Raspberry Pi 4 8Gb not booting

Support Raspberry Pi
1

Hi,

I recently bought a Raspberry Pi 4 (8Gb model), and am having problems booting into any operating system. I’m using the official RPI power supply, and the HDMI cabling works with another RPi4.

I had prepared a Micro SD card with Ubuntu 18.04 (64bit). See screenshot, it stops booting saying the board requires newer software.

ubuntu18_04-64bit-resized
ubuntu18_04-64bit-resized2000×1500 745 KB

I also tried the following:

Any further suggestions, let me know.

  • Eric
2

Hi all,

I was able to resolve the problem by reformatting the SD card and installing Raspberry Pi OS (32-bit) Lite. This allowed me to boot into the OS and do updates and upgrades.

2 Likes
3

Hi Eric,

Glad to hear that it’s now working correctly. For future reference of any readers on this forum I’ve attached some extra debugging steps below. All the best with it!

  • If Pi 4 - Ensure that HDMI is connected before the power and is connected to HDMI0 on the Pi4

  • If using your own uSD, you will need to use the newest version of Noobs or Raspbian for support of new board variants.

  • 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.

  • Have a look over this thread that has a lot of advice on boot issues.

  • 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).

Bryce
Core Electronics | Support

1 Like
4

my boot loader boasts sep 9 2020…so it just could be out of date or has become unstable…

i agree with Bryce on this issue…need to reinstall the boot loader…

you casn write into the loader file before you flash it i have re-flashed mine using ubuntu i changed the boot order so it boots fron the usb port if it cannot find a op-sys on the usb it then looks at the sd-card

image

you can have a look here…

also this page may be of assistance to many users…having the fault codes…

this may be handy as well…

1 Like