A Stuck theme, frozen, can't change themes or revert back

rylock

Hi guys, I'm pretty new to all this.

I Have retropie installed, bunch of games and platforms, having a great time. Wanted to change the theme, i was choose a theme, and restarting emulationstation, and it would show the new theme.
After i switched to this TronkyFran theme, it's all messed up, it freezes and i can't do a thing on the keyboard or gamepad. Because of my lack of knowledge with command line stuff, I have no idea.

I'd like to just revert back to the Pixel theme I was using, it was really nice.
I'm just totally stuck. I have no options, i don't know how to reset settings, or boot to command line stuff, or anything. I now have a theme i can't change, and it freezes immediately.

From what i found online, this theme works in 720p, not 1080p. so that's probably the issue, but it doesn't matter, i just wnat ot change my theme back to what worked.
Does anyone have any ideas? or what i can do. I have so many roms on here, i dread the idea of formatting the sd card and redoing all this. it seems like there should be a way.

rylock

here is a quick video i made of it happening.

edmaul69

When you see the emulationstation loading screen just keep pressing f4. It will kick you to the command prompt. Or you can ftp into it and manually change the /opt/retropie/configs/all/emulationstation/es_settings.cfg theme set. "carbon" (no caps) is default and would get you back to working. The theme you chose doesnt work on pi if you use several game systems. It is designed more for pc's and stuff.

If you have to do it from command line you can type:
sudo nano /opt/retropie/configs/all/emulationstation/es_settings.cfg scroll down to theme set change it then press "ctrl + x" then "y" then "enter" then reboot after it saves.

rylock

thanks edmaul69 - I will try this.
F4 repeatedly pressed during boot does not seem to bring up any options or command prompt.
I may have to try ftp i think i can manage that. I will come back and update when I complete this.
I appreciate your reply, and instructions.

edmaul69

@rylock anytime. The f4 only works when the emulationstation loading screen is on the screen. Doesnt work anytime before that.

rylock

@edmaul69 Thanks my friend, that works well. I appreciate it.
For anyone else, The pressing f4 over and over but at the correct place brought me to the command line.
Then i used the command you suggested exactly as is. and it worked fine. Rebooted and it was back to Carbon after I changed it of course to look for Carbon. Now I got the pixel theme up and everything is great. Thanks again.

edmaul69

@rylock glad to see you up and running. It sucks when you go down and cant get it running.

Brettannica

@edmaul69 I followed your command, I couldn't get it to work. Can't find it. Also I didn't see where you could tab down any where. The only thing I can find is a directory without theme options

edmaul69

@brettannica can you be more specific what you have a problem with and what you actually tried to do?

Brettannica

@edmaul69 I installed a new comic theme and I've read some aren't setup for the raspberry pie and will freeze up immediately after it loads emulation station. You can't use the keyboard, nothing. Just blank screen. If it's loading, and I hit f4, I can get to that Linux screen, but have no idea how to change it to some other emulation theme so I won't have this problem again.

edmaul69

@brettannica when you are at the commandline type this command

sudo nano /opt/retropie/configs/all/emulationstation/es_settings.cfg

scroll down to “theme set” and change it to "carbon". Then press "ctrl + x" then "y" . Then when it puts you back to commandline type

sudo reboot

Brettannica

@edmaul69 that's where I'm getting lost. There isn't anywhere to "scroll down". It just says GNU nano 2.2.6 at the top, and bottom of the screen it says get help, write out, read file, prev page, etc. There's no where to scroll after writing all that on the retro pie page.

edmaul69

@brettannica press the down arrow on your keyboard.

edmaul69

@brettannica so are you saying the page itself is blank?

Brettannica

@edmaul69 this is crappy quality in the video, but I'm hoping this shows you where I'm at.

[link text]

(link url)

edmaul69

@brettannica ok you are going to need to reinstall emulationstation through retropie-setup. I am watching a movie at the moment so in about 30 minutes i can look and see what command you need to type to get to retropie setup

Brettannica

@edmaul69 ok, thank you! :) I appreciate the help!

edmaul69

@brettannica first off, you arent using something like berryboot or noobs are you? If so i dont know anything about that kind of stuff. If not type this to get to retropie setup to reinstall emulationstation. (Do not use nano) caps and lowercase are important.

sudo /home/pi/RetroPie-Setup/retropie_setup.sh

Brettannica

@edmaul69 that got me into the retropie setup script. I do not believe I am using noobs or berryroot. This is all new to me. Not sure how to tell.

edmaul69

@brettannica so in here go to manage packages or whatever then go into main packages, choose emulationstation and install from binary if that option is available.