Hi everyone – and Raspberry Pi team,
I’m having trouble booting my Raspberry Pi 4 Model B (8GB). It used to work just fine, but after reconnecting the power adapter, it completely stopped booting.
Here’s what happened:
I connected the official 5V 3A Raspberry Pi power adapter to a power strip with surge protection. As soon as I plugged it in, the surge protector’s indicator light turned off suddenly — which made me suspect a power surge or short circuit. After that, my Raspberry Pi hasn't booted.
System details:
Raspberry Pi 4B (8GB)
ADATA 32GB microSD card flashed with Raspberry Pi OS Lite 64-bit using Raspberry Pi Imager
ACT LED blinks 7 times repeatedly (indicating missing kernel.img)
Red power LED is solid
No HDMI output
Ethernet LEDs do not light up
GPIO-connected fan spins normally
Additional observations:
I usually connect to the Pi via Ethernet and access it from my laptop; I do not use HDMI regularly.
However, I also tested connecting an HDMI display, but the Pi still does not boot or show any output.
The ACT LED blinks 7 times repeatedly and then pauses, in a loop, regardless of whether the SD card is inserted or not, and regardless of Ethernet or HDMI connection status.
When Ethernet is connected, its LEDs remain off, indicating no network activity.
I tested the same SD card with the same OS on another Raspberry Pi 4B, and it works perfectly. I also tried re-flashing different OS images, including Raspberry Pi OS Full 64-bit.
All parts (power adapter, Ethernet cable, SD card) have been tested independently and confirmed to be working.
My concern:
It seems the Pi board cannot read the boot files anymore. Could this be a damaged SD card slot, corrupted EEPROM, or maybe a more serious hardware failure caused by the power event?
I haven’t tried EEPROM recovery yet but I’m open to doing it if recommended.
Any guidance on how to further diagnose or possibly recover the board would be deeply appreciated.
Thanks a lot,
[SkyR]
Tagging: @Raspberry Pi Team
"Any guidance on how to further diagnose"
You say - " I also tested connecting an HDMI display, but the Pi still does not boot or show any output."
Did you specifically check for this : Boot diagnostics - https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentati ... iagnostics
Hi everyone – and Raspberry Pi team,
[ ... ]
Tagging: @Raspberry Pi Team
That is unlikely to be effective in these forums. There is a 'Report this post' feature that you could use if you feel that volunteer input is insufficient or unreliable.
Statistics: Posted by B.Goode — Mon Jul 28, 2025 10:58 am