Screen goes black after trying to install OS

[Eat_Sleep_Repeat]

I recently bought a raspberry pi with an 8gb sd card with 'noobs' pre installed from Farnell and it arrived this morning, I hooked everything up and booted up the PI and choose my preferred operating system, which installed but then a window saying 'Image applied successfully' popped up and when I clicked 'ok' the whole thing cut out and the screen went black.
Every time I reboot the machine it shows a coloured splash screen then the raspberry pi logo and says 'hold shift for recovery mode' if I don't do anything the whole thing cuts out again and if I open recover mode the install operating system comes up again and I'm back to the start.

The PWR led is always on red, the ACT led flashes when installing OS but fades away once the PI cuts out.

Hope someone can help, thanks

Ben

[abishur]

As a rule, I'm distrustful of pre imaged SD cards as they can often contain outdated images... but in this case I'm not sure if there have been more than one release of NOOBs

The physical boot process sounds normal (colored splash, hold shift) as do the LEDs. My intial thought is there might be a problem starting the gui. How are you connected to the monitor/TV? And just for reference, what OS did you end up installing and how long did you wait after the screen went black before calling it quits?

[drgeoff]

As a rule, I'm distrustful of pre imaged SD cards as they can often contain outdated images... but in this case I'm not sure if there have been more than one release of NOOBs

There has certainly been more than one issue of NOOBS on the downloads page of this site.

[abishur]

As a rule, I'm distrustful of pre imaged SD cards as they can often contain outdated images... but in this case I'm not sure if there have been more than one release of NOOBs

There has certainly been more than one issue of NOOBS on the downloads page of this site.

Thanks for updating my faulty memory

[Eat_Sleep_Repeat]

I tried Raspbian twice and RISC OS once, I'm using hdmi

[Eat_Sleep_Repeat]

*Update
I've left it on for 15 minutes come back and its still black screen, I also tried on a different monitor but with no luck.

[stevepork]

Just re-image the drive yourself!

And yeah.... NOOBS has caused some issues with Raspbmc auto update, this is now fixed so there is definitely more than one update!

[Genius23008]

If NOOBS doesn't work, BerryBoot is a good, lightweight alternative that allows you to write OS data to USB drives and boot from them too.

[Early]

Same issue here ... RPi hdmi works fine on one TV. On the other TV the screen goes blank after the (Hold Shift) screen.
.
The only difference is the two tv sets. A 3 year old Panasonic 42" works fine .... A brand new Wally Mart 19" with hdmi input; displays first two screens then goes blank when GUI screen should display.
.
So, Original Poster - I'd say it's the TV.

I did see a message that said "Pulse 8 CEC" ... but messages and message boxes go by too fast to read.

Any ideas will be appreciated ..... Thanks much.

[Eat_Sleep_Repeat]

So its the tv? Although could be the cable? It's not the sd or pi though cause I got a replacement and no difference

[Early]

re: "... it could be the cable ..."

I used the same hdmi cable on both tvs' ... It is a $6 cable, not one of those $35 ones.

My NOOBS install is dated 6/26/2013 ... downloaded in the last week from RPi downloads.

Googling "pulse 8 ", I get this note on the pulse-eight site:
"... Use the TV's language setting: requests the GUI language of the TV and tries to set the same language in XBMC when enabled." ..... Maybe the "pulse 8" message that flew by on the failed boot is a error message about the tv's "language" ???

[Early]

Just noticed the same issue is on the Beginner forum.
The response is below. So I'm going to look at config.txt
Maybe NOOBS could display a message if this problem is detected.

"As the raspberry PI doesn't have a conventional BIOS, the various system configuration parameters that would normally be kept and set using the BIOS are now stored on a text file named "config.txt". ?

[DeeJay]

The description in the first post in this thread is consistent with having installed an operating system that is not, by default, compatible with the display you are using. [NOOBS was designed to be as tolerant as possible of different displays, so perhaps this is why you get a screen from NOOBS itself, but not the installed operating system?]

Have a look at the video modes information online here. http://elinux.org/RPiconfig

Note that any advice about modifying config.txt by moving the sd card to another computer is NOT applicable to a NOOBS installation. To modify this file with NOOBS, accept the offer to enter Recovery mode by pressing Shift at boot time, and use the Edit Config option on the Recovery Console screen.

[Eat_Sleep_Repeat]

I edited to config.txt on the recovery screen but the same thing happened on both my PC monitor and tv.

[Early]

OK. Video Success by editing config.txt to hdmi_safe=1
.... that is, I editted the first command line in config.txt, ... from #hdmi_safe=1 to hdmi_safe=1
.
Then I did a reinstall of Raspian. Now video is working on the tv that was going blank at the (shift to reset) message box..
.... haven't tested the other tv, the one that was already working.
.
fyi - It looks like config.txt changed radically from the config.txt that displayed before I did the reinstall above.
.... The "New to me" config.txt has lots of comments and options. The "Old" config.txt had only six command lines with no comments at all. ..... Looks to me like someone revised config.txt recently ?

[Early]

DeeJay,

Thanks for pointing out the config.txt ...... I may now play around with the hdmi_mode command for trying to set it to one of the modes noted in my tv's user manual.

[Eat_Sleep_Repeat]

I was able to fix the problem by uncommenting hdmi safe mode, but not the config.txt accessible when you boot 'NOOBS', i had to put the sd card in a Linux machine and edit the config.txt their and that worked.

[Early]

OP,

That's interesting. Maybe editting the config.txt from the <shift> screen requires a power_off/power_on reset, i.e. a hard boot.
I'm a linux beginner and new to the RPi too ... My 42" tv displays fine, but the 19" tv has me trying differenc "overscan" settings.

Goog luck with your RPi ...

[W. H. Heydt]

I did some experimenting with NOOBS earlier this month. NOOBS is much better than Raspbian at detecting monitor parameters. The fix that I found worked (using a Viewsonic 912b, 19" 1280x1024) was to uncomment the "hdmi_force_hotplug=1" line in config.txt. I was able to do that using the recovery console in NOOBS.

[WisdomFire]

I have tried to use raspbian, and the message comes in that The OS has installed correctly. I press ok, and then my screen turns blank. Ctrl Alt Delete. My screen will flash as it always does when I restart, but nothing comes up...

[Nicowe]

I had the exact same problem after connecting the Pi on my network and accepting the updates. The addition of the line hdmi_safe=1 in the config.txt from the recovery mode solved the problem !

[neyt]

Its the screen / cable.
Had the same problems for 3 days. Until I tried it on my tv. works just fine the screen that I was using is a Samsung screen 932b with a HDMI to VGA adaptor.

the reason it took so long to figure it out. It that is was working ok . the first day, at least for a while