Steps and Solutions for Fixing a Raspberry Pi 4 That Won’t Boot

Steps and Solutions for Fixing a Raspberry Pi 4 That Won’t Boot

Steps and Solutions for Fixing a Raspberry Pi 4 That Won’t Boot

I had waited several weeks for my newly ordered Raspberry Pi 4 to finally arrive. I had also ordered an aluminum case for it to make it look even cooler. So you can imagine how disappointed I was when I found that I simply couldn’t get the new Raspberry Pi to boot, no matter what I tried.

When I powered it on, the red LED lit up, indicating that power was being supplied, and the fan was spinning as well. But the green LED only flashed briefly and then nothing else happened. There was no video output, and even the LEDs on my connected keyboard and mouse did not light up.

There are a few steps you can try to solve this problem. First, I checked the official website, where they mentioned that some new Raspberry Pi 4 units might fail to boot because of EEPROM corruption, and they provided the following solution to recover the EEPROM.

1. Try Recovering the EEPROM

If your Raspberry Pi 4 won’t boot, the SPI EEPROM may be corrupted.

To check this, remove the SD card, disconnect the device from power, and then reconnect it. If the green LED does not flash, you will need to reprogram the EEPROM:

• Download the bootloader recovery files.
• Extract them to an empty FAT-formatted SD card and insert it into your Raspberry Pi 4.
• Connect the power and wait for the green LED to flash rapidly.
• Disconnect the power, replace the SD card with your normal boot SD card, and power it on again to see whether the device works properly.

2. Update Your Raspbian Image

If the first step does not solve the problem, your Raspbian image may be outdated and may not support the Raspberry Pi 4. In that case, you should:

• Download the latest image from the official website. It is recommended to use the official Raspbian image to ensure your Pi 4 works correctly.
• Extract the image file and write it to the SD card. On macOS or Linux, you can use the dd command. On Windows, Rufus is a useful tool.
• To enable SSH, add a file named ssh to the boot partition, with no file extension such as .txt. This allows you to access the Pi over SSH without connecting a monitor, keyboard, or mouse.
• If there is still no response, move on to the next step.

3. Remove Any Unnecessary Peripherals

Because the Raspberry Pi 4 consumes more power than its predecessors, a power adapter that cannot supply enough current may also cause boot failure.

In this case, you may need to unplug all unnecessary peripherals such as the monitor, keyboard, and mouse, leaving only the power supply and Ethernet connection.

You will also need another computer, as well as access to your LAN router’s admin page, to look up the Pi’s IP address.

• On macOS or Linux, you can try connecting via SSH from the terminal.
• On Windows, you may need to enable WSL or use an SSH client such as PuTTY.
• If you can find the Pi 4 on your local network and log in using the username pi and the default password raspberry, that means the Pi 4 is working and you should check your power adapter and HDMI adapter instead.