First time poster in need of help: Pi3 not booting

grant2258

here is the thing your missing though the reboot format reboot burn. My toshiba laptop needed this its the only computer ive had that particular problem with

jbryan1984

@grant2258 what is the steps to do that? and @mitu where do you download Rasbian lite? I found something called Rasbian Lite Stretch.

grant2258

i think ive found your problem https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/installation/sdxc_formatting.md you need to get it formatted fat32 then burn the image this page explains it. max i have went is 16 gigs

jbryan1984

@mitu Rasbian Lite didn't work either. @grant2258 I will try that next. After reading it, it sure does make sense. Wish me luck.

grant2258

it will work just do the sd format then the guiformat.exe youll be good. I really do need to get a bigger sd no excuse now they are cheap enough

jbryan1984

lol it still didn't work! I formatted it with SD card formatter, then did the fat 32 format in guiformat, then burned the image using windisk32. Still has the same results. How can I tell if the pi or sd card is faulty? Like I said the pi lights up red and the sd card shows it has files on it.

mitu

@jbryan1984 Besides trying either another PI or another card, take a look at https://elinux.org/R-Pi_Troubleshooting#Red_power_LED_is_blinking. It explains the LED color relation to various boot problems, including if your SD card is read or not by the PI.
I assume you inserted the SD card correctly, so it's not one of those 'is the monitor pluged in ?' moments.

jbryan1984

ok next I am going to try the fat32 format but instead of burning the retropie image, I will try the Rasbian lite image you suggested. If that don't work then I will try your next suggestion. Yes, the sd card is inserted face down. I even went threw some youtube videos to ensure they inserted it the same way. it doesn't go in the other way anyway. I am using my TV as the monitor. I have switched HDMI ports but the others plugged into my xbox, cable and roku all work fine.

grant2258

did you delete the partitions and and FORMAT SIZE ADJUSTMENT" set to "ON in sd formater? You would get some kind of error if the sd failed to write

jbryan1984

@grant2258 I did not. But where are those options at in formatter? I open it and the only things you can do are select card, refresh, click quick or overwrite and then finally format at the bottom.

jbryan1984

then on guiformat, all you can do is pick the drive, the allocation unit size (which i left on the default 32768) and click start. Those are the only 3 options on there. Where is format size adjustment at?

grant2258

format size adjustment is on sd formatter :)

jbryan1984

Also I read somewhere else that sometimes you have to install NOOBS yourself? Is that true?

Where is it at on formatter? All I can do is select my card, click quick or overwrite format, refresh and format at the bottom

grant2258

they must have removed the option from the latest sdformat its on mine. Just use the minitools on it and delete all the partitions and make one big fat32 then use the guiformat

jbryan1984

what do you mean mini tools? i don't have an option for that either. Nothing about fat32 shows up in formatter, only on guiformat. I'm sure this is the problem but I cannot access anything like that on sd card formatter.

jbryan1984

Also I went ahead and uninstalled formatter and made sure I had the latest one. Exact same version though.

grant2258

I see where your getting confused. Let me try explain first we need to remove the partitions and make one big one the option " FORMAT SIZE ADJUSTMENT" set to "ON", in sdformat that that isint there is what does this. It then make the card on partition in the wrong format. Then we format it with guiformat.exe. Since sd magic isint working for that you will need to use minitools at the bottom of that page

mitu

@jbryan1984 said in First time poster in need of help: Pi3 not booting:

Also I read somewhere else that sometimes you have to install NOOBS yourself? Is that true?

No, that's not necessary.

jbryan1984

ok so i decided to take it completely out of the case, and it installed. It is booting now. I am not sure what the problem was? Perhaps the case was preventing the sd card from going in all the way? So I am just going to go ahead ans set up and then put it in the case. Something obviously involving the case was preventing it. I thank you both for all your help.

BobHarris

If I want to get rid of the Linux partition on my sd card, I always use my Sony camera to format the card. (It can be quite tricky in Windows because windows can't see the partition.)