A couple of months ago I got my first Pi and I got it up and going no problems. I was disconnecting the power with out shutting it down properly and who knows what else I was doing wrong. One day I dropped it and it fell about 30cm. After that it didn’t work.
I’d heard the SD cards were fragile so I pinned my hopes on getting a new card and getting back in business. This didn’t work.
Current status:
Powered up and connected to screen with no SD card I get the boot-loader screen with the raspberry logo at the top and it says card not detected. Solid red light, green light flashing 4 times. This looks good to me.
When I power it up with the card inserted the green light flashes a couple of times and then gives up. The rainbow screen briefly flashes and then a black screen.
I have searched all over the internet looking for a solution but I’m beginning to think my Pi is stuffed.
I have reflashed the SD card a few times with NOOBS, Raspberry Pi OS.
I have Raspberry Pi brand HDMI cable, power supply and SD card.
I have checked that none of the connections or the card is loose.
I have HDMI cable in the socket next to the power supply.
I have inspected the Pi and nothing appears to be jammed in any ports and there doesn’t appear to be any damage.
I know my monitor is good.
Is there anything else I can do before getting the credit card out and getting a new Pi?
Sorry to hear about the problems you are having with your Raspberry Pi. So that we can get your project back on track as fast as possible can we get you to run through a few debugging steps so that we can get your project back up and running as fast as possible?
If Pi 4 - Ensure that HDMI is connected before the power and is connected to HDMI0 on the Pi4
If using your own uSD (not a preloaded NOOBS from us), we recommend BalenaEtcher to write the freshly downloaded image to your USD (this fixes most boot issues, due to incorrect formatting methods)
If Pi 4 - Check that the Pi4 bootloader is correct with the recovery steps.
Check that the SD card has not been damaged by a drop or mishandling (uSD should be removed when installing Pi into a case to avoid snapping the uSD).
Ensure you are using a power supply that can provide 5.1V (not just 5 Volts) at a minimum of 2 Amps
Check the HDMI cable connectors for damage. Shine a light (phone torch would suffice) into the connectors and check for dislodged/damaged pins.
Check the Power Connector (both on the Pi and on the lead) in the same way, inspecting for dislodged/damaged pins.
As all RPi boards are electrically tested post-manufacture, in the majority of use cases we find the uSD is at fault (we have replacements here if you don’t have one handy).
If these solutions don’t resolve the issue please let me know. As this may be hardware related.
No worries at all, if you can please send through an email to support@coreelectronics.com.au we’ll get this sorted out for you right away. Have a great day Brian!
