pi's stopped booting

[saiyen2012]

Hello Everyone. I'm having problems booting my pi's. i have two of them purchased at the same time earlier in the year. CanaKit Raspberry Pi B Complete Starter Kit . i've already read the sticky on the pi not booting. I tried creating a new image with diskimage and i tried the new version of noobs which came out last month. i've tried different cards, power cords , new power cords and new memory cards. i even tried the cards from the swag store. my pi's just show the red light. no light flickers next to the ACT LED. the pi's just gave out working after i while. i read that sometimes you may have to give it a few days unpluged. i've had them unplugged for months and decided to try them before i posted this. any help will be greatly appreciated. thanks in advance.

[DirkS]

my pi's just show the red light. no light flickers next to the ACT LED.

Is the green (ACT) led on or off? If it's on the problem is the related to the SD card.

Gr.
Dirk.

[saiyen2012]

the green light is off

[saiyen2012]

my pi's just show the red light. no light flickers next to the ACT LED.

Is the green (ACT) led on or off? If it's on the problem is the related to the SD card.

Gr.
Dirk.

the green light is off

[DirkS]

So the red is on, the green flickers for a while (?) and then goes off, but no output to a screen?

What kind of screen, if any, is connected? Using HDMI?

Do you have it connected to a LAN through ethernet? Maybe you can confirm that the Pi is visible on the network?
And even maybe log in using SSH (if the Pi is up and running SSH should be active).

Gr.
Dirk.

[saiyen2012]

So the red is on, the green flickers for a while (?) and then goes off, but no output to a screen?

What kind of screen, if any, is connected? Using HDMI?

Do you have it connected to a LAN through ethernet? Maybe you can confirm that the Pi is visible on the network?
And even maybe log in using SSH (if the Pi is up and running SSH should be active).

Gr.
Dirk.

both of them are connected to a individual tv. it shows nothing on the tv connected via hdmi. yes i'm connected to the net via Ethernet. neither one of the pi's are showing on the network. only getting that steady red light on the pi's.

[saiyen2012]

any saving these two items or should i just toss them in the trash?

[drgeoff]

As I understand it, both of these RPis worked when you got them but stopped after a while.

RPis are reasonably reliable if not mistreated so two going faulty on you would be rather unlikely. What exactly were you doing with them?

[B.Goode]

If you want to trash them, send them to me and I will see that they are ethically recycled.

But more seriously I want to suggest a simple diagnostic.

Download the NOOBS-lite installer, and copy the unzipped files to an SD card following the documentation on the official RPF downloads page. It is only a 20Mb download and you only need a 32Mb card because I am not suggesting you actually install an OS this way. Note that once you have prepared the NOOBS installer card it will contain a single partition occupying the whole of the card.

Attempt to boot one of your suspect RPi from this card. Even if you get no display, give it about 2mins. Power off and put the card back in another computer with an SD card reader and examine the content. The label on the card should have changed and the size of the fat (windows-readable) partition will have shrunk.

If these things have happened your RPi is fine. If not, maybe you didn't prepare the SD card correctly. Or it might be that your RPi is dead, in which case the first option above applies!

[drgeoff]

Download the NOOBS-lite installer, and copy the unzipped files to an SD card following the documentation on the official RPF downloads page.

"Following the documentation" includes formatting the whole card to a single FAT or FAT32 partition if it is not already.

[saiyen2012]

As I understand it, both of these RPis worked when you got them but stopped after a while.

RPis are reasonably reliable if not mistreated so two going faulty on you would be rather unlikely. What exactly were you doing with them?

just left them plugged into the tv and they both stopped working one day. not on the same day. the second one stopped working a few months later.

[saiyen2012]

Download the NOOBS-lite installer, and copy the unzipped files to an SD card following the documentation on the official RPF downloads page.

"Following the documentation" includes formatting the whole card to a single FAT or FAT32 partition if it is not already.

thanks for the info i tried it on the 2nd pi which was purchased it worked. i now have raspmc back on the pi as it was before. the 1st pi still wont boot light is still red and the card didnt shrink. any other suggestions?

[saiyen2012]

what's going on everyone? Happy Holidays. i'm back with the same issue, only difference is instead of both one of my pi's stopped booting. only showing the red light again smh. this is becoming very annoying now. i figure my 2nd pi will soon follow. I've tried the usual different cards, ac adapters . noob install, noob lite install, raspmc install. i've even tried taking the card out of the pi tht isn't booting and placing the card in the pi that is able to boot and you know what it worked. so i don't know what the issue is. i've cloned the image of the working pi and placed it on the card of the other pi to try and get it to work, that didn't happen. can someone please tell me what is going ? i would just keep the working card in the non-booting pi but both pi's are set up different as far as the plugins.

[Burngate]

i've even tried taking the card out of the pi tht isn't booting and placing the card in the pi that is able to boot and you know what it worked

Well, that proves that both Pis are okay.
So it's got to be the SD card. Or the power supplies.

From what you've written earlier, downloading NOOBs and writing it to a card fixed it last time?

Maybe your cards are worn out, or maybe not doing a full shutdown before removing power is corrupting them.
Or maybe your power supplies aren't quite good enough (they can degrade over time)
Or have the fingers in the card slot stopped reaching the card - bent fingers or bent card?

[saiyen2012]

i've even tried taking the card out of the pi tht isn't booting and placing the card in the pi that is able to boot and you know what it worked

Well, that proves that both Pis are okay.
So it's got to be the SD card. Or the power supplies.

From what you've written earlier, downloading NOOBs and writing it to a card fixed it last time?

Maybe your cards are worn out, or maybe not doing a full shutdown before removing power is corrupting them.
Or maybe your power supplies aren't quite good enough (they can degrade over time)
Or have the fingers in the card slot stopped reaching the card - bent fingers or bent card?[/quote

i've tried dwn'loading the noobs again. it didn't work. its just crazy i tried new sd cards and power supplies. even new hdmi cables. i ended up making a image off of the pi tht isn't giving a problem and cloned it to the one that is giving a problem. as of right now its working. just not sure for how long. smh. thanks for the reply. sorry i took so long to reply . i didn't have the notify whn a post is replied to checked.