RPI 4 Will Not Boot

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samson7point1
 
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RPI 4 Will Not Boot

Post by samson7point1 »

I bought a new RPi 4GB a month or two ago and just finally had the time to play around with it this weekend. It was working normally yesterday and for most of the day today - I was using it to play emulated games with RetroPie. When I finished my session, I shut the Pi off (via the inline switch in my power supply cable). When I tried to turn it back on a few minutes later it would not boot.

The red LED is solid, but the green activity LED never lights. No HDMI signal is detected. There is no power getting to the USB ports (at least my RGB keyboard and mouse are no longer lighting up).

I have done the following to troubleshoot:
- Tried 3 other SD cards with new images freshly installed via the Raspberry Pi imager.
- Tried an SD card which is currently working in a different RPi 4
- Tried the original SD card I was using when this one stopped working in another RPi 4GB (it boots in the other RPi with no issues)
- Tried a different power supply
- Tried three different HDMI cables (all of which were working before and work with other RPi 4s)
- Tried plugging the HDMI cable into the secondary port
- Tried powering on with no USB devices connected
- Tried powering on with no HDMI connected

Additional information:
- There is nothing connected to the GPIO
- I'm using an aluminum passively-cooled case

Am I missing any troubleshooting steps or do I have a defective unit?

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dastels
 
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Re: RPI 4 Will Not Boot

Post by dastels »

You just cut power it without cleanly shutting down?

Dave

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samson7point1
 
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Re: RPI 4 Will Not Boot

Post by samson7point1 »

I legitimately don’t remember whether I hit shutdown first. Why do you ask? I could see an uncontrolled shutdown corrupting the SD card, but as I explained the SD card boots up fine in another Pi, and this one won’t boot even with a known good card.

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dastels
 
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Re: RPI 4 Will Not Boot

Post by dastels »

Corrupted storage is the most likely result of a messy shutdown, but I wouldn't rule out other effects.

This might help: https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/raspberry ... -boot-fix/

Dave

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samson7point1
 
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Re: RPI 4 Will Not Boot

Post by samson7point1 »

Unfortunately, as my first post explained, I have already tried all that, and it still isn’t working.

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dastels
 
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Re: RPI 4 Will Not Boot

Post by dastels »

The only other thing that comes to mind is to check for shorts. Did it maybe get bumped and manage to short against the aluminum case?

Dave

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samson7point1
 
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Re: RPI 4 Will Not Boot

Post by samson7point1 »

The aluminum case is quite sturdy and well made - there’s really not much chance of a short due to movement. Just the same I did remove the Pi from the case and try starting it up all by itself, but the result was the same - it won’t even try to boot. I also mostly ruled out a short to ground with a multimeter by buzzing out the USB-C power and ground pins (with the Pi disconnected from power, of course).

I also inspected the board under a microscope to see if there were any obvious physical signs of damage (like a burned component for example) but I didn’t see any - it looks perfectly fine so far as I can tell.

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dastels
 
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Re: RPI 4 Will Not Boot

Post by dastels »

I've put the word out internally to see if anyone else has any suggestions.

Dave

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dastels
 
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Re: RPI 4 Will Not Boot

Post by dastels »

OK, basically something bad happened. It's really hard to tell what, especially via a forum. We'll just assume it's one of those "made it through Q/A ok and failed a bit later" cases.

Please email [email protected] with a link to this thread, your order number, and request the replacement of one Raspberry Pi 4-4G.

Dave

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dastels
 
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Re: RPI 4 Will Not Boot

Post by dastels »

I also suggest you (and anyone reading this thread) take it as a cautionary tale and always shutdown a Pi (or any UNIX/Linux-based computer) cleanly.

Dave

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samson7point1
 
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Re: RPI 4 Will Not Boot

Post by samson7point1 »

Thanks very much I will follow those instructions to request a replacement.

Just to flesh out the cautionary tale can you give some examples of how the RPi itself could have been damaged by suddenly disconnecting power? (I mean other than corrupting the SD card). I'm not convinced that's what I did because I usually do shutdown first out of habit, but I simply don't remember.

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Re: RPI 4 Will Not Boot

Post by dastels »

Nothing concrete, but it's a complex computer. It's a full scale Linux computer, nothing like an Arduino (or any MCU board). There are a lot of processes running that should be shut down in an orderly fashion. If you cut power in the middle of some atomic low level operation, I can imagine things getting scrambled in the SOC.

Dave

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