Raspberry Pi 5 boot splash screen (pink/white) returns after abrupt power cycles despite disable_splash=1

General Discussion
1

Hi everyone,

I am developing an industrial system using a Raspberry Pi 5 (Raspberry Pi OS Bookworm). Because it is deployed in an environment with abrupt power cutoffs, I am facing an issue where the default pink and white splash screen randomly reappears during boot, overriding my configuration.

Here is what I have already implemented to prevent this:

  1. Disabled Splash Screen: Added disable_splash=1 to /boot/firmware/config.txt.

  2. Read-Only File System: Enabled the native Overlay File System via raspi-config to protect the boot and root partitions from corruption.

  3. Industrial Hardware: Tested with high-end storage to rule out basic SD card degradation.

The Problem:
The system boots cleanly with no display text or logo for several cycles. However, after a few abrupt hardware power cutoffs, the pink and white splash screen unexpectedly pops back up during boot.

Since the Overlay FS is active, config.txt should theoretically be protected from corruption or modification.

My Questions:

  1. Does the Raspberry Pi 5 EEPROM/bootloader force the fallback splash screen if it detects an improper shutdown flag, completely bypassing the config.txt directive?

  2. Is there a specific EEPROM configuration parameter (via sudo rpi-eeprom-config -e) that permanently disables this splash image at the firmware level, rather than relying on the OS partition?

  3. Are there any known bugs with the Raspberry Pi 5 firmware where an unclean power-off resets certain video/boot states?

Any insights into the Pi 5 bootloader behavior regarding dirty shutdowns would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

2

Are you using Raspberry Pi OS or DietPi? In the former case, please open an issue in the RPi forum https://forums.raspberrypi.com/ or their firmware repository: GitHub - raspberrypi/firmware: This repository contains pre-compiled binaries of the current Raspberry Pi kernel and modules, userspace libraries, and bootloader/GPU firmware. ยท GitHub

I am not sure which splash screen you mean. disable_splash=1 disables the row of Raspberry Pi logos at the top of the screen during boot, which seems to work. At best take a screenshot/photo of what you see. There are some other visual indicators possible, e.g. a rainbow square in case of insufficient power. Yours might be a similar indicator for an issue. All these are unrelated to disable_splash=1, and I would not even attempt to disable them, since they are probably hinting to an important issue. Low voltage certainly is a reason for immediate action, in any serious (industrial) application.