Green light blinks 7 times

Troubleshooting
1

Hi! My Pi4 isn’t booting up again, the green light blinks 7 times.

It’s not the first time that i have this issue. I have started a couple of times with a fresh install on a USB stick, everything works well for a couple of days, and then it stop working

What could the problem be? Is my Pi4 broken?

2

When it blinks 7 times it can not find a valid boot drive. Maybe the USB stick is dying. Maybe you have a power issue and data gets corrupted over time, which leads also to a unbootable drive.

Can you try another stick? You can also check dmesg for power issues and other problems.

3

it’s connected to an UPS, so shouldn’t be a power issue

the USB stick is less than 4 moths old, do you think it can die so quickly?

Also, i have no HDMI input

4

LED error code can be found there Raspberry Pi Documentation - Configuration

7 short flashed means Kernel image not found. This indicated data corruption. Can you connect USB pen stick to your computer and check content off boot folder

5

there’s no boot folder

6

Sorry, the whole USB device should be called boot on Windows. Just check what is on the stick.

7 
cmdline.txt
config.txt
dietpi.txt
dietpi-README.md
dietpi-LICENSE.txt
dietpi
overlays
bcm2710-rpi-3-b-plus.dtb
kernel8.img
bcm2710-rpi-2-b.dtb
bcm2710-rpi-zero-2-w.dtb
bcm2710-rpi-3-b.dtb
bcm2710-rpi-cm3.dtb
dietpi-wifi.txt
bcm2710-rpi-zero-2.dtb
bcm2711-rpi-4-b.dtb
bcm2711-rpi-400.dtb
bcm2711-rpi-cm4-io.dtb
bcm2711-rpi-cm4.dtb
bcm2711-rpi-cm4s.dtb
COPYING.linux
start.elf
start_cd.elf
start_db.elf
start_x.elf
fixup.dat
fixup_cd.dat
fixup_db.dat
fixup_x.dat
bootcode.bin
start4.elf
start4cd.elf
start4db.elf
start4x.elf
fixup4.dat
fixup4cd.dat
fixup4db.dat
fixup4x.dat
LICENCE.broadcom
8

can you share content from config.txt

9

config.txt (2.9 KB)

10

ok seems to be fine.

However, you could try to download latest kernel (possible on Windows) and copy it to your SD card boot partition firmware/boot at stable · raspberrypi/firmware · GitHub

In a first step try to replace the kernel8.img file. If this is not working, add other kernel*.img files and/or replace rest of boot partition.

11

tried with kernel8.img, no more green light, can find the Pi4 on my network but can’t access it neither via dietpi dashboard or putty

12

does it react on ping?? Try to connect a screen to check what happen.

13

ping is ok, but i have no hdmi output on both ports. Dunno if my micro hdmi is broken or the issue are the ports

14

you could try to add dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d,noaudio to the end of config.txt and reboot again.

15

HDMI is now working, i have this message

You are in emergency mode.
Give root password maintenance
16

can you try to replace all files on the boot partition?

17

even the overlays folder?

18

yes, to be on safe side

19

Failed to mount /boot and emergency mode again

20

Probably the USB stick has suffered even more damage. Was it a cheap stick?

Personally, I’m using RasPiKey as SD card replacement on all my RPI. It’s working quite will with good performance. RasPiKey: Plug and Play eMMC Module for Raspberry Pi | UUGear Ok but it has a certain price :smiley: