No video after update

BuZz

I think you may have installed all drivers. Which is not a good idea. Eg ones for power on/off devices. See what @mitu said above.

cowpuncher

Thanks for the replies.. .but how do I do that with no video?

Is there a way to stop the boot process before it tries to start emulationstation... and then uninstall the drivers from there?

mitu

@cowpuncher Try using SSH to connect to your Pi - https://retropie.org.uk/docs/SSH/.

Mosaad-20

I have the same problem and I noticed that the usb ports stops working after the retropie splahscreen and no signal on my TV so my guess is that it shutsdown after the splashscreen so if there is a way to get my saves it would be great.

cowpuncher

@Mosaad-20

I'm working away from home for the week so my ability to try things is limited, but nothing's worked to fix that corrupt install so far except copying the Home directory (without Roms) from the good card and pasting it into the bad one.

Even that's not perfect, you get some errors for dependencies and stuff when you reboot the card you do that to... and then when i tried to update packages and underlying OS on that card, the problem comes back - No HDMI out.

I'm going to just format the card that's having issues, do a fresh install, transfer a few ROMS over.... then try to update packages and underlying OS again to see if the problem persists. If it does at that point, I'd think there's a problem with the updates. Dunno what else to do, I'm no computer genius.

DarkScar

If you are still having issues with the video disappearing after you update here is why. https://retropie.org.uk/2019/07/composite-out-broken-on-retropie-4-5/
4.5.1 gives you a previous kernel so video will work, however, if you update system packages it'll up you to the broken kernel. Hope this helps.

cowpuncher

Gents, I've solved my problems... I think. Posting here just in case somebody else runs into the same sort of problems. For clarity's sake, I'll chronologically list the issues I ran into, and the steps I took:

1 - Used Etcher to install RetroPie onto a 128 gb uSD card. Loaded it with roms and drivers, worked great but I ran out of space.

2 - Got some 256GB cards. Made an image of the 128GB card using WIn32diskimager and then used Etcher to transfer the image to a 256GB uSD card with the Samsung card adapter that came with it. Loaded it with roms and it worked fine.

3 - Since I'm making Christmas gifts for about 5 ppl, I used Win32diskimager to make another backup image after getting the 256GB card loaded.

4 - Used Etcher to transfer that 256GB image to 4 other cards, using a uSD USB adapter that came with a Canakit Pi3 B+ kit. (This is where things start going haywire)

5 - Tried booting up the cards I transferred that image to using the Canakit uSD USB adapter and Etcher. I kept getting errors on first boot - Some bluetooth dependencies, kernel dependency, and something else. Eventually it WOULD boot though. SO I let them boot on up.

6 - Went into Retropie Setup, chose to update all installed packages AND selected the option presented to update the underlying OS, figuring this would fix those driver and dependency issues. Unfortunately... selecting the "update underlying OS" option gives you that different kernel that breaks your video out, this is when I lost video out. (Btw - If it's known that the new kernel breaks the video output, why does the "update underlying OS" option give you that new kernel that breaks things? Shouldn't that update be pulling the last kernel that works, and not the broken one, to avoid this until those issues are resolved with the new kernel?)

At that point, no video out from any of the cards I did that on, nothing helped after trying several suggestions online including uncommenting some things in the config file to force HDMI out.

So that's the end of how I got into this mess. I downloaded a fresh official image and decided just to start over from scratch.... ended up with the exact same problems and errors on boot (bluetooth and kernel dependencies). Checked the MD5 checksum and it was a good, uncorrupted download.

So then I decided to try another approach: I tried doign a fresh install with the good downloaded official image from another computer. Same issue.

Then, systematically going through the process of elimination - I used the samsung uSD card adapter to do some fresh installs from the official image using Etcher, rather than that uSD USB adapter from Canakit. - SUCCESS... no more errors.... nice clean install! Furthermore, I then used Etcher and the Samsung uSD Card adapter to put my previously saved 256GB backup image with all of my roms onto a couple cards. Again - SUCCESS... no errors and they booted up fine, error free, and worked.

So I've been chasing multiple problems. THe first being a faulty uSD USB adapter from the Canakit kit. (Not bashing them, I've had good luck with everything else I've got from them so one bad little widget is not a black mark on their reputation). The second problem being..... when I tried to fix the bad installs by updating all installed packages AND chose "update underlying OS" it switched me over to that new kernel that eliminates your video output.

Sorry for such a long post, but just in case anybody else someday has similar problems and spends a bunch of time chasing down these problems... maybe it will help them out. Thanks again for all comments.

Side note: Since one of the mods mentioned he thought I chose "install all drivers" - No, I did not do that when I initially had this problem. For the sake of fun and science, I DID try that with a fresh install after the mod posted that, just for grins. He was right, that does wipe out your video as well... it's just not the way I'd wiped out my video updating previously. That was the "update underlying OS" issue with that new kernel.

Thanks again folks !

cowpuncher

My "tv" at my place is a 1080P, 3000 lumen, low latency projector and an 8 foot wide movie screen. My house is small, and having a big motorized screen that rolls up into my ceiling for my TV actually saves space... I live big where i can. :)

I managed to snap a couple photos of what was going on. Here are the errors I was seeing when I was using that faulty uSD USB adapter to install Retropie to my uSD cards. Also for reference... since now I know what was going on and need no further assistance with this issue. Might help somebody later.

cowpuncher

So.... my problem above has reappeared! It apparently was not the USB uSD card reader that I thought was at fault.

I know that I put my 256GB image on the last 2 cards using Win32diskimager. I just tried to boot those two cards (which are going to a couple close friends soon) and got the same errors from the photos above, which is part of what I've been chasing this whole time.... (along with the problem with getting the wrong kernel that kills video if I run updates and choose "yes" when asked if I want to update the underlying OS, kernel, etc).

Will post the results when I'm done with this card using Etcher. I thought my problems had went away because I did 2 cards in a row from my image that booted up fine and worked flawlessly. Maybe I used Etcher to burn those, and the problem has been Win32diskimager all along?

Related question: For the updates, when prompted "Updated underlying kernel, OS, etc" - Why does that update point to the kernel that kills the HDMI video out? Anybody else who updates their system and chooses to updated the underlying kernel/OS is going to run into the same problem. Just wondering why nobody's changed that to point back to the last kernel that doesn't kill the video.

mitu

@cowpuncher said in No video after update:

Related question: For the updates, when prompted "Updated underlying kernel, OS, etc" - Why does that update point to the kernel that kills the HDMI video out? Anybody else who updates their system and chooses to updated the underlying kernel/OS is going to run into the same problem. Just wondering why nobody's changed that to point back to the last kernel that doesn't kill the video.

The OS updates are not distributed by RetroPie, but are coming straight from upstream Raspbian distribution. If you have a video initialisation issue with a certain update, most likely is because of a firmware update.
Try telling the boot loader/firmware what resolution do you need by modifying the config.txt file and tweaking the video resolution parameters - see https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/configuration/hdmi-config.md.

What version of the Raspbian kernel are you using ? Can you run uname -a from a terminal and post the output ?