@ByteThis Yes I have an sd card adapter and a usb adapter I have tried in multiple ports

Does it work if you remove all bootable SDcards/USB disks - i.e. do you get the PI4 diagnostic screen ?
Please add soem info abour your setup, as detailed in https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/3/read-this-first.

@zoner said in Booting to the default Raspbian desktop.:

I may have misspoken.

I don't think so.

Do I understand you correctly that after installing RetroPie on Raspbian my desktop environment will remain the same?

Yes. You can configure how the system boots and what's started in the autostart configuration - by default no configuration is performed, so the current boot configuration is not modified.

OMG, I used the wrong HDMI port - that‘s why the screen was black ;(

Anyhow, thanks a lot for your support and sorry for wasting your time!

@HavronL

I hate that you had this happen to you, but if you can prove the capacity is bogus with a tool like F3 as mitu suggested you should be able to get a refund.

There is a legitimate NAND maker named Silicon Power that focuses on budget priced drives and cards: I'm currently using a few of their SD card models (A 128GB, 256GB and 512GB) along with half a dozen NVME and SATA drives for some PCs, and while they're not the most blazingly fast drives in their respective classes they are more than fast enough for a Raspberry Pi and have held up well so far (One is two years old now). Most importantly, they are really what they state they are in terms of capacity.

It looks like they have several 1TB SD card models now, the slowest/cheapest one currently going for around $55 (USD), which isn't really all that much more than the Alisensen "1TB" drives I'm seeing.

Realistically, around $32 USD (Currently) will get you a super nice 512GB micro SD card like a Samsung Evo or Sandisk Extreme.

@JackTaylor said in Retropie saving images in /boot:

However, I have found there is another roms folder on the boot directory, where the images are being sent to when the pi boots.

Not sure why that happens, but it's not from RetroPie. EmulationStation, which is the only RetroPie program started at boot that stays resident, doesn't move images around.

@mitu I found out I had themes and videos saved there, thanks for the help!

@mitu Yeah that would probably be the best idea for this problem.

Thanks for the help though, I might just do a clean install since it's a time sensitive project

My test Ubuntu 22.04 system was also upgrade. Since 22.04 sets Wayland as default display server, you may be missing some libraries needed for CSD. Try installing the libdecor-0-plugin-1-cairo package and see if - when using Wayland - you get the same error when starting a SDL2 application (i.e. EmulationStation or gnome-terminal).

@exitkioskmode you may have messed up things that may be too difficult to fix. That fix is from 2016, and may cause bigger issues on a newer os. Might be easier to start over with a fresh install.

This issue that appears during boot is normal and harmless, nothing to worry.

@Chadmon10 said in Retropie won't boot into a rom, tries, then goes to command line.:

/opt/retropie/supplementary/runcommand/runcommand.sh 0 _SYS_ megadrive "/RetroPie/roms/megadrive/Sonic The Hedgehog 2 (World).md"

You forgot the ~ in ~/RetroPie/roms/megadrive/Sonic The Hedgehog 2 (World).md.

@mitu I ended up loading version 4.8 on an sd card and switching my pi’s boot selector to usb default. When PINN adds 4.8 to their lineup I can add it to a project space. Thank you for the help.

@metalgamerfil said in Blank dark screen after boot:

if I plug a keyboard and press ALT+Tab and return to the emulationstation it shows the normal picture.

Are you using the desktop to start EmulationStation ? This is not supported on a Raspberry Pi, EmulationStation (and the emulators it starts) should run outside of the Desktop env.

@sleve_mcdichael

Thanks ! Will give it a try and post result after a couple of tests...

@TimD123 When you write an image it will delete the previous image every time. This temporary fix is outdated. You can now use the retropie 4.8 image.

You can make an older buster image work if you replace some boot files (I don't know what they are) or put it in an older pi4 and update it that way.

@soulfunkdjx

Nice !

Good luck with building it up.