[ISSUE] Lakka boots into a grey menu with no text

Libretro Lakka
#1

I recently put lakka on an older PC, it is running an Intel motherboard and an intel pentium 4.

When it boots up it comes to a all grey screen with the icons in a different shade of grey. On some occasions I was able to boot it up and see a glimpse of the normal colorful interface but it would not last. There is no text visible so there is no foreseeable way t scroll over to setting to try to change via the graphical interface.

If anyone could provide some information and/or solutions for this that would be awesome.

#2

I’ve just run into a similar problem after trying to run Reicast which crashed lakka. I then shut down the PC and now it won’t boot up at all, won’t even let me log into it through my network. Wtf? So Reicast kills my entire lakka installation? I don’t get it. I think I may be done with this project.

I should add that I also updated to the latest Lakka build through the online updater before playing Reicast, might have something to do with it. This is really frustrating, I don’t want to have to reinstall Lakka all over again and spend an hour coping all my roms over to my hard drive again. Wtf happened? Fck this stupid ass update that fcked everything up. I can’t even access through SSH.

#3

Well, sorry for your frustration guys. The PC port is a difficult one, there are so much different PC hardware.

Here is a workaround that may fix your problem: let try, by any way, to remove as much things as possible from the second partition. Except your ROMs and your saves and your playlist. The problem can’t come from that.

The first thing I remove, when Lakka is broken by an update, is my retroarch.cfg. There are also the folders named .cache and .config.

If you can remove all that, there are chances that your Lakka will boot again or work again. It’s like a factory reset.

#4

I recently put lakka on an older PC, it is running an Intel motherboard and an intel pentium 4.

What is your graphic card ?

#5

[QUOTE=Kivutar;36157]Well, sorry for your frustration guys. The PC port is a difficult one, there are so much different PC hardware.

Here is a workaround that may fix your problem: let try, by any way, to remove as much things as possible from the second partition. Except your ROMs and your saves and your playlist. The problem can’t come from that.

The first thing I remove, when Lakka is broken by an update, is my retroarch.cfg. There are also the folders named .cache and .config.

If you can remove all that, there are chances that your Lakka will boot again or work again. It’s like a factory reset.[/QUOTE]

I apologize for my outburst, I just did not expect anything like this to ever happen. I’ve done that before, where if I run into problems I simply erase the .config file and everything resets. However I’ve always done this through SSH, how do I go about doing this without even being able to connect to the PC through my network?

#6

I’m running a ATI RADEON* XPRESS 200 based graphics according to Intel’s site. I did have a Nvidia vanta 16 accelerated graphics card installed but it would not even display anything on the screen when that was installed. I would guess that potentially there is an issue in graphics card support but I would need someone to confirm this.

#7

@roadkill, yeah, on other hardware I would say just edit the command line to enable tty. But here on PC, I was never able to access syslinux prompt (except in the live version). I have no ideas, except booting a live ubuntu to access your partitions. We really need to find a way to allow PC users to tweak the bootloader easily.

Anyways, I think these instabilities come from two sources:

  • The complex union mounts we’re doing with OverlayFS to enable overriding some folders
  • Our inability to update the retroarch.cfg without loosing the choices of the user

I don’t think I can do anything about problem #1. However, I think I’m going to remove all that union mount thing, and also disable all the core/assets/info/shader updating. Because users can get those updates anway by the regular lakka updates. I’m not sure yet if it’s the way to go, but it may be.

#8

I’m running a ATI RADEON* XPRESS 200 based graphics according to Intel’s site. I did have a Nvidia vanta 16 accelerated graphics card installed but it would not even display anything on the screen when that was installed. I would guess that potentially there is an issue in graphics card support but I would need someone to confirm this.

It didn’t work with the nvidia card because nvidia agp support is not enabled.

Can you try with thenightly build because I tried with an ATI Radeon Xpress 200M and it worked.

#9

[QUOTE=Kivutar;36157]Well, sorry for your frustration guys. The PC port is a difficult one, there are so much different PC hardware.

Here is a workaround that may fix your problem: let try, by any way, to remove as much things as possible from the second partition. Except your ROMs and your saves and your playlist. The problem can’t come from that.

The first thing I remove, when Lakka is broken by an update, is my retroarch.cfg. There are also the folders named .cache and .config.

If you can remove all that, there are chances that your Lakka will boot again or work again. It’s like a factory reset.[/QUOTE]

So am I better off buying the newest Raspberry Pi 3 and using Lakka on that instead of on a PC? I mainly just want to use it for N64 and PS1 emulation. With a Raspberry Pi 3, will I completely avoid running into this problem again where an update disables my Lakka installation? I’d also like to use an N64 controller too, I have the usb converter adapter that allows me to use N64 and GCN controllers on my PC. I also have an adapter for PS1 controllers to usb.

#10

Thanks for the insight guys. I guess I’ll start all over again from scratch and not download updates anymore out of the blue until I get more information on them from here. I just couldn’t help but get fairly upset about my setup essentially getting bricked. I still think this is a neat project but I’ve since gotten into OpenELEC after what happen and want to keep that PC I was using for Lakka as an HTPC now. Guess I’ll just get another cheap used Dell originating from an office or school :wink: