B+ Act LED on always, no longers boots

[AKASteve]

I received my Pi the other day and it worked fine out of the box. Went through noobs, got the OS running, was watching some shows through the Raspbian XBMC. Mid way through a show it shut off(probably from my doing) and from that point things started going weird so I gave up and went to bed for the night. I left it off over night and came back to it this morning to find that it no longer thought many commands existed(commands such as sudo) and I figured that the SD card got corrupted when it lost power the other night.

I've used the SDFormatter on the card, used the Win32 Disk Imager with the raspbian image and it booted once. Got through raspi-config and then I rebooted it, or at least I attempted to since it would no longer boot. Only thing that happened is the LEDs turned on.

I've tried two different SD cards, one 8 GB and one 16 GB, I have taken both through the formatter with FULL(OverWrite) and FORMAT SIZE ADJUSTMENT ON and I have attempted with/without a volume label. I've tried copying NOOBs and imaging with Raspbian but it seems that no matter what I try the B+ refused to boot.

As far as I can tell I have gone over the checklist.

[DougieLawson]

Two checklists to check:

http://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewt ... 91&t=83372
http://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewt ... 28&t=58151

[AKASteve]

As far as I can tell I have checked those, hence the longish post.

[DougieLawson]

Grab a brand new microSD card (or try formatting it in an adapter in your camera).
Unzip the NOOBS file directly to the card, don't unzip it to a folder first. You should get

Code: Select all

.
├── bootcode.bin
├── BUILD-DATA
├── defaults
│   └── slides
│       └── A.png
├── INSTRUCTIONS-README.txt
├── os
│   ├── Data_Partition
│   │   ├── Data_Partition.png
│   │   ├── data.tar.xz
│   │   ├── os.json
│   │   └── partitions.json
│   └── Raspbian
│       ├── boot.tar.xz
│       ├── flavours.json
│       ├── os.json
│       ├── partition_setup.sh
│       ├── partitions.json
│       ├── Raspbian_-_Boot_to_Scratch.png
│       ├── Raspbian.png
│       ├── release_notes.txt
│       ├── root.tar.xz
│       └── slides_vga
│           ├── A.png
│           ├── B.png
│           ├── C.png
│           ├── D.png
│           ├── E.png
│           ├── F.png
│           └── G.png
├── recovery.cmdline
├── recovery.elf
├── RECOVERY_FILES_DO_NOT_EDIT
├── recovery.img
├── recovery.rfs
└── riscos-boot.bin

That's 6 directories with a total of 30 files in the root of the SDCard

Do you get any output (the rainbow screen) when you power up your RaspberryPi?

[AKASteve]

Nothing, no output to the screen. Act LED is solid green no matter what I do it seems.


Most recently I have used a linux live boot CD and followed this guide in an attempt to get it to boot: http://qdosmsq.dunbar-it.co.uk/blog/201 ... pberry-pi/

Still constant green LED and nothing on screen.

[Cubytus]

I don't know if this will come handy, but I have seen these issues from
1- corrupted SD cards
2- new cards written with an incorrect block size. I don't know how that translates to Windows, but AFAIK only bs=4M works.

[mahjongg]

Solid on ATC LED (on a B+) simply means the PI cannot read the boot files it need, on a B it was solid off.
All causes and cures are described in the boot sticky, most likely in this situation is that the card has given the ghost, and you need a new one.

[AKASteve]

Solid on ATC LED (on a B+) simply means the PI cannot read the boot files it need, on a B it was solid off.
All causes and cures are described in the boot sticky, most likely in this situation is that the card has given the ghost, and you need a new one.

At one point I was able to get it to boot once more but then accidentally cancelled the setup, forgot that my keyboard was plugged into it and not my desktop, so after that it failed to boot, and at another point I got it to boot but then it failed at doing something with the FAT partitions and then it failed to boot once again after that. Is there anyway, other than the SDFormatter which doesn't seem to do what it claims, to ensure the card is wiped and ready to go or where does the problem lie?

If I order another boot ready card is there anyway for me to duplicate it to a second SD card?

[DougieLawson]

If I order another boot ready card is there anyway for me to duplicate it to a second SD card?

On Windows you can clone cards with Win32DiskImager.
On a Raspberry Pi (with a USB SDCard reader) you can clone cards with the dd command.

Beware that not all 8GB cards are the same size.

[AKASteve]

If I order another boot ready card is there anyway for me to duplicate it to a second SD card?

On Windows you can clone cards with Win32DiskImager.
On a Raspberry Pi (with a USB SDCard reader) you can clone cards with the dd command.

Beware that not all 8GB cards are the same size.

I thought I saw an option for that, do I simply pop in the card and then select a location for the image file and hit read? I assume it generates an ~8 GB file? Then pop in the other SD card and select write, hopefully it will be big enough?

[DougieLawson]

With Win32DiskImager you create an *.IMG file from the SDCard, swap over and copy the *.IMG file back to the new card.

With dd it's a one step operation
sudo dd if=/dev/mmcblk0 of=/dev/sda bs=30M &

Neither way of doing it is going to be quick. It's set it going get a coffee, a tea, a cake, a beer, another coffee and it might be done.

[AKASteve]

Alright, now will it work if instead of an 8GB second SD card I used a 16 GB one, or will all that extra space lead to similar formatting problems?

[DougieLawson]

You can clone an 8GB card to a 16GB card. You then have to jump through some hoops to expand the 8GB filesystem to use the whole of the larger card.

In general it's easier to stick with the same basic size and just check that you're not trying to squeeze 7.9GB on to a 7.8GB card.

[AKASteve]

Awesome, appreciate the advice. Hopefully my new boot ready card will arrive soon, I can clone it, and then I can lock it in a drawer to be safe forever more.

[AKASteve]

Alright, so I got a new PI and a new boot ready SD card today, cloned the SD card and tested it in both PI's. Both SD cards work in the new PI, but neither one works in the original PI. So I guess somehow in the first 24 hours of owning it I managed to damage it so that it doesn't want to read SD cards anymore.

[mahjongg]

you should return it as it should still be under guarantee.

[AKASteve]

I'll have to look into that. Ordered it through Amazon so I'll have to dig to see how to do a refund through them.