LibreELEC on SD card stopped booting

Nubi · May 15, 2022 at 9:25 PM

After using LibreELEC (LE) successfully a few times with an SD card on two Windows 10 PCs, I now get the message "Invalid partition table." On one PC, the menu appears for "install," "live," or "run," but the script shows an error message of "Fail" for both the device ID and loading from cache, and freezes after the LE logo appears. On the other PC, the 3 item menu doesn't appear at all. The startup files may be corrupt and cannot be fixed. After crashing 5 times on each PC within 15 minutes, the SAFE MODE menu does NOT appear, which it was supposed to do. My questions are these:

1. Is there another way to enter safe mode? (I'm not sure how to use SSH, and what "nano" is in the help section.)

2. I can see the SD card in File Explorer, so can I start or run the LE program from there and fix the corrupted files?

As I am a newbie, I hope to get some help in non-technical language. Thanks.

**chewitt** · May 16, 2022 at 5:00 AM

LE is a complete OS not an App, so you cannot run it from within Windows. And nano is a Linux text editor; like notepad, but run from the Linux command shell, it's not a GUI app.

It's hard to comment on what's happened, but either the SD cards are old/bad/dying which leads to corruption and issues or perhaps you're powering off the machines without clean shutdown and causing filesystem problems on the cards. Linux is a lot more sensitive to that kind of thing than Windows; it will fail loudly and early whereas Windows sort of blindly continues giving the appearance of normal while secretly trashing your data.

Nubi · May 18, 2022 at 11:36 PM

Thanks, chewitt. I thought there was an OS feature that tries to fix corrupted files, and perhaps switching between 2 PCs may have confused the software beyond repair. Is there a way to still get into Safe Mode, and can you instruct me how to do so? Thanks.

**chewitt** · May 19, 2022 at 5:17 AM

Safe mode only applies when the OS is fine but something got messed up with Kodi (normally a bad add-on causing repeated crashing). In your case something more fundamental is messed up and you're not getting that far in the boot process. The OS does (or should) attempt to fix basic filesystem issues automagically but there are limits to that. NB: If you aren't familiar with Linux and only used the USB a few times it'll be easier abd considerably quicker to start over with a clean install.

LibreELEC on SD card stopped booting

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