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I've had my Raspberry Pi for a few months now, and it's given me no trouble up to now.

First off, I use one of those micro SD cards that slides in to a small adapter that looks like a full sized SD, and it has always worked well in my Pi. I have an issue whenever I try to boot it up, a single red LED shows on the board and nothing happens, this is the same thing that happens when there is not even an SD card plugged in at all.

My temporary solution to this problem was holding the SD card to the board just as I plug it in, then when I see everything is working fine I just let go and it's good. Then, if I so much as bump that SD card everything turns to crap and I have to reboot it.

I really hope this is just a problem with the SD, which also has thin crack down the middle (I have no idea how this happened), because I could easily replace it. Although, the small crack down the SD card may not be a problem because everything is really stored on the micro SD card that just plugs into it. But also, I'm lead to believe that it could be a problem with the Raspberry Pi because when holding it the SD card down, as I described before, it boots up fine until that card is moved.

I did some research and apparently those small pins on the inside of SD card reader are broken easily. So please, any ideas about what the issue is and how to fix it?

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  • I have had this problem twice both times I unplugged the power adapter and replugged and everything was fine.
    – piggykid1
    Jul 11, 2014 at 6:23

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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This question has been asked many times.

Rather than repeating a long list of suggestion follow the process suggested in:-

http://elinux.org/R-Pi_Troubleshooting#Red_power_LED_is_on.2C_green_LED_does_not_flash.2C_nothing_on_display

It may be a problem with the SD card - the only way to tell is try another; they are cheap enough!

SD Card socket problems are also common (most caused by moving the Pi with a card in place).

If you search you will find suggestions on repairing the SD Card socket, although the contacts are rather delicate, so I wouldn't be poking at them unless necessary.

As a last resort get a new SD adapter and glue in place (with a removable adhesive).

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  • Thanks for the useful link. Do you know of any way to get debug output from the bootloader? I have USB-boot enabled on this Pi and it won't boot from that either. In addition, the SD card boots fine on another Pi
    – moo
    Jun 9, 2020 at 19:48
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The problem could be caused by a corrupt SD card. When switching off the Pi without following the standard shutdown process - not simply pulling the plug, rather performing the command sudo shutdown -h now - it can occasionally cause damage to the SD Card.

See the link below on how to safely power-off and the common errors you get from this. You can just flash your card to the next and continue like nothing went wrong if a corrupt SD card is to blame.

Prevent SD-Card Corruption

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