pi zero w problem?

[pjetson]

I've just purchased a pi zero w board. I initially loaded Jessie Lite on it, and everything ran fine via SSH. I then tried to install some software, but lost network connectivity during the installs (my fault) and now it seems that I can't get the board to run properly

I reinstalled Jessie Lite on my sdcard, and when it starts, the board prompts for a login and password, but then does nothing at all after I enter the password - nothing else is displayed on the screen. I downloaded Jessie Lite again and loaded it onto my sdcard again, but no change.

I then installed ("non-Lite") Jessie and tried booting that. It boots properly and displays the desktop, but neither mouse nor keyboard work.

Does anyone have any ideas about what I might have broken? And how I might fix it?

[4LULZ]

Might not be broken, I had a similar issue when I first got my Zero W's.

viewtopic.php?f=28&t=180185&p=1145628#p1145628

tl;dr - double check that your USB's are plugged in to the correct inputs, it'll still power on and boot even if they're the wrong way around. Power should be connected to the mirco USB that's furthest away from the SD card, keyboard in the one to it's left.

[mattmiller]

I then installed ("non-Lite") Jessie and tried booting that. It boots properly and displays the desktop, but neither mouse nor keyboard work.

Can you ssh into it (having created an ssh.txt file on the FAT32 partition 1st) ?

[pjetson]

Yes, I can SSH into it, and I can log in and enter my pasword, but nothing appears on the screen after that - no intro text, no command prompt.

[mattmiller]

All that's left to do is try another SD card

[pjetson]

Thanks, Matt, but I've already tried another sdcard, with the same result.

[mattmiller]

Well this is a really strange one - either the PiZero is broken in a VERY strange way or you have a bad batch of SD cards
Do you know anyone else with a Pi that you could borrow to try your cards in?

[pjetson]

Hi, Matt. Sometimes I think I'm a bit of a magnet for strange problems.

Anyway, the problem might be resolved - at least it's working now. I found a blog post that seemed to describe a similar problem here https://expresshosting.net/ssh-hanging-authentication/

I currently have an old Linksys access point, but I had a new unused Edimax access point put away in a cupboard, so I hooked that up and connected the pi 0 w to it, and now I can log in!

I might eventually try changing the settings that the blog guy talks about, but for now I just need to stop wasting any more time on the problem and get on with actually using my pi 0 w!

[mattmiller]

Glad it gots going.

Very interesting to find out that a network router can cause problems between 2 clients - the only previous problems I've had was when I developed a "find a pi" prog and then discovered that a lot of routers filter out LAN broadcast messages so that scuppered that plan