New to raspberry pi and having a rough time getting started

PedroTheLion7

I bought a raspberry pi 3 (with a canna kit) because I wanted to make it easy to play old games and I am having a hell of a time getting it to work.
My first SD card i think i tried to partition it because i also wanted to be able to use the OS and now i can't figure that out so I said screw it and just bought a new card.
The card was already fat32 and i used win32diskmanager to write the UNZIPPED retropie image onto the card. i noticed when i did that it only had 57 MB available (its a 16 gb card) but i tried it anyway and plugged it into the Pi and it booted up. I was able to configure the controller (it froze once or twice and I had to unplug it to restart it which had me worried) and get the bluetooth controller working as well as set up the wifi. I read somewhere to run "sudo apt-get update" and "sudo apt-get upgrade" which after the upgrade ran for awhile i saw a couple failure notices and then the whole thing would not work and wont go back to retro pie.
I decided to just reformat the thing and start over and just write the image and just go with whatever is on there and not do the update and upgrade. when I put the microSD into my computer is says there are 2 drives (one is the 57 mb and the other is about 15gb) and the larger one will not let me format and the smaller one tries to and then it gets a failure.
im sorry for the long post but i've been researching (i am not the best with computers and know nothing about coding) and i can not figure out what to do. any help would be awesome.

herb_fargus

@PedroTheLion7 I'd start here:

https://retropie.org.uk/docs/First-Installation/

Explains why you see 57MB instead of all of it.

I'd also recommend using etcher to write the image, a format shouldn't be necessary as the SD image overwrites the whole thing. But if you do want to format I'd recommend SD formatter

Just take it a step at a time and fill in the details requested on the read me first page linked at the top of the forum so that we can know best how to help

Also where did you get the second SD card? The freezing might be due to a power supply issue (though unlikely if youre using the one from the canakit) or may just a crappy SD card

PedroTheLion7

raspberry pi 3
canna kit 2.5A 5V power supply
retropie-4.2-rpi2_rpi3 .img.gz downloaded directly from the retropie website.
for the "built from" part, what exactly is being asked? i bought a raspberry pi 3 and a canna kit through amazon a few months back i believe.
wireless logitech optical mouse
generic usb wired keyboard ( i can give you model numbers or something if you need specifics but i figured it was not important)
8bitdo Nes30 Pro
the error im getting now is when im using diskmanager32 to write the image back onto the file
"write error 1.0 an error occured when attempting to write data to handle. Error 5 - Access is denied"

when i plug the sd in and turn it on, this is what i get and i can not do anything. keyboard does not work.

http://imgur.com/hT0TfKP

https://howchoo.com/g/n2qyzdk5zdm/build-your-own-raspberry-pi-retro-gaming-rig
not sure why i was using this guide but its the one where it has the upgrade and update thing that i believe messed it up

as for the rest of the questions, as i said, i am not very good with this thing and not entirely sure how to answer them. if you need more info, let me know and i will do my best to give you more. i really appreciate the help, this stuff is driving me nuts.

herb_fargus

@PedroTheLion7 I'd suggest just start from the beginning following the official docs one step at a time and then document your steps so you know exactly where it goes wrong.

TMNTturtlguy

@PedroTheLion7 the first thing you need to do is reformat your sd card. I believe there is good information in the documents That @herb_fargus posted. Make sure to do a full format and not a quick one, and follow the directions on making sure it is fat32. Once you do this you should not have the write errors you are currently getting.

PedroTheLion7

ok, I returned my SD card and i am starting all over. i googled it and now i am wondering if my microSD is not compatible.

it is: lexar 16gb high-performance 300x microSDHC UHS-I (uhs-1?)

says it is a class 10. LSDMI16GBB1NL300A

There is one UHS-I that isnt compatible on this page: http://elinux.org/RPi_SD_cards

but it says it is an SDXC and mine is an SDHC. i cant find the exact product code on the list but there a couple of close ones and i would rather just return this one now than muck this one up too.