdcard? I did try re-imaging this card but nothing. I guess I should go buy another sdcard and try again. I'm guessing the hard reset borked the fs. So if this is gonna be something I have to do every week or so, a hard reset, is there a way to make the fs more robust? Because having to reinstall the OS every week is gonna get old. Its raspbian ext3 iirc. Would using a SDD instead of sdcard help? I get the feeling the sdcard drivers/system just isnt cut out for server use?

[PietPompies]

very clear - thanks! i'll give that a go, although i think there are many causes with similar symptoms; for me, for example, reformatting the same SD card back restores "service".

You are correct in that there could be many causes. I was lucky in the sens that I have a friend with a working Raspberry Pi and I could confirm with him that my power supply and SD card was working. So I knew that it had to be a problem with my Raspberry Pi. If the green OK LED lights dimly it shows that the Raspberry is trying to access the SD card without success. The LED is dim because the Raspberry Pi is in a loop. This led me to the SD card holder. If the card is corrupt or not compatable you may get different indications from the LED. Hope you get a solution soon.

[permaband]

fscking the root ext4 partition showed it was completely lunched. and judging from the sheer volume of errors, wrongly allocated/unallocated, redundant blocks etc going back a while too.

did some googling and this is what happened to me:

http://www.redhat.com/archives/ext3-use ... 00254.html

reaching here but it would seem that 'a busy' server environment with a lot of fs i/o just doesnt work too good on sdcard for whatever reason.

[Jim JKla]

OK I am going to work with PietPompies to produce a wiki page to support this fix.

I am relay only posting this here so I can find the place and so that I can put the thread on watch.

[Angelnet]

For those that had a working RPi and now you are getting a red light, below is this link that explains about properly shutting down your RPi. It also states that unplugging it might corrupt your SD card.

http://raspi.tv/2012/how-to-safely-shut ... spberry-pi

[ubergeek72]

I had this, with the very faint green LED being lit. Turned out I messed up when I wrote the disk image out to my sdcard.

You have to talk directly to the raw device (which is in the directions, I just skimmed/ignored it). So if, as on my mac, you have /dev/disk3s1 where the sd card is, you have to dd to /dev/rdisk3 . Like many classic unix utilities, dd will do exactly what you tell it, regardless of whether it's sensible or not.

Also, I noticed the link in the wiki to the discussion about .trash and ._.trash as helpfully created on mount by Macs. Apparently these can cause your Pi not to boot at all. You can remove these right on the mac. Just stat up terminal, cd to the root of the pi flash card, ls -al to see the files, and rmdir .trash and rm ._.trash.

OS X loves to create these things, so make sure you remove them every time your sd card is touched by a mac.