Suddenly stopped working

[Doncaster]

Please be kind - I'm a newbie!

I have a 4B that I use to run a weather station and a few other bits and bobs. Earlier this afternoon, I noticed that it had stopped broadcasting updates so I started to investigate.

I wasn't able to SSH onto the box and got a java.net.SocketException message. I plugged in a keyboard and started the screen and it had frozen. I had to power cycle to try and reboot and since then, nothing. When it tries to boot, I don't even get the rainbow screen.

I've had a look at the boot problems sticky and have deduced that as the green LED is flashing 4 times, there is an issue with loader.bin. Is there a quick fix I can do as I it took quite a quite to get things going in the first place!

[Adamanewtown]

There is no other way than to reinstall the OS, just refollow the instructions for your OS of choice and the programs of choice



Sorry, no other way!
Hoped this helped you



-Adamanewtown

[pcmanbob]

Hi.

So the first thing I suggest is you get another SD card load raspbian buster on it and try booting your pi from that,

this way you can prove if its your pi or the SD card that is at fault.

If the pi boots from the new SD card then I suspect your original SD card is corrupt.

[Doncaster]

Thanks. I'll give that a go later. Card and Pi are only 6 weeks old so wouldn't have expected hardware failure just yet.

If it is the card, is there any way I could transfer stuff across or would things like the weather station need installing from scratch?

Hi.

So the first thing I suggest is you get another SD card load raspbian buster on it and try booting your pi from that,

this way you can prove if its your pi or the SD card that is at fault.

If the pi boots from the new SD card then I suspect your original SD card is corrupt.

[pcmanbob]

Card and Pi are only 6 weeks old so wouldn't have expected hardware failure just yet.

If it is the card, is there any way I could transfer stuff across or would things like the weather station need installing from scratch?

It depends upon what you have connected to the gpio , if you have any part of your weather station using 5V and that 5v is reaching the pi gpio then yes you could have killed your pi.

SD card corruption could be due to a mains brown out or very short power outage, it could also be full if you used a small capacity SD card.

You may be able to copy off any programs you have written , but if you installed things like the weather station by loading the completed program from some were like github you will probably need to go through installation again.

[Doncaster]

Well - I 'borrowed' the card out of my camera and installed Buster and after a few attempts, it came back to life. Looks like I'm ordering a new SD card today...

I've tried to read the card in several other devices and none of them can see it so it looks like I'm starting from scratch.

The weather station connects via USB.

[pcmanbob]

Well this time once you have it all installed and working make a copy of the SD card , so that should you have a problem in the future you have a copy to restore from.

what devices did you try reading the old SD card with , because windows will only see the fat partition.

[davidcoton]

Well - I 'borrowed' the card out of my camera and installed Buster and after a few attempts, it came back to life. Looks like I'm ordering a new SD card today...

I've tried to read the card in several other devices and none of them can see it so it looks like I'm starting from scratch.

In the absence of any device able to read the original card, it is worth trying to format the original card in your camera, to see if it is salvageable. You will of course lose the data on it, but camera formatting has been known to recover cards that are otherwise unusable (even those that can't be formatted on PCs).

If that fails, throw it away before it confuses you when you forget the history (bitter experience here).