Pi4 suddenly won't boot anymore

Development Boards Raspberry Pi
1

Hi:

I have a relatively new Raspberry Pi 4 that was working fine for a month running the Lakka OS. Suddenly, last week, it stopped booting, meaning that I get no HDMI signal and it doesn’t appear on Wifi or Ethernet.

We tried all the steps in the forums “Boot Problems Sticky,” specifically:

  • - With no SD card, the Pi4 blinks 4x times, indicating that the EEPROM is fine, right?
  • - I am using the 3.0A Raspberry Pi-branded power adapter (bought from Sparkfun)
  • - With the Lakka SD card (a name-brand 64gb card bought from Sparkfun, which was working fine for weeks) the green LED comes on for ~1 second and then stays off
  • - I then reformatted the SD card and flashed the latest Buster Lite image; same LED booting sequence
  • - I even bought a new Sandisk SD card and tried a new external SD card reader but same same.
  • - I tried reflashing the EEPROM (even though it wasn't recommended) but still no change.
  • - I tested for 3V3 using a multimeter, and it reads 3.3V

    • I can’t find any other suggestions around how to get further logs; is the start_debug flag in config.txt something that might help here? Or any way to make the Pi emit status information as it tries to boot?

    I know it’s never a hardware issue, but honestly I can’t think of anything else to try! Help please? :slight_smile:

    Thanks,

    /m

    2

    One more update, I tried a full laptop USB-C power supply to rule that out. No dice, same results. Thanks!

    3

    Not sure what would cause this, it could be ESD damage to the Pi.

    Have you tried a SD card with NOOBS on it? How about a different / smaller SD card?

    4

    Hi: Thanks for the suggestion. I tried a different card – a new-in-box Sandisk 32GB – and installed NOOBS to it. Same result: When I plug it in, the green LED comes on for a second, then goes out and there’s no Wifi, Ethernet, or HDMI activity.

    Wouldn’t ESD damage cause some logs or LED activity? Is there any way to verify? NB that I had this installed in a case so it didn’t have exposed pins or anything overly risky.

    Thank you again.

    5

    Wouldn’t ESD damage cause some logs or LED activity? Is there any way to verify? NB that I had this installed in a case so it didn’t have exposed pins or anything overly risky.

    Not necessarily. ESD could do anything from weird behavior to totally killing the board.

    Can you PM me your order number so I can take a look at your order?

    6

    New to the forum. I have a similar issue. Working over the weekend with it, noticed an icon in the upper right corner that showed a thermometer, so I shut it down. Have not been able to get it to boot since.

    When powering on, the power LED stays on solid RED, activity light does not do anything. I tried to reload the image to SD card and also the EEPROM boot recovery with no luck.

    New to Raspberry PI and not sure what to try next.

    7

    Sounds like you’ve overheated your Pi, unfortunately it’s probably dead and you will need to replace it. :frowning: