Booting and Flashing Problem

[FFarzin]

Hi, good afternoon,

I’m reaching out for urgent support regarding the Jetson Orin Nano Developer Kit. My colleague has been stuck troubleshooting these devices for months with little progress. Despite contacting NVIDIA support multiple times, the only guidance received was a link to a YouTube video, which hasn’t resolved the problem.

This is a critical and expensive research project, and the delays have significantly hindered our progress. I’ve been put in charge to fix the issue, but I must admit that I have no prior background in this type of work. I’d appreciate detailed guidance to resolve the problems I’ve been encountering.

This is a summary of what I’ve done so far:

I followed the instructions on the NVIDIA website to install the SDK on a memory card, which I then inserted into the Jetson Orin Nano.
When I powered it up, it consistently booted into the UEFI shell instead of the operating system. The screen displays the following:
Press ESC in 1 second to skip startup.nsh or any other key to continue.

When I attempted to run: fs0:\EFI\BOOT\bootaa64.efi
I received an error message stating: bootaa64.efi is not recognized as an internal or external command.

I thought maybe the device might be malfunctioning, so I tried a brand-new device and encountered the exact same issue.

Then, I installed Ubuntu in a VirtualBox VM on my Windows laptop and downloaded the NVIDIA SDK Manager on the Ubuntu VM.
I connected the Jetson Orin Nano to my laptop using a USB-C to USB-A cable and followed the flashing instructions. Despite multiple attempts, the device did not appear in lsusb on the Ubuntu VM. and it was not detected by the SDK Manager.

On both Jetson devices, when connected to my Windows laptop, I receive the following error on Windows: USB Device Not Recognized

Please note that I’m new to working with this type of hardware and software, so I’d greatly appreciate detailed instructions.

Thank you in advance for your help.

[cyato]

Hi ffarzin,
Thank you for reaching out and compiling the detailed report.

The screen displays the following:
Press ESC in 1 second to skip startup.nsh or any other key to continue.

It sounds like you entered into UEFI Interactive Shell, hinting you did not insert the SD card or the SD card was not flashed correctly.
Did you use Balena Ethcer to flash the NVIDIA provided SD card image (JP513-orin-nano-sd-card-image_b29.zip) on your SD card on your Windows PC?

If possible, it would be great if you can try following this initial setup guide and tell us where your experience diverges from what’s documented.

🚀 Initial Setup Guide - Jetson Orin Nano - NVIDIA Jetson AI Lab

The SD card flashing and insertion is documented in Step 2️⃣ of this guide.
You should be able to follow through as demonstrated in the associated walk-through video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-U_zGUwAPQ.

Then, I installed Ubuntu in a VirtualBox VM on my Windows laptop and downloaded the NVIDIA SDK Manager on the Ubuntu VM.

If you are to take this method, there are a couple of things you need to do.

First, you need to set the Jetson Orin Nano Developer Kit to boot into recovery mode (while running SDK Manager) by inserting a jumper pin and configuring the VirtualBox USB setting to always connect your Jetson Orin Nano Developer Kit to the VM (bypassing the host).
And then, once the flashing starts, you need to manually disconnect and reconnect USB cable at the right timings (because for some reason the VM does not sense the Jetson gets reset while the host does).

I have demonstrated this in this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uj_uiZe8xbY).
However it is very tricky manual process, so I would recommend first following the above initial guide which only requires SD card (and 3 reboots).

Please feel free to let me know if you need any additional help.

[FFarzin]

Hi,
thank you so much! Your instructions were really helpful.