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I have a fan that I was trying to plug into my Raspberry Pi 4 (4gb) (Deskpi lite addition from "Geeekpi")

I was plugging it in, but didn't realize I accidentally plugged the red/positive wire into the "GND" pin, and then the black/negative wire into the "5v" pin.

I turned on the Pi after I plugged it in, thinking I would be done. I didn't hear it spin to life so I turned the device back off. I changed the connection to red to 5v, and black to GND, and turned it on.

The fan spun to life, the lights on the pi did the blinking they normally do, everything looked normal. It showed the "splash screen" that says "Welcome to the Raspberry Pi desktop" on my display for a couple seconds, changed some words in the bottom left like it were to boot up, the screen went off and then back on to a black screen and stayed like that. (You could tell the monitor went off but came back because even if it's black it still emits light)

Could the fan "failed modification" be the problem? I'm really worried, I just got this Pi a few days ago, not sure if warranty would cover it...

Thanks for any help.

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No warranty would cover such a user error. Perhaps accidental damage insurance would.

Try another SD card or test the SD card in another device. If you are lucky perhaps the SD card was corrupted.

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  • Thank you so much for this, I grabbed a spare SD card and loaded a new copy of Raspbian and it worked. So glad it's not broken. One more question is why would this have corrupted the SD card? I'm a bit of a beginner to raspberry pi but wouldn't it not matter what's positive and negative since it's really just the color of the casing on the wire, the core is really the same. Maybe not but that's why I'm asking.
    – Unique_Zeph
    Commented Jul 25, 2023 at 20:39
  • Positive / negative is nothing to do with the colour of the wires. Paint positive green with yellow spots and it would still be positive. All you need to know is that electronics know the difference and may well die if wired incorrectly. I thought the SD card might be corrupt because your machine seemed fine in the pre-SD card stages of boot.
    – joan
    Commented Jul 25, 2023 at 21:28
  • why would this have corrupted the SD card? ... it didn't ... think about what you did when the fan did not turn on
    – jsotola
    Commented Jul 26, 2023 at 6:02

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