Just in case anybody has a similar issue.
I have multiple RapsberryPi5s used for CCTV, each has an NVME drive mounted on a Rapsberry Pi M2 HAT+. One of them was a bit dodgy from the start, but mostly worked. A few days ago I couldn't connect to see the camera, and though I could connect by VNC, but the password wasn't recognised. When I made a local connection, the system booted up, but the screen wasn't right, the menu bar didn't load up, and if I did anything, the system locked up. It was a consistent problem through multiple reboots. I disconnected the NVME drive and everything worked fine from the SD card. I had a spare Pi5 and swapped out, but the symptoms persisted. I ordered a couple of spare M2 HAT+ boards, which arrived today. I swapped out the M2 HAT+ board, but the problem was just the same. I checked the NVME drive in Windows and it didn't report any error. Despite Windows saying that the NVME drive was OK I was close to blaming it anyway, but as a last shot I swapped the ribbon cable between the Pi5 and the M2 HAT+. It fixed the problem, so the ribbon cable can be an issue. You might say that I hadn't connected it correctly, but it had been disconnected and reconnected multiple times as I swapped stuff around. And as soon as I used the new ribbon cable everything worked.
I have multiple RapsberryPi5s used for CCTV, each has an NVME drive mounted on a Rapsberry Pi M2 HAT+. One of them was a bit dodgy from the start, but mostly worked. A few days ago I couldn't connect to see the camera, and though I could connect by VNC, but the password wasn't recognised. When I made a local connection, the system booted up, but the screen wasn't right, the menu bar didn't load up, and if I did anything, the system locked up. It was a consistent problem through multiple reboots. I disconnected the NVME drive and everything worked fine from the SD card. I had a spare Pi5 and swapped out, but the symptoms persisted. I ordered a couple of spare M2 HAT+ boards, which arrived today. I swapped out the M2 HAT+ board, but the problem was just the same. I checked the NVME drive in Windows and it didn't report any error. Despite Windows saying that the NVME drive was OK I was close to blaming it anyway, but as a last shot I swapped the ribbon cable between the Pi5 and the M2 HAT+. It fixed the problem, so the ribbon cable can be an issue. You might say that I hadn't connected it correctly, but it had been disconnected and reconnected multiple times as I swapped stuff around. And as soon as I used the new ribbon cable everything worked.
Statistics: Posted by whatsmypi — Thu Feb 05, 2026 3:32 pm