@mitu ok thankyou

Well, 3 days later, no more weird out of frame picture! I think I can safely say that it solved it. Thanks again @mitu !

Right finally got this working :)

To confirm, 3rd party images at the moe dont seem to be supported, but just wanted to highlight the official ''image'' download of 4.6 (found under pi4, https://retropie.org.uk/download/) also does not work and you will get a boot error occur

You can however get RP 4.6 to work! From official Raspberry Pi page, download the imager app: https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/

Using the app, there is an option to choose the op system you want to install, so retropie for us and then let it do its thing. It will format disk/write image in one go. Once you put the SDcard in Pi, it will boot, no errors whatsover straight into Retropie!

Note: If you use windows 10, there is chance the imager will fail to write, its a windows setting thats the issue and this is the fix: https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=267364&sid=f6d32a82c84ebcfacdc2b3f1536cc4c1&start=25#p1664662

With Pi up and running! just needed to load roms which are on my external ssd. (indeed, the following is correct proc: https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Running-ROMs-from-a-USB-drive/). The SSD was again working painfully slow and needed the fix mentioned (https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=245931) to sort that out.

Finally got RP working! in for a long scrape now for artwork before i can get onto some tweaking :)

I don't know if maybe the retropie images are thought to be played on 16:9 monitors?

RetroPie can use all sorts of resolutions, it's not a problem here. It was probably - badly - configured to use an incorrect aspect ratio, ask your friend's friend. We can't help you here, since we don't know what and how it's configured.

@mitu ok thanks I will try running it direct from bootup

thank you.

I did some dirty work and managed to prepare a small uSD image so i can boot to USB and load a 128 GB image.
thank.

@mitu I will. I've been into Retropie for a couple of years now so have a reasonable handle on the themes available, the challenge is always finding one which hits the spot but gives you what you want. Given it's a build in an actual PS1 case, the Playstation theme was the obvious, choice but it didn't really tick all the boxes. After a lot of trial and error, Showcase seemed the next best alternative. I'll keep on looking.

I've been meaning to build this for about a year now, just sod's law when I get round to it, it looks like modding the PS Classic is now the way to go. :)

Many thanks for your advice and assistance, greatly appreciated.

Regards
Andrew

Pro tip: use etcher. Doesn't require extraction

cool thanks @quicksilver, I figured as much. I rarely add games so this kinda threw me off esp will all the permissions problems I created for myself moving from 4.3 to 4.4.

@rlmariz See https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/3/read-this-first - we don't support 3rd party images. Ask the image creator about it or install the RetroPie provided image from retropie.org.uk/download.

If you are still using the EasyHax setup try the following.

Make sure you are using the updated version that runs from the RetroPie menu

Format the drive to NTFS and create a “roms” folder at the root of the drive. (do not transfer ROMs yet)

Run the Expand to External Drive (Disable) to remove any previous setups.

Plug External Hard drive to Raspbery Pie

Run the Expand to External Drive (Enable) - Pi will shutdown.

Plug External Hard Drive into your PC. There should now be a full selection of folders in your “roms” directory. Place your roms into the desired system and it should be good to go.

No I'm still using a normal pi3 although I am considering getting the 3b+. Im starting to believe that it's the actual image at fault as wrote a new official image to this card and other cards I have without issues.
The strange thing is that win32 said it was read and completed fine. But now my backed up image seems to be 'broken' and unbootable when written to cards.
Any ideas?

So EasyHax pointed out to me that any gamelist.xml file in the roms directory will override the one in the .emulationstation/gamelists/ directories. Sure enough I found a 0 byte gamelist.xml file in the snes roms directory. It HAD to be something this simple...

@chicuelo i see thank you very much ill see if i cant do that on Monday anything else I can do in the mean time and do you mind if i ask you nice guys a few more questions because there are some other things I'm working on for my end of the project mainly two things: 1. I wish to use a separate background image for the retro-pie options but when I add a background image tag extra= "true" included to the theme.xml in the retro-pie sub folder it seems to break it (it being the entire theme) and I can't seem to figure out the issue 2. I've heard a lot of conflicting documentation about the subject of the carousel being theme able everything from it only being theme-able specifically on retropie to it requiring a plugin to it being hard coded and not being theme able at all I merely wish to remove the grey carousel bar and include the logo svg any recent relevant documentation on this would be appreciated thanks a lot everyone!

https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/4843/how-to-shrink-a-retropie-image

@cash513 The image is to stretched to recognize the program that gives you this error. However, it seems the file is an .img file and this is the file that you can use with Win32DiskImager.
Start Win32DiskImager, choose your sd card partition and then browse to the folder where this file is stored and choose this file to be written to the sd card.

@edmaul69 I´m pretty sure, I bought it at a large store, and when I record the retropie official image on it it works like a charm. Guess I´ll manually do the work then :) thank you for your reply my friend, wish you a nice week :)

@TMNTturtlguy I will when this stops being funny

0_1499482005903_IMG_20170704_105024.jpg

@itsnitro you have the linux partition and the boot partition. It is always like this when you install retropie.

@fnkngrv Hey man. Here's a few samples of my gamelist.xml folders. Before you look at them, you need to keep in mind that you need to treat each sub folder exactly as you would treat each rom in the sub folder, meaning that you need to have a separate <folder> entry for each one (along with any paths to the media you want displayed while highlighting it.

Then, to display all of the media for the roms in the sub-folders, you need to have the rom <path> in the <game> show the location inside the sub-folder, not the main folder, and the <image> show the location of the media for that game. (Ask me specifically if you have any questions about it after checking out some examples.

NOTE: I actually have 6 folders in the /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/nes/ folder. A few of these have roms directly in them, but most of them just have sub-folders before you get to any roms.

NOTE 2: You can have the "media" you want displayed for the folders and roms anywhere you want them as long as they're being pointed to. My folders media is located here: /home/pi/RetroPie/Media/nes/Artwork/Folders/

MAIN "LICENSED GAMES" FOLDER:

/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/nes/(1) Licensed/

<folder> <name>(1) Official Nintendo Entertainment System Games</name> <path>/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/nes/(1) Licensed</path> <image>/home/pi/RetroPie/Media/nes/Artwork/Folders/(1) Licensed.png</image> <video/> <marquee/> <desc> [REMOVED - I just removed the text here to keep it simple]</desc> <releasedate>19850101T000000</releasedate> <developer>Nintendo</developer> <publisher>Nintendo</publisher> <genre/> <players/> </folder>

US LICENSED GAMES (SUB-FOLDER):

/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/nes/(1) Licensed/(1_1) US Licensed/

<folder> <name>(1) US: Licensed NES Games</name> <path>/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/nes/(1) Licensed/(1_1) US Licensed</path> <image>/home/pi/RetroPie/Media/nes/Artwork/Folders/(1_1) US Licensed.png</image> <video/> <marquee/> <desc>[REMOVED - I just removed the text here to keep it simple]</desc> <releasedate>19850101T000000</releasedate> <developer>Nintendo</developer> <publisher>Nintendo</publisher> <genre/> <players/> </folder>

Now, here's an example of a US Licensed game in the sub folder

<game> <name>1942</name> <path>/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/nes/(1) Licensed/(1_1) US Licensed/1942.zip</path> <image>/home/pi/RetroPie/Media/nes/Artwork/Box Front/1942.jpg</image> <video/> <marquee/> <desc> 1942... you and daring fighter pilot "Super Ace" are engaged in realistic, thrilling and challenging high-flying battles with the enemy. Over land, on the sea and in the air, your own skill and dexterity... combined with Super Ace's flying mastery, duel enemy pilots in fighter and bomber craft. 1942... it's airplanes taking off and landing on ocean-going aircraft carriers... disrupting enemy formations ready to attack... intercepting enemy air-warriors you must defeat by "blasting 'em out of the sky." Will it be victory? Or defeat? It's in your skillful hands! https://www.gamefaqs.com/nes/587058-1942</desc> <releasedate>19860101T000000</releasedate> <developer>Capcom Co., Ltd.</developer> <publisher>Capcom U.S.A., Inc.</publisher> <genre>Shoot 'em Up / Vertical</genre> <players>2</players> <region>USA</region> <platform>nes</platform> <media>Cartridge</media> <controller>NES Gamepad</controller> <gametype>Licensed</gametype> <xtrasname>1942</xtrasname> <originaltitle/> <alternatetitle/> <hackedby/> <translatedby/> <version/> <cart>/home/pi/RetroPie/Media/nes/Artwork/Cart/1942.jpg</cart> <title>/home/pi/RetroPie/Media/nes/Artwork/Titles/1942.jpg</title> <action>/home/pi/RetroPie/Media/nes/Artwork/Action/1942.jpg</action> <threedbox>/home/pi/RetroPie/Media/nes/Artwork/3D Boxart/1942.png</threedbox> <gamefaq/> <manual/> <vgmap/> <license/> <programmer/> <musician/> </game>

Note that in the above example there are a LOT of tags that you won't be using or needing in your XML. These are mostly tags for data and media that are not supported by RetroPie/EmulationStation currently.

The important things to look at are the <name>, <path> and <image> tags. You can also add videos to display for folders and roms if you want by making sure the <video> tag shows where the proper video is located.

Hope that clears some stuff up for you. Feel free to ask any questions. I figured I'd just end the post now instead of writing a total novel, since I'm not exactly sure what your issue is without more information.