I got it all working and wrote up notes on what I had to do in this post.

@rtarroyo said in Remove Initial Boot Screen:

using the terminal remotely is lightyears better, I feel stupid for not knowing that was an option.

Then please spread the word, as many people (especially Windows users) think about the terminal as backward and cumbersome, while in fact it's very powerful and no rocket science with a little willingness to learn.

I compare it sometimes to a Swiss Army knife next to the everyday knife and fork (the graphical desktop), or a look under a car's hood in addition to its dashboard. 😉

Besides remote administration, it's perfect for doing the same thing over and over, e.g. processing a big number of files (example, example).

To become even more efficient with the terminal, I can highly recommend to check out its keyboard shortcuts, especially those for Tab Completion and the Command History.

End of the noncommercial break. 🤓

Just for the record, this command removes write permissions from the file:

sudo chmod -w /boot/config.txt

Restore them only for the owner (the default) with u+w instead of -w.

But note that any script that runs with admin rights can change the file nonetheless.

edit: Ah, I noticed the logical flaw in this. The file is owned by the admin user root and it is already only editable by the owner. So removing w wouldn't make any difference in this case. 😇

What's the content of the file you deleted (es_input.cfg) ?

@bilu just to say thanks. To date, I've been underwhelmed by the PI4 performance since I swapped from my pi3.

I've been struggling with all kinds of screen tearing issues, despite overclocking to 2.1ghz.

I borrowed this configuration and everything is now running buttery smooth.

Thanks for sharing.

Just for future reference, I was messing around with this problem again and it just worked now........

So to recap, if you want to change between X and EmulationStation depending on what output is connected, change /opt/retropie/configs/all/autostart.sh to something like the code below and it should work.

#if HDMI connected, go to desktop
video="$(tvservice -s)"

if [[ $video =~ "HDMI" ]];
then
startx
else
emulationstation #auto
fi

I believe my Pi had some inconsistency in which user had ownership over the display, I manually set up ES and Rapibian to start on cmd, than in raspconfig set it to start X and lastly changed it back to ES to start by default. (yes, sounds complicated, but it was an accident really)

After that, the code snippet should work as intended.

If you're using berryboot, that has its own config.txt

Berryboot isn't supported btw, and we don't provide berryboot images for the rpi4. I wasn't sure if you meant above you installed the standard image to test after.

Great, thank you very much @BuZz !!

@ahndrooan You can edit the topic title - there's no 'solved' checkbox :).

I was actually wrong it started up again but when i connected a power supply to my hdmi av connector it stopped and has been good since i think it is a power issue and using overscan must draw less power so thats why it seemed better

@Clyde said in External Boot in my image:

@MPlay Thank you for sharing your solution.

you are welcome, my next step is set retropie to stream my game play (if possible in net play mode) in my youtube channel.

thank you and other friends for support.

@microb41 According to the Raspberrypi website, there is a pixel clock limit, ie effectively a limit to the number of pixels that can be controlled, of 1920x1200@60 Hz, so as your resolution exceeds that, it shouldn't work

You can set higher resolutions, in config.txt, but they won't work.

https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/configuration/config-txt/video.md

Further down on the same page, it shows you how to create a custom screen resolution, so it would be worth you looking at that to get the aspect ratio you want.

@fuzzybat23 berryboot works differently. You can mount the partition with the globally shared config.txt though - https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/6972/location-of-berryboots-config-txt

@mitu

I've also solved the screen saver problem and added a script to trigger and Enter Key press, 8 seconds triggers this about 2 seconds after loading..

I've created a script to emulate the key press.. updated the post below:

https://retropie.org.uk/forum/post/129603

After doing what @Brigane suggested, I believe you can uninstall Attract Mode from the RetroPie-Setup.

Thanks very much

@Krisu not a good first response to get help here.

How about:

Because I asked you to. It may not be the same issue - cause may be different. Lots has changed in 2 years. The forum wouldn't work if everyone used one topic per type of issue.

Yes, give it a go from a version with the standard build and add AM from experimental. I'm sure Buzz integrated it better than I would have done, plus I could do the same to help debug if it still doesnt work.

@jukeltruck
Glad you where able to figure this one out. I double checked my system and I already had libvlc5 installed. For others reading this, this is what you type in to install it:
sudo apt-get install libvlc5