@mitu Thanks, i will have to wait until the next problem because:

journactl -U '12 hours ago'

tells me that the logs starts today... (the event happened yersterday)... Unless you have an another idea.

Thanks: Will update this post as soon as i have an another emergency mode !

What's in the boot partition of the SDcard ? It seems only config.txt is being read and the other files are either missing or corrupted - including the firmware files needed to start the boot. Did you get any errors during the update ?

You can copy over the files from a good known boot partition, but they'll have to match the kernel you have installed. You can save your sdcard as an .img file, then re-install RetroPie and do an update again. Save the boot partition contents, restore your initial image and copy over the saved file from the correct boot partition.

@abj Thank you SO MUCH, I was super lost when it came to this but it worked <3

@vmkamhi 3rd party images aren't supported here. Nobody knows what the configurations are and how to solve so called problematic 3rd party images. You should start from scratch with the official Retropie image and transfer over all the games from your current card to the new fresh image.

@mitu Thanks. Didn’t work though. Updated Skyscraper, recreated the gamelist, installed the Daphne emulator, rebooted: the ES fails to boot, same error code.

OK, here are some final words:

I tried reinstalling Daphne and Ports emulators, which did nothing I wiped the SD card and started over.

After that, I attempted an experiment: with the RPi shiny and new, I changed the resolution with Raspi-Config and rebooted. The EmulationStation never came back. Apparently, in my case, changing the RetroPie resolution is a death sentence. For any reason, you'll never see your ES again.

Case closed.