Raspberry Pi SD boot failed; autoboot.txt and Firmware not Found

Hello everyone:

I really need some help.

I have a Raspberry Pi 4 with XFCE Manjaro ARM OS. The other day, I was updating the system; I left it unattended while it was updating. Then, there was a blackout at my home. When the electricity came back, I turned my Pi4 on, but it could not boot Manjaro. I am not sure if it was due to the blackout while updating or another reason.

When turning on the Pi4, the screen shows the following:

autoboot.txt not found
Partition: 0
lba: 62500 oem: ‘mkfs.fat’ volume: ’ v ^ ’
rsc 8 fat-sectors 216 c-count 54628 c-size 8 r-dir 1 r-sec 32
config.txt not found
recover4.elf not found
recovery.elf not found
start4.elf not found
start.elf not found
Firmware not found
SD boot failed
BOOT_STOPPED: 0x00000001 0x0

I removed the SD card from the Pi4 and plugged it into my Qubes OS Linux machine. When I clicked on the SD card directory, the following message appeared:

(BOOT_MNJRO)
Unable to access location
Error mounting /dev/xvdi1 at /run/media/user/BOOT_MNJRO: can’t read superblock on /dev/xvdi1

(ROOT_MNJRO)
Unable to access location
Error mounting /dev/xvdi2 at /run/media/user/ROOT_MNJRO: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/xvdi2, missing codepage or helper program, or other error.

I also plugged the SD card into a laptop with Windows. It seems the files with my OS are still there. It looks like the Manjaro OS is still in the Pi4’s SD card, but the system does not know how to boot.

I do not want to flash the SD card because I have personal files I would like to save. Do you have an idea of how to boot my system?

Have a great day!

Create another sdcard with a fresh downloaded copy.

You cannot boot the sdcard as the filesystem has been damaged.

You can use a bootable rescue system like SystemRescue - Download to boot your laptop. The iso is arch-based using xfce so it should be familiar.

You can use testdisk or photorec for the recovery.

You will need a removable device with - at very least - free space same as the size of the sdcard.

1 Like

Thank you very much for your answer linux-aarhus

I am sorry I took long to reply.

I will try to rewrite what you said to see if I understood well what to do:

linux-aarhus
You cannot boot the sdcard as the filesystem has been damaged.

There is no way to simply add the autoboot.txt and other files to boot up normally right?

linux-aarhus
You can use a bootable rescue system like [SystemRescue - Download ] to boot your laptop. The iso is arch-based using xfce so it should be familiar.

  1. Is that mandatory? Or can I just use testdisk or photorec for the recovery?

linux-aarhus
You will need a removable device with - at very least - free space same as the size of the sdcard.

Am I going to be able to recover my OS configuration or just my files?

Could you please tell me which one should I first check with testdisk, BOOT_MNJRO (FAT16 > 32M) or ROOT_MNJRO (Linux)?