Pi won't no longer boots

[hmesko]

Hello, Just last month I purchased a new Pi 2.0 from the Raspberry Pi website. I also purchased an 8 gb NOOBS preloaded sd card. Originally it did not work, when I connected it to my TV via HDMI cord it would display no signal available after the initial color display. However, after removing all content, reformatting the card and downloading the latest NOOBS and extracting it to my card everything was working perfectly. I was successful at everything I attempted on the PI except for printing and chromium. However, yesterday when I was setting up I started to see the same thing again. It would display the color screen then drop the signal. When I removed the card and connected it to my computer I saw it display as 814 total MBs in sd formatter on windows 7. I chose to format file type FAT32 and when I did the drive returned to its original size of 8 GBs. I extracted the latest NOOBS into it once again and when I connected it to my TV it would cycle through the color page and a Graphical screen displaying "Hold shift to enter recovery", Holding shift on the keyboard sometimes causes it to hang, if not it will simply continue to alternate between the color page and "Hold shift to enter recovery page". After removing the drive it again displayed as 814 MBs in sd formatter. I have tried flashing the both the Raspbian image and the Snappy Ubuntu Core image from the official website only to be met with the same problems again. I've had an original Pi for over a year and it has never had any problems. I have read online of people experiencing similar issues but they stated that theirs was cleared up by re flashing the drive. My first thought is hardware, but given that other people experienced something similar and were able to clear them up I was hoping that maybe somebody might have some advice/suggestions. It would truly be ashamed if the newer better one just so happened to give out on me right away. Thank you.

[pluggy]

What makes you think Windows only showing a small part of the card is a problem ?. Its absolutely normal. Windows has no concept of partitions formatted with something other than FAT or NTFS. Its also very good at screwing up formatting SD cards that have had other partioning systems used on them. The standard advice is to format the card in a digital camera, or at least something other than Windows.

[hmesko]

Thank you for the response. I have tried formatting in Ubuntu too, with the same result.

[hmesko]

Hello, at first I was thinking it was problems with my Pi board itself. However now I am almost 100% sure it is the sd card. I placed the card into my working Pi 1 only to have it cycle through the color splash page and recovery option, ignoring my shift input. While I feel more revealed that its not my Pi itself I cannot test for sure as I do not have any more micro sds (the one on my Pi 1 is a full sized card). I have reformatted the Sandisk 8 gb sd card used by my Pi 1 several times using the same techniques in windows 7.

[hmesko]

Hi, I was able to get the card to work by reformatting it with sd formatter in windows 7, extracting NOOBS into it, then going through the instillation process in my old Pi 1. Everything worked perfectly running on my Pi 1. However, when I placed it into my Pi 2 it causes the same problem. It displays the color splash page, then drops the signal.

[mahjongg]

you used software that doesn't support the PI 2B, see this sticky topic: http://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/posti ... 1&p=695146

[hmesko]

From what I gather reading that If I have a build that runs on the Pi 1 I can run the code in that post in the terminal to update it to a build that will boot on the Pi 2?

[DougieLawson]

From what I gather reading that If I have a build that runs on the Pi 1 I can run the code in that post in the terminal to update it to a build that will boot on the Pi 2?

It depends.

If the original system is running NOOBS you have to mess around casting some strange arcane runes.

If it is a regular non-NOOBS card the sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade will get it ready.

[hmesko]

I'm sorry but I genuinely do not get it. Should I flash an image directly onto the card, load it to Pi 1, then run the update command from the terminal? Why exactly does it supposedly not work on windows but would with a digital camera? Everywhere I've seen online says to use SD formatter in windows 7 or standard software in linux, are they all for Pi 1 and therefore outdated? If I am using the wrong software what is the recommended software? I am using a Core i3 processor is it the x86_64 architecture vs the 32 bit ARM?? Do I need a 32 bit computer to format and install successfully?

I was already disappointed enough when it showed up on my doorstep to find that it had the strange camcorder peripheral replacing the standard component video of the first Pi (The TV I was initially going to hook it to only has component). This seems to be turning into a major hurdle I never faced with the first model.

[DougieLawson]

Start with a fresh 8GB card. Download NOOBS or NOOBS Lite. Unzip it. Copy the unzipped stuff to the card (or unzip it directly to the card). Boot and be happy.

[RaTTuS]

1) take raspbain image and write that to the SDcard
2) boot that in the new RPI

[hmesko]

Success! The powersupply, although stated to output the adequate 5.1v, must be faulty. I swapped it with the one connected to my old Pi 1 and it loaded no problems. I was even able to connect to the internet. Now I can finally finish setting this one up as a dedicated bittorrent machine.

[Emexrulsier]

My advice not just to you but everyone is to stop buying this prebuilt SD noobs set up. You learn nothing and when you run into error you are completely stuck. It is not hard at all to downloading pi images and write them to sd cards and then install extra apps etc and whilst doing this you will learn so much more

[DougieLawson]

My advice not just to you but everyone is to stop buying this prebuilt SD noobs set up. You learn nothing and when you run into error you are completely stuck. It is not hard at all to downloading pi images and write them to sd cards and then install extra apps etc and whilst doing this you will learn so much more

Poppycock and balderdash.

For the new users who've never used anything but Windows then NOOBS or NOOBS Lite is the best option, if you can follow simple instructions to unzip a zipfile and copy to an factory fresh FAT formatted SDCard then NOOBS is simple and straighforward.

The problems with NOOBS are: 1. it's not easy to update the firmware that's actually used to boot the RPi, 2. it makes a 8GB card into one that appears as 56MB card (to Windows) after a NOOBS install is complete, 3. Nearly 1GB of space can "vanish" and 4. it's impossible to add another OS to the boot manager once a NOOBS install is complete.

Other than that it's better than trying to get new users running that awful Win32DiskImager thing.

The only other way NOOBS could have been done would be as a purpose made Windows executable program that did everything on the Windows system to get from a blank card to a bootable card. (Download a small *.MSI installer, run NOOBS which then downloads the current image and writes it to the card.) But then you'd fail on the systems that are locked down and not allowed to install special purpose application programs. The current NOOBS system uses stuff that's already built in to Windows (no additional software needed).

[hmesko]

I do not know if NOOBS existed when setting up my first Pi, but I didn't use it. I flashed Debian Wheezy directly to my Sandisk 8 gb sd card when setting up my Pi 1 as an HTPC.

[DougieLawson]

The time is NOW for starting with a fresh copy of Raspbian from: http://downloads.raspberrypi.org/raspbian_latest