Obscure Tech Support: New install on Raspberry Pi has a blank screen

01 Aug, 2022

Sometimes I'll have a problem that takes me forever to search for a solution. I find it, make the fix, then promptly forget the solution. Next time it happens, I perform the search all over again.

Problem

Recently, I installed Raspbian bullseye onto a Raspberry Pi 4. On bootup, the system would resize and then restart. After the restart, text would briefly flash across the screen with the logo. Then, the rainbow screen would turn on, and then nothing. The system would freeze with a line cursor at the top left of the screen.

You are probably having this problem, too. A lot of people are and there are a bunch of websites with lists of 5, 10, 15 things you can do to fix the problem. None of them worked for me. I went through countless forums posts. None of them helped. Eventually, I fixed and it and here is the secret.

Solution

After the system has resized on the SD Card and the system is frozen, turn off the system and remove the SD Card from the Raspberry Pi. Insert it into a working computer and open the boot drive on the SD card. Open "config.txt" in a text editor.

Scroll down to this section:

# Enable DRM VC4 V3D driver
dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d
max_framebuffers=2

Comment out the dtoverlay line, so that it looks like this:

# Enable DRM VC4 V3D driver
#dtoverlay=vc4-kms-v3d
max_framebuffers=2

Save and try it in the Raspberry Pi again. It should work. If it doesn't, happy searching.