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I formatted my SD card to fat32 using GParted and copied all the files from the official NOOBS Lite download: https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/noobs/. I unzipped using unzip command on the terminal. When I turn on the rainbow appears and the Pi gets stuck there. Red LED is on, green turned off after a few seconds. Don't know if I did something wrong or my card is broken. Appreciate your help.

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  • rainbow usually means under voltage
    – tlfong01
    Commented Aug 23, 2019 at 0:51
  • Rainbow with a good power supply on a RPi4 is 100% bound to be an SDCard that doesn't have the RPi4 kernel and firmware.
    – Dougie
    Commented Aug 23, 2019 at 9:00

4 Answers 4

Reset to default
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I connected it to the other HDMI port and the image appeared, it was actually booting but showing the rainbow through that port.

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    Yep, was doing the same thing. Connect your micro hdmi to the hdmi port nearest the USB C power connection.
    – Chris S
    Commented Jan 4, 2020 at 13:13
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    This should be the first thing that comes up on Google when "stuck on rainbow screen" is searched. I spent literally hours downloading, reformatting, unzipping, etc., under the assumption that the kernel or SD card was corrupted only to learn the answer is just to connect to the second HDMI port.
    – Kevin
    Commented Feb 6, 2020 at 22:59
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    I've removed the parts of this post that had nothing to do with an answer and instead belong in a question. Please take the tour to understand better how the site works.
    – goldilocks ♦
    Commented Feb 13, 2020 at 14:56
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Try plugin your display to the other port. I spent an hour to figure out that my display was not on the primary display port and the secondary port was showing rainbow. Switched my display to primary port i.e. next to the power input and it came up :-)

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  • Exactly what happened. That was my problem too
    – Sebastian Braga
    Commented May 18, 2020 at 14:24
  • This is solve my problem. Never realized such a problem will occur.
    – Willy satrio nugroho
    Commented Oct 7, 2020 at 4:40
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The Boot Problems Sticky contains detailed troubleshooting steps.

Using NOOBS just makes fault finding harder.

The rainbow screen is due to missing (or obsolete) firmware.

I suggest you use Etcher to install Raspbian to a SD Card (like the vast bulk of us).

If you REALLY want to install NOOBS, make sure you have the LATEST version and follow the Foundation instructions =>

Visit the SD Association’s website and download SD Formatter for Windows or Mac.

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I ran into the same problem while working on my project. It seems like a low voltage problem so make sure the power supply has minimum of 2A Output and that should fix the rainbow screen problem.

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    The rainbow screen is unrelated to low voltage it indicates missing or obsolete boot files.
    – Milliways
    Commented Aug 23, 2019 at 3:28
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    @Milliways "Immediately after displaying the splash screen, the PI starts consuming a little more current. If the PI resets at that moment, it is an indication that the power supply isn't able to deliver the full current your PI requires..." elinux.org/R-Pi_Troubleshooting#Coloured_splash_screen Of course this does not mean stuck on the rainbow screen.
    – goldilocks ♦
    Commented Aug 23, 2019 at 12:43

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