First boot up of retropie comes up with a command line.

[slomo0077]

@BuZz it just doesn't have the white text on top.

[BuZz]

Please post a picture of your screen - a "similar" one from someone else isn't much use.

I suspect the image was not written correctly, or you have a faulty/incompatible sd card. Are any errors displayed ?

[rbaker]

@slomo0077 Are you using Noobs? It's not compatible with 128GB cards as I understand it.

[slomo0077]

https://imgur.com/a/BmoM3
I'm also not using NOOBS but the direct install from the retropie website.

[BuZz]

I would try writing the image again - I can only think the startup script has somehow been lost/broken.

what is the output of cat /etc/profile.d/10-emulationstation.sh

Did you do anything else apart from setup a controller ?

[slomo0077]

It comes up with:

# launch emulationstation (if we are on the correct tty)
[ "'tty'" = "/dev/tty1" ] && emulationstation

And no, I have only connected my keyboard to it and nothing else.

[BuZz]

and what happens if you type emulationstation ?

[slomo0077]

@BuZz It gives me the welcome screen and it tells me to configure a gamepad.

[BuZz]

Something has gone wrong with the autostarting - not sure what, but i would write a fresh image (might be some filesystem corruption or something).

[slomo0077]

@BuZz Ow, thank you. I'll update you if it works. Again, thanks. also thank you @rbaker for trying to help me as well.

[slomo0077]

Yay, it worked after a fresh install and a SD format. Again, thank you for everyone helping in this thread and somehow surviving helping a newbie.

[UrWelcomeGoogler]

Apologies for the bump but this thread is the top result on Google so hopefully this answer will help a lot of people.

If you're having this problem, try running sudo ./RetroPie-Setup/retropie_setup.sh then going to Configuration / tools > splashscreen and set Enable splashscreen on boot to disabled.

[Clyde]

@urwelcomegoogler IMO that only disables the splash screen on boot. I'm curious, how would that fix a broken autostart?

[mitu]

@clyde Well, 2 years later probably it fixed it by using a current version.

[brenthunter2005]

@urwelcomegoogler I just wanted to tell you that this fixed the problem I was having.

I was running Retropie and hadn't updated since late 2017. I turned on Retropie and everything was working fine, but I then updated the script and packages, but upon reboot it just went to the login prompt. I followed your instructions to disable/enable the splashscreen, and now it's autostarting into EmulationStation correctly. Thank you.

[Clyde]

Thanks for the confirmation. I still wonder how that could be technically. (?)

[mitu]

@clyde Do you want to know how to do it automatically (with a command) instead of going through the RP script menus ?

[Clyde]

@mitu No, I still don't understand how disabling the splash screen can fix a broken autostart.

[herb_fargus]

@clyde enabling the splashcreen automatically regenerates the default autostart script. It's part of the setup script you can look what it calls in the code on github

[Clyde]

@herb_fargus Okay, that makes sense. So, every setting that recreates the startup script could be used as a "fix" for some autostart problems – if the splash screen setting isn't the only one that does it, of course.
Thank you for expanding my knowledge of this world. :)