Help, my Retropie won’t boot anymore!!! What do I do?

Redghost357

So I tried going into Retropie setup and Raspberry Pi config days ago and every time I clicked them the screen went black(loading screen), would say something like “/no OS found/unsupported OS” then redirected me back to the main menu. Weird. I was hoping to download Wolfenstein 3D but now I can’t access the optional packages...

Today every time I attempt to boot it up it doesn’t work!!!

I get this weird message every time I boot my Pi! Hope this is a easy fix cause I have 1000s of valuable roms and saves I don’t wanna lose.

Cant figure out how to upload pictures of my pictures of the error message so I’ll just type it below:

1 (1 Of 2) A starting job is running for dev-serial.device...

You are in emergenyc mode. After logging in, type “journalctl -xb” to view system logs, “systemctl reboot” to reboot, “systemctl default” or ^D to try again to boot into default mode.

Cannot open access to console, the root Account is locked.
See sulogin(8) man page for more details.

Press Enter to continue.

herb_fargus

Might be best to start from scratch. 4.4 is the latest version based on raspbian stretch

Redghost357

For some reason akismet.com has just flagged my post as supposedly “spam”. Indeed a absurd act.

I’m trying to add the tags “root account locked” “emergency mode” in my final edits to this post. Thank you.

Redghost357

Anyhoo, what other options do I have to fix my Retropie. I hope this is a possible fix.

I have lots of valuable roms I don’t want to lose.

mitu

@redghost357 If you want to read the SD cards's contents and get the ROMs from it you'll need a Linux system - do you have one installed on a PC ? If not, you might consider getting a live Ubuntu install - write it on an USB drive - and use it to be able to read the SD card.
You might be stumbling on a SD card corruption/error, which might not be 'fixable' .

Redghost357

@mitu I’m not familiar with Linux. I only have Windows 7. I purchased this SD card with Retropie preinstalled and I’ve never setup WiFi or any other settings. Perhaps I could pop in the SD to my Windows and fix it?

I’m not sure if it’s corrupted, I can’t think of any good reason why it stopped working this morning. I suppose their are more testimonies than mine out there on Retropie images randomly crashing? Or is it something I possibly did that corrupted it?

Redghost357

@mitu If I get Ubuntu on my Windows 7 32 bit what exactly do I need to do to recover my content and roms?

Can’t I do a image backup and reload my SD and everything will work again?

mitu

Sorry, we can't offer support for 3rd party images, I think this is clearly stated in the https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/3/read-this-first page.
There is no 'randomly crashing' - you either configure something that's unsupported, resulting in an un-bootable system - or there's a hardware problem.

Redghost357

@mitu What 3rd party image are you referring too? I’m having issues strictly with my bootscreen of my Retropie. Clarify.

mitu

@redghost357

I purchased this SD card with Retropie preinstalled ...

It's not legal to sell RetroPie - see https://retropie.org.uk/about/legal/. If you used another image except the one on https://retropie.org.uk/download, it's a 3rd party image.

Redghost357

@mitu It’s clearly the same official image from the official link

Redghost357

Anyways... how exactly can I retrieve the content and roms from this sd Card, I don’t want to lose anything.

Would like detailed steps.

mitu

@redghost357 Did it came with ROMs on it ? Then it's not the same image.

Redghost357

@mitu I bought ONLY an sd Card from the store “RaspberryPiXtreme” they don’t sell Retropie or roms which INDEED is illegal.

It was installed legally(free) before the sd was shipped. I’m a newb so I had them download everything for me, so it’s absurd to think of legal issues in this context

mitu

@redghost357 Really ? Looking at their website, they sell quite a handful of pre-loaded images. They're literally the definition of scammers which profit from selling RetroPie.

Redghost357

I do not see how a preloaded sd isn’t official. It was the Retropie version 4.3 image.

Moving along, just how exactly do I retrieve the content and roms since you so claim it’s possible (since supposedly I’m the only guy on the forums with a corrupted Retropie image as I have had no success in searching for answers in any other posts)

mitu

@redghost357 said in Help, my Retropie won’t boot anymore!!! What do I do?:

I do not see how a preloaded sd isn’t official. It was the Retropie version 4.3 image.

As I said, we don't offer support for 3rd party images, especially ones sold with RetroPie.

GoldManSex778

You might try booting your pi with a usb drive, then pulling off the roms via WiFi. Very tricky though, probably more work than learning Linux to get at them.

Since you are in for a ton of work either way, you might as well join a rom community and learn to get and manage rom sets. The rims are the easiest thing to get and building the thing is the real fun of it all, which is why i’ll never understand why people buy those “pre-loaded” systems; it’s like buying a model airplane and having someone else build it

mediamogul

@redghost357 said in Help, my Retropie won’t boot anymore!!! What do I do?:

I suppose their are more testimonies than mine out there on Retropie images randomly crashing?

More often than not, those mysterious types of issues tend to come from users such as yourself who bought a pre-configured setup. Buyers seem to assume that since the sellers have gone through the trouble of starting a business, albeit an illegal one, they must know what they're doing. However, in most situations, these con artists either don't know much about setup, or simply don't care if it breaks down after purchase. Compounding the problem is that since the buyers didn't set anything up themselves, they have no idea where the problems might be in order to fix things themselves or even make an informed report here. The good news is that you now own everything you need to create a RetroPie system from scratch. As far as the ROMs are concerned, I wouldn't trust that they were sourced correctly anyway.

rbaker

@redghost357 said in Help, my Retropie won’t boot anymore!!! What do I do?:

I do not see how a preloaded sd isn’t official. It was the Retropie version 4.3 image.

How do you know the configurations of this "4.3" image. The latest is v4.4 – released April 14, 2018 and is available for free download. Other than all the legal reasons stated already, nobody can possibly know how the scammer has set up the configuration files and therefore all support is futile with question following response following another question about "mine is not like that" etc. etc. Unless you start from a known "official verified image" people are guessing and nobody is prepared to waste time on that.