Pi 3 showing red light and having all boot files

[AmyFL]

So my 12yo son says this about the problem with his Pi:

The pi doesn't work with retro pi. the pi has all the proper set up files, like boot.bin and the other ones. When he plugs in the power , he only sees a red light. It doesn't blink and he can't figure out why. (the SD card is 4gb)

This is what he's done so far: He checked to see if its got all the proper files (and it does). He formatted the SD card to fat 32.

He thinks its a hardware problem. Is there any advice you can offer to help us fix it?

(this is his mom and I know nothing about this stuff)

THANK YOU!!

[mahjongg]

There is a permanent "sticky" posts for boot problems, here: viewtopic.php?f=28&t=58151

in 99.9% of cases its NOT a hardware problem (with the PI).

[Imperf3kt]

To clarify, your son wants to run Retropie on a Raspberry Pi, but all he is seeing is the red light come on and nothing else?

While the boot sticky is a very good place to start, its not the end all, be all for these types of questions.

First, you mention the SD card used is 4Gb. That may not be big enough for a RetroPie image. I don't recall the install size, but I believe the minimum recommended size is 8Gb. Twice what you currently have.

The next piece of advice is that a solid red LED is a good sign. If it was blinking, it would mean either your chosen power supply is not sufficient, or the cable used between the power supply and the Pi, is cheap quality.
There should, however, be a blinking GREEN LED after turning it on.

I would suggest a read through the following:
https://retropie.org.uk/docs/First-Installation/

Also, keep in mind that while RetroPie may be a free download, the games your son wishes to play with it, may not be.
Unauthorised downloads could potentially land both you and your son in some legal trouble.
I would suggest monitoring his actions and ensure he understands about copyrighted material and what is legal to download and what isn't.

[drgeoff]

I've never tried retropie but having googled "retropie card size" and found https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/992 ... s-required I would query if 4 Gbyte is large enough.

Conflicting replies there. One says 8 Gbyte for basic install gives 3 Gbyte free space while another says a 4 Gbyte card has 1.5 Gbyte space.

[thagrol]

He formatted the SD card to fat 32.

That could be the problem right there. Most SD card images for the Pi (NOOBS excepted) aren't installed by formatting the card to FAT32 and copying the file over.

Point him at this: https://retropie.org.uk/docs/First-Installation/

There's another possibility that's specific to windows 10. Without getting too technical, a few months back windows changed how it handled SD cards with areas it couldn't understand on them. It now pops up a message asking you to format it when the card is inserted. If your son allowed windows to do so he would have lost all the Pi specific data on that part of the SD card.

An easy mistake to make, especially for a beginner. Easy to fix too by rewriting the card.

Edit:
Just spotted another possibility: There are two version of retropie on their download page: One for Pi 2 and 3, one for the rest (labled as Pi 0/1). He should check he's installed the right version for th ePi he's using.

[HawaiianPi]

As suggested above, follow the installation directions from the RetroPie site, and if that doesn't help, try the following.

First thing to do would be to check if it's a hardware problem, and the simplest way to do that would be to test it with a standard Raspbian Linux image. A 4GB card is not large enough to install the full desktop version of Raspbian, so you should test it with the Raspbian Stretch Lite image.

Assuming he has a keyboard, mouse and screen connected to his Raspberry Pi computer, try the following:

1. Grab the latest Raspbian image from https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspbian/ (get Raspbian Stretch Lite)
2. Grab the Etcher software from https://etcher.io/
3. Install Etcher and use it to write the Raspbian image to your SD card.
   • You don't need to extract the image or format the card prior to writing.
   • Just run Etcher, choose the Raspbian .zip you downloaded, pick your SD card and write.
   • If you have trouble, verify the SHA256 checksum of the download against the one on the download page.
4. Safely eject the card from your PC and use it to boot the Pi.

It should boot into a command line (text) interface. It that works, then you know the Pi can boot correctly and the problem is in creating the RetroPie SD card. I'm pretty sure RetroPie is a disk image and not files you copy. So use Etcher again to write the RetroPie image to your card (it's more reliable than Win32 Disk Imager). Also, in spite of what the tutorial says, you do not need to format the card prior to writing an image.