# PiCade - Retropie 4.5.1 won't boot on Rpi4

**URL:** <https://forums.pimoroni.com/t/picade-retropie-4-5-1-wont-boot-on-rpi4/12553>\
**Category:** Support\
**Created:** [December 28, 2019, 8:58pm UTC](https://forums.pimoroni.com/t/picade-retropie-4-5-1-wont-boot-on-rpi4/12553 "2019-12-28T20:58:16Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Maxik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7feea3/32.png) [@Maxik](https://forums.pimoroni.com/u/Maxik)\
**Post date:** [December 28, 2019, 8:58pm UTC](https://forums.pimoroni.com/t/picade-retropie-4-5-1-wont-boot-on-rpi4/12553/1 "2019-12-28T20:58:16Z")

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Hi All - I’m looking for some help on a brand new PiCade I just built.

I have just built a PiCade (8inch screen) using a Raspberry Pi4, and it boots fine into Raspian Full.  
However, when I follow the PiMaroni instructions and use Etcher to burn RetroPie onto my SD card and try and boot from it, the PiCade won’t even boot. The Raspberry Pi4 has 2 status LEDs (one Green and one Red) and normally when I boot from a Raspian image, both LEDs light up, but when I boot from the RetroPie Image, only the red LED lights.

I’m new to this and lost on what to do. I bought the Picade and the Raspberry Pi4 from PiMaroni together, and their advertising says that it’s Raspberry Pi 4 compatible, but I have no idea how to get RetroPie to boot.

My SD card is a 32Gb SanDisk , and I have burned RetroPie 4.5.1 to it.  
I have a Raspberry Pi 4, with 4GB RAM.  
I know the SD card is fine, as when I burn Raspian Full to it, my PiCade boots OK.

Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks,  
Maxik

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**Author:** ![Crowbot](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forums.pimoroni.com/crowbot/32/5888_2.png) [@Crowbot](https://forums.pimoroni.com/u/Crowbot)\
**Post date:** [December 28, 2019, 9:15pm UTC](https://forums.pimoroni.com/t/picade-retropie-4-5-1-wont-boot-on-rpi4/12553/2 "2019-12-28T21:15:44Z")

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Firstly, welcome to the forum.

I don’t have one of these.

On a Pi4 the red light means it has power. The green light is disk activity. So if the green isn’t activating then it doesn’t like the disk for some reason. Try burning the SD card again. Or try another card.

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**Author:** ![Maxik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7feea3/32.png) [@Maxik](https://forums.pimoroni.com/u/Maxik)\
**Post date:** [December 28, 2019, 9:31pm UTC](https://forums.pimoroni.com/t/picade-retropie-4-5-1-wont-boot-on-rpi4/12553/3 "2019-12-28T21:31:55Z")

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Thanks Crowbot. I’ll try another card and feedback to you. Thanks for your input.

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**Author:** ![Crowbot](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forums.pimoroni.com/crowbot/32/5888_2.png) [@Crowbot](https://forums.pimoroni.com/u/Crowbot)\
**Post date:** [December 28, 2019, 11:07pm UTC](https://forums.pimoroni.com/t/picade-retropie-4-5-1-wont-boot-on-rpi4/12553/4 "2019-12-28T23:07:15Z")

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I was thinking that if you can burn a Raspbian image and it works then the card is probably OK. I would reformat it first ([https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter/](https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter/)) and re download and install the RetroPi package.

Good luck.

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**Author:** ![alphanumeric](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forums.pimoroni.com/alphanumeric/32/2729_2.png) [@alphanumeric](https://forums.pimoroni.com/u/alphanumeric)\
**Post date:** [December 29, 2019, 11:58am UTC](https://forums.pimoroni.com/t/picade-retropie-4-5-1-wont-boot-on-rpi4/12553/5 "2019-12-29T11:58:27Z")

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The flash codes are here if you want to have a look see.  
I’ve only had one boot failure so far, due to a bad SD Card. I got the 4 green flashes over and over.  
[https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=58151#p1485558](https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=58151#p1485558)

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**Author:** ![Pablo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ad7895/32.png) [@Pablo](https://forums.pimoroni.com/u/Pablo)\
**Post date:** [July 2, 2022, 12:29am UTC](https://forums.pimoroni.com/t/picade-retropie-4-5-1-wont-boot-on-rpi4/12553/6 "2022-07-02T00:29:19Z")

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Hi,  
I had the same problem with a Raspberry Pi3 B+ and I solved it editing the config.txt from the SD card removing the # symbol before the next line: hdmi\_force\_hotplug=1
