Saving a RPi5 that stopped booting

Oct 22, 2025, 10:51 PM

Just posting this in case it helps anyone else.

A while back I accidentally left a Rpi5 4 gig powered (via RPi branded Pi5 specific USB power supply) overnight (not sure now if I had shut down the OS or just walked off), worse it was not cased and on an unstable stack of stuff on my desk and fell off at some point too. When I found this out in the morning the Pi was sitting with red LED on only and no output, initially I thought I had shut it down but forgotten to turn off the power supply but it would not boot again. I can't remember which OS I was testing at the time but it was not ARpiCADE (and I wasn't using a RaspberryJAMMA either). The Pi would no longer boot on any SD card (or USB) and seemed dead. I had a quick troubleshoot to no avail and figured it had shorted on something when it fell and was prob dead.

I got it out again today. Powered up with or without SD card it was slow flashing green 3 times and fast once, this is the troubleshooting code for EEPROM issues (previously I thought it was giving me 4 of the same speed LED blinks, the code for SD card error). I made a bootloader EEPROM restore SD card using RPI imager, reflashed the RPi5s bootloader and.... WORKING RPI5!

Still have to double check the GPIO isn't damaged and hide the bootloader screen output (as it's in 1080p and I mostly use RPis at low res) but I'm pretty damn happy with the result.

I also have a Pi4 1gig I physically broke the SD card slot on... (if you have a Pi in a case and want to take it out of the case make sure to remove the SD card first) - may as well try re-soldering it, I possibly broke the surface mount contacts.... not sure if I'll get to it today but maybe I can save that one too.

EDIT: had a quick go at the RPi4, no luck. Pi5 bootloader HDMI output disabled.

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Saving a RPi5 that stopped booting

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