@dankcushions oh bugger ! what 32gb card would you recommend and from which seller ?

This is indeed part of a safe shutdown circuit.
This pin needs to be HIGH while the raspberry pi is on and not change its state before shutdown process completes, because it drives the mosfet that provides power to the pi.
Thank you, I will try your script although I don't understand it.

@KobeT Looks like a damaged SD card or improper power source - see https://elinux.org/R-Pi_Troubleshooting#Coloured_splash_screen for reasons why this might happen and maybe try the config.txt modification suggested on the page.

@ddoherty958 Is this a question or an observation ?

@killias2 Looks like a failing SD card or corrupted filesystem. Without a Linux installation to access the SD card and try a filesystem repair, re-install might be the only option.

@mitu
I was using 9zip to unzip the image and it wasn't unzipping the entire image file for some reason. Decided to, as an experiment, use winrar instead and I noticed the image file was a different size - I'd not even thought to check this.

@Seedname101 please follow the guidelines agreed when signing up. This thread is from 2017. Please create a new topic.

Please do not post a support request without first reading and following the advice in https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/3/read-this-first

@Freakadude said in Strange cloned RetroPie Image issue!:

This is a self backup and restore issue/question.

Sorry for assuming you were using a 3rd party image. I hope our fellows posts above helped you.

Cheers!

Perhaps it is a bad image. I did use the same image on each of the SD cards ... I'll try downloading again tomorrow, and see how that goes. I did unplug the extra hardware and still had the same errors, so my guess is it's not hardware related.

@buckoo Please do not post a support request without first reading and following the advice in https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/3/read-this-first (as you agreed when registering).

Bad/fake sdcard probably.

@RetroResolution yeh. Always best to get direct from known good companies