Raspberry Pi 4 running RetroPie does not save games, settings or console changes

[ROFG_TTV]

I recently re-purchased a Raspberry Pi 4 running RetroPie as my last one was lost along with all of my lifetime of consoles in a disastrous flood. My old RetroPie worked flawlessly with no issues for all the years I had it, but this new one seems to have problems that I have never encountered before.

1: When i utilize a ROMs in-game save feature it will never retain the save after I exit the game (using the Start+Select exit command). I have tried on several different games on several different consoles and it is the same every time.
2: No changes to the UI are ever saved. I will change certain sound settings and my console's theme every time I start it up, but when I turn it off the console reverts back to its default settings. I always shut down the console by pressing Start to access the menu, selecting "Shutdown" and then selecting "Yes" when the console says 'Really Shut Down?' I never turn it off by just pressing the power button first.
3: Any changes I make to a controller's button mapping are never saved when I shut down the console. Same as stated in Issue 2 above, it reverts to default settings every time I shut down the console.

I have reset the permissions in the Configuration/Tools menu, I have performed an update to ensure that the console is fully current and I have even replaced the SD card with a brand new 128 Gb SD card, but to no avail.

Would anyone know any other options I may be able to look into? My old RetroPie was literally plug and play with no issues whatsoever, so i am not sure why this newer one is so janky.

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated as I am somewhat of a tech noob when it comes to troubleshooting RetroPie issues.

[mitu]

Which image did you install on the SD card ?

We only support the image from https://retropie.org.uk/download, so if your PI came with RetroPie pre-installed I suggest you re-install with the official image from the link above.