SD card - Erased the MBR, reformatted FAT32 and copied NOOBS 3.0.0 files - won't boot

a boot sector?

TNP,

"and copied the Noobs 3.0.0 files onto it"

Would I have been able to do that without it ?

Regards, Rudy Wieser

the Pi just looks in FAT for a file called bootcode.bin

what size card?

formatted with XP's own formatter (from explorer or cmd shell) or a 3rd party tool?

Andy,

about 15x10x1.5 mm :-)

Seriously, it just 16GB.

Neither. From within "computer management" (the partition manager).

But I think I found the cause: when I used HPs formatting tool (HPUSBFW) the SD worked again. The difference ? The former formatted the SD as being a mega-floppy (starting with a simple boot record), while the latter wrote an MBR with a single partition.

Regards, Rudy Wieser

On Sun, 20 Jan 2019 18:49:52 +0100, "R.Wieser" declaimed the following:

You might also have lost the SD card reserved security space... Unfortunately, I don't know if the SD card association formatter runs under WinXP (they only list back to Win7).

yup!

Dennis,

And what might that be ? Something similar to what the the old spinners had (to "fix" bad sectors) ?

It installs, but does not run (mentions not finding a function in shell32). Yup, made that mistake myself. :-)

Regards, Rudy Wieser

TNP,

Nope.

Regards, Rudy Wieser

Andy,

Yep, that one was among the files I copied (I did some checking before posting here).

Regards, Rudy Wieser

On Sun, 20 Jan 2019 21:03:16 +0100, "R.Wieser" declaimed the following:

No... It was a small number of blocks intended to be used by security software running on the host computer (the S in Secure Digital). Likely meant to contain part of a decryption key which software could then use to access files on the regular part of the card.

Otherwise they are basically MultiMediaCard (MMC).

Dennis,

It also crossed my mind ...

... but discarded it of exactly that.

Thanks for the explanation.

Regards, Rudy Wieser

Formating the sdcard with XP-whatever, will not put the MBR in a working state. if no correct MBR, it will never boot

K.

which is the opposite of what the O/P reports ...

Kelbel,

Thats funny, I seem to remember that I stated that it did. Are you claiming I just made that up ? If not, what *do* you mean.

Also, the standard XP formatting will not put an MBR onto the media to begin with, working or not (but - obviously - it can be different for the "whatever" kind :-) )

Define "correct" And than please explain *why* "it will never boot" without an MBR.

You see, (USB) (thumb)drives (and yesteryears floppies) have no problem with being bootable without one.

In short, you've made a number of claims without explaining them. And as you might have noticed by now, that doesn't quite work for me (understatement).

Regards, Rudy Wieser

P.s. Suggestion: Re-read my reply to Andy again (in this branch the second, or from here the third of mine up), but now a bit more carefully. It

Andy,

I think (hope actually) he misunderstood. Than again, his post is rather vague (an understatement), so I could be wrong in that ....

Regards, Rudy Wieser