@meleu you are the best! I will test when I return from my trip!

@SonPluck The images won't be re-downloaded unless you delete them. There is an option to overwrite or append to the gamelist. Append will preserve the existing data including the last played and number of times played and only add in new games.

I think it's worth to mention it was implemented. Those who like to update frequently may have noticed. The PR 1980 was merged, and now the "a button" means "A button".

Thanks to all the testers here!

@BuZz I already have my two systems set up and working after the manual copying. I'm actually out of extra Pis and USB drives at the moment. If it's broken it's not bad enough that I wasn't able to fix it so it didn't really bother me.

@edmaul69 Hey, great! Thanks for your help. It worked

There is Kodi 17.1 final/stable available at PiPplware's unstable repo:
https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/6308/testing-kodi-17-0-stable-final-available-for-retropie

It is in the unstable because it needs newer firmware/kernel (which you can get with rpi-update), at least to play h265 videos. This newer firmware/kernel wasn't tested, by me very much in emulators, so if you do it, you have been warned. Newer firmware/kernel should come very soon to Raspbian and RetroPie.
Anyway, the 17.1 RC2 available in RetroPie is pretty much 17.1 stable/final like BuZz said, if the update warning appears just choose "no" and it won't appear again.

@meleu Perfect, many thanks for this! Exactly what I was looking for. I always take routine backups.

Did you dual-boot or did you install the kodi package?

Did you disable the retropie splashscreen ? Please post the contents of your /boot/cmdline.txt

Note you can speed up boot by disabling "wait for network" in raspi-config.

Also - 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

Please provide as much information as possible.

@SIB217 https://retropie.org.uk/download/

@SKIIERFOX86 I don't understand your question. Try re-imaging the SD card. That usually sorts a lot of issues out.

@BuZz

OSMC support is included

My mistake. I always thought RetrOSMC was installed by some non-traditional means.

They are didn't images that you need to burn till the SD card

@Rabih My guess is you are running Raspbian Wheezy and not Jessie, the latest version of the OS. Wheezy is no longer supported. Update or preferably reinstall from fresh.

ok.. yes the /Retropie/roms directories is a "clone" of the USB stick... if ther are file links then I understand its only a pointer to the USB stick... was just strange that it didn't display links.

worse case as digi321 said, i'll just use another directory name.

thanks for the help.
Johnny

It might not be new or the answer for the whole life existence thingy, but it may help someone ;)