More details....
Pi boots off a small FAT partition, with the OS residing on a large ext4 partition. Windows does not understand ext4 file systems and nukes it, which trashes your OS if you let it "fix the microSD card". It is not recoverable at this point.
Option 1: Install from Windows PC using the Imager software, and then don't let Windows do anything to the microSD. It will not see the second partition as valid and offer to "fix" it for you.
Option 2: Install from a civilized OS that understand more filesystems. Any computer running Linux fits this bill. Later models of Pi can even self install over a network connection. A functional Pi makes a dandy installer of OS's for other Pis.
Pi boots off a small FAT partition, with the OS residing on a large ext4 partition. Windows does not understand ext4 file systems and nukes it, which trashes your OS if you let it "fix the microSD card". It is not recoverable at this point.
Option 1: Install from Windows PC using the Imager software, and then don't let Windows do anything to the microSD. It will not see the second partition as valid and offer to "fix" it for you.
Option 2: Install from a civilized OS that understand more filesystems. Any computer running Linux fits this bill. Later models of Pi can even self install over a network connection. A functional Pi makes a dandy installer of OS's for other Pis.
Statistics: Posted by bjtheone — Fri Jul 18, 2025 7:30 pm