Problems with booting

[francescojordan]

Hi! i Have some problems when the PI is booting. if i restart it, twice on three it doesn't start.
The third one it starts.

While is booting only the red light is on.

When the pi start i do nothing particular, simply i remove the cable but the power outlet is always the same.

Someone can help me?

[FTrevorGowen]

Hi! i Have some problems when the PI is booting. if i restart it, twice on three it doesn't start.
The third one it starts.
While is booting only the red light is on.
When the pi start i do nothing particular, simply i remove the cable but the power outlet is always the same.
Someone can help me?

W.r.t. "When the pi start i do nothing particular, simply i remove the cable ..."
Have you "always" been doing this? I.e. removing power without cleanly shutting down with sudo shutdown -h now (or similar). If so, you've probably corrupted the file system on the SDHC card. Otherwise, esp. w.r.t. "While is booting only the red light is on", first suspect is the PSU. More info. on non-booting issues & troubleshooting can be found in this sticky thread:
http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewt ... 28&t=58151
Trev.

[francescojordan]

HI! thanks for the reply.
i think i expressed myself badly..
When the Pi doesn't boot i remove the cable...the if it boot there's no problem and it don't tell me that i shutdown incorretly...

[FTrevorGowen]

HI! thanks for the reply.
i think i expressed myself badly..
When the Pi doesn't boot i remove the cable...the if it boot there's no problem and it don't tell me that i shutdown incorretly...

O.K., but exactly how do you shutdown? (The Pi will not tell you whether you've shutdown correctly or not).
However, if you're using the Raspbian desktop the "red button" on the desktop will perform a clean shutdown for you (the one on the taskbar just takes you out of the desktop to the "command-line" and from there you have to issue the shutdown command manually, like in my previous post)
Trev.

[francescojordan]

I have the problem with RASPBMC... I can shutdown or reboot with terminal or with the button... i've always the same problem... It doesn't boot immediatly but i have to remove the cable at least 2 times..

[GTR2Fan]

If it's specifically a RaspBMC problem then it may be down to the slight overclock it applies by default. It's unlikely to be the cause, but it's possible.

[francescojordan]

So should i overclock a little bit or downclock a little be?

[GTR2Fan]

Try it on default clock speeds and voltages. To do this from inside RaspBMC...

Choose 'Raspbmc Settings' from the 'PROGRAM' menu item, then go to the 'System Configuration' tab and scroll down until you find the 'System Performance Profile' entry. Choose 'Normal', then click on 'OK' at the bottom of the settings window. It should prompt you to do a restart. Do so, then you should be on standard clocks and voltages when it re-launches.

If this doesn't fix the problem then it's clearly not related to overclocking, but at least you'll have eliminated overclocking as the cause of your problem.

[francescojordan]

i tried as you wrote but the problems is the same. I removed the cable 3 times and then i turned on... I don't know why...

i can understand what's the problem...

[francescojordan]

i noticed that if i remove the cable 3 times, it starts.... it seems that i should remove always 3 times...

[GTR2Fan]

Then it may be either your SD card or 5V power supply that it doesn't like. Are they both of makes and models known to work with the Pi?

[RC51Rider]

I had a problem where the Pi always booted OK from cold running Openelec, but after being on for a while it would take several attempts to get beyond the Rainbow splash screen. Re-boot never seemed to work. Lots of talk about dodgy SD cards and power supply's but I was using good stuff and thought I had a thermal problem.
Fixed by the simple addition of boot_delay=1 in the config file - it now always re-boots even when hot. This parameter ought to be standard as it seems to fix the problem for a lot of people and doesn't add much delay. I was starting to think the Pi was unstable and unreliable but now I have a rock steady device.

I also noted that if using a phone charger, even a quality one with plenty of output, you need a good quality cable and keep it as short as possible. Again, something others have also experienced and mentioned in the trouble shooting guide.