[SOLVED] First time booting and not working

[senkun]

@Nalkozz said :

formatted in FAT32 with Minitool Partition Wizard

Probably your sdcard. What brand? Try a reformat and reinstall.

I'd use SD Formatter 4.0
https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/index.html

If it fails again, try another sdcard to be sure.

[Nalkozz]

It's a Toshiba64 Gb Card.

I'll try with SD Formatter, even if it forces the filesystem to be in exFAT with 64Gb cards.
I just saw that the card is partitioned like this: "boot" which is in FAT, "retropie" in EXT4 and a third one without name or even filesystem. Is it normal ?

Thank you for your reply senkun :)

[senkun]

@Nalkozz

Missed that 64Gb part, SD Formatter first then Minitool Partition Wizard after?
Or try fat32/guiformat?
http://www.ridgecrop.demon.co.uk/index.htm?guiformat.htm

[Nalkozz]

I tried just minitool, but why not trying SDFormatter then minitool :)
I'll try guiformat too, in case it's not working.
I'll post after all these tests :)

[senkun]

@Nalkozz said in First time booting and not working:

I tried just minitool, but why not trying SDFormatter then minitool :)
I'll try guiformat too, in case it's not working.
I'll post after all these tests :)

Retropie will not work with exFat. What I normally do for 64Gb sdcards is format with SD Formatter to exFat first, then guiformat to fat32, then install the retropie image on that.

[whsiung]

If you work from a Windows machine, try this tool:
http://winflashtool.sysprogs.com/download/

Before I discover this tool, I had to use the formatter tool when I need to reflash a SD card that is partitioned with Linux file system. With this tool, however, it can detect and let you select the whole SD card instead of just a partition or volume. In this case you can write an image directly to a SD card WITHOUT the need to format it!

[Nalkozz]

@senkun
Same thing again, I tried several things, like formatting with SDFormatter then with Minitool, just with Minitool, just with GuiFormat, with SDFormatter then GUIFormat, and each times everything is like before.

@whsiung
I forgot to mention that I work from a Windows machine, my bad :)
I tried to build the SD Card with Apple Pi Baker before, for the same result, so I don't think errors are from the image file.
I tried WinFLASHTool, for the same issues as before.

I managed to grab some pictures of what happened during the first boot :

I don't know what to do now. I'm considering installing raspbian, then some packets on top of it. Any recommendations?

[BuZz]

Your SD card is corrupt. If this happens every time you write, it could be

a) Your RetroPie image is corrupt / incomplete (re-download ?)
b) Your card is faulty

[BuZz]

just to clarify - people are talking about formatting as fat32 etc - the only reason to format would be for a an application or OS that is daft enough to not allow you to write to a drive without it having a driver letter etc. The actual image contains the partition table and partitions. Any existing partitions data will be gone when the image is written.

The tool @whsiung mentioned sounds a bit more intelligent, and so there should be no need to format the sdcard at all.

[Nalkozz]

@BuZz
Thank you for your answer :)

I don't know if it's the card or the image file. I'll try to re-download the image file and "burn" it with WinFLASHTool. If it doesn't work, I'll try to install a raspbian distro and run the retropie setup script from it. :)

[BuZz]

That won't help if the card is faulty though. Perhaps you can provide me with the md5sum / name / filesize of the image and I will tell you if it's ok. If so we can rule that out.

[Nalkozz]

@BuZz
name: retropie-v3.8.1-rpi2_rpi3.img
size: 2,734,375 Ko
MD5Sum: 335fa2eed9f94a9caaf29ac0293ecfa6
I hope my card isn't faulty! D:

[BuZz]

Checksum is correct. So either it is not being written correctly (somehow), the card is faulty, or the card is just incompatible. First thing would be to try another card.

[Nalkozz]

I'll see if I find another one in my home. If not, I need to buy a new card tomorrow :/
I'll tell you when the test is ran with another card.

[EDIT]: No more microSD card at home, so I tried to install a raspbian and then the setup script. Raspbian worked well util I expand the filesystem and reboot. The error I got is "not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(179,2)".
I did a surface test on my card to see if all the clusters are ok, and they are, so I don't think the card is corrupted or faulty. Maybe an incompatibility with the raspberry Pi 3 ?
I'll buy a new card tomorrow, maybe just a 32 Gb for testing and why not for mt project, even I wanted a 64 Gb capacity :/

[EDIT AGAIN]: Even if I don't expand the root filesystem, I got the same error on reboot. Definitely need to buy another card for tessting purpose AND for my project.

Btw, thank you very much for your help BuZz !

[Nalkozz]

Finally, I have a retropie which is working very well !
As expected, that was the card which was faulty.

For information, that was a Toshiba Exceria 64 Gb UHS-I U1 Class 10. I bought a brand new Emtec Gold+ 64 Gb UHS-I U1 Class 10, and everything is working well with it.

Thanks for your help guys! :)

[BuZz]

If the previous card works ok on the PC and only has problems on the RPI, you should report the problem to https://github.com/raspberrypi/firmware - they may be able to give some options to test with (editing config.txt before putting the card in the RPI), and it might help improve compatibility.

[Nalkozz]

@BuZz
It's a very good idea, I'll make some tests on my pc before, and then report the problem if everything is fine with it. Thank you very much!