Console not booting into Batocera
Console not booting into Batocera
If your machine starts up to a setup screen instead of your games, it has forgotten which drive to boot from. Your library is still there.
A console that powers on into a blue or grey setup screen, or tells you there is no bootable device, has lost its boot order. That is not a broken drive and it is not lost games. The motherboard simply needs pointing back at the Batocera drive. The first two steps get you playing again in about a minute. The three after that make it stick, so you never have to do it twice.
What you need
- A USB keyboard plugged straight into the console. These setup screens do not read a game controller.
- Your TV or monitor switched to the input the console normally uses, so you can see what it is doing.
- A Phillips screwdriver, and something thin like an old plastic card to help open the case. Both only if you get as far as the last section.
Open the boot menu
Power the console on and start tapping F7 straight away, about twice a second, from the moment anything appears on screen. A short list of drives should come up.
If you land on the normal setup screen instead, or nothing happens at all, switch the console off and try the same thing again with F11. Boards differ, and yours answers to one of those two.
Choose the Batocera drive
In that list, look for an entry called batocera or UEFI OS. Move to it with the arrow keys and press Enter.
It boots into your games. That is your answer. The drive is healthy, your saves are intact, and the only thing that went missing was the boot order. Play as long as you like, then come back and do steps 3 to 5 so the console remembers on its own.
Neither entry is in the list. Then the motherboard cannot see the drive at all. Skip the rest of the steps and go straight to If batocera is not in the list further down this page.
Reboot into Setup
Everything from here is what makes the fix permanent. Restart the console, and this time tap Delete repeatedly instead. That opens the motherboard's setup screen, the one with a row of tabs across the top.
On a small number of boards the key is F2. If Delete does nothing, power off and try that.
Put the Batocera drive first
Move across to the Boot tab with the arrow keys. Find the line marked Boot Option #1, press Enter, and choose the batocera or UEFI OS entry. It is the same one that worked in step 2.
Boot > Boot Option #1 > batocera
Save and exit
Press F4, then choose Yes to confirm. The console restarts by itself and comes straight up into your games.
If F4 does nothing on your board, go to the Save & Exit tab instead and choose Save Changes and Exit. Same result.
That's it. It will boot on its own from now on.
The boot order is stored on the motherboard, so it survives being unplugged, moved, and switched off at the wall. There is nothing to run again and nothing to keep an eye on.
If the console loses it a second time weeks later, that is worth telling me about. A setting that will not stay put points at the board rather than at the drive, and I would want to look at it.
If batocera is not in the list
If the boot menu opens but there is no batocera and no UEFI OS in it, the motherboard cannot see the drive. There are two reasons for that, and the free one is worth ruling out first.
Your games live on an M.2 drive, a flat stick held down inside the console by one small screw. A hard enough knock in transit can lift it just far enough out of its slot to stop making contact. Taking it out and pushing it firmly back in fixes that, and it costs nothing but a few minutes. It is the first thing I would do.
The other reason is that the boot loader on the drive is gone, which needs a reimage from me. Reseating the drive is what tells those two apart, so it is worth doing either way.
Watch this first
The whole job is in this short video, filmed on the same machine you have.
Before you open anything. Shut the console down fully and unplug the cord marked DC IN. Do not do any of this with power connected.
Work on a hard surface rather than carpet, and touch something metal first. Nothing inside needs force. If the drive does not want to move, stop and email me rather than pushing harder.
The short version
- Power off and unplug the cord from the socket marked DC IN.
- Turn the console around so the ports face you. Undo the two black screws on the back panel, one at each end of the row of ports, circled in the photo below.
- Lift the top of the case off. It is a snug fit, so you may need a thin blade or an old plastic card to start it at the seam. Lift it gently and keep it near the console, as there are wires attached to it.
- Find the M.2 drive. It is the flat stick held down at the far end by one small screw. Undo that screw.
- The free end of the drive lifts slightly on its own. Pull it straight out of its slot, level, rather than bending it upward.
- Push it back in the same way, all the way in and evenly, until the gold contacts are no longer showing. Press the free end down and put the small screw back.
- Refit the top, put the two screws back, reconnect DC IN, power on, and run step 1 again.
The two screws to undo, circled in red. The DC IN socket to unplug is on the same panel, bottom left.
With both screws out, the top lifts off. A thin blade helps to start it at the seam.
If it still is not in the list
Then the boot loader is gone and the drive needs reimaging. That is a job for me, not for you, and I do not want you buying anything before we know that for certain.
Take a photo of the boot menu screen with your phone, the whole screen with the list of drives visible, and send it to me along with your order number. That one photo tells me straight away which of the two problems it is, and I will come back to you with exactly what happens next.
paul@umbrellaarcades.com
484.631.5241