I have a Raspberry Pi 3. For whatever reason, it doesn't seem to boot up if the HDMI cable is not plugged in. I am running the latest "stretch" desktop version.
Steps taken:
1) Plug in AC adapter.
2) Plugin HDMI cable. At this point, I can see the PI booting up.
3) VNC into the PI, which works at this point.
4) Disconnect the HDMI cable. This kills my VNC session, and the IP address stops responding.
5) Plug the HDMI cable back in. I can see at this point that the PI is booting back up again.
If I start the PI without the HDMI cable, and never plug it in, I am not able to ever reach it with VNC, and the IP never responds.
This tells me that it's not booting up unless it has an HDMI cable plugged in.
Anyone else run into this? Any idea how to address it? My config.txt file is set to allow HDMI hot swapping.