Jetson Orin Nano: No Display After UEFI Reset – Board Unresponsive

[dthonangi2023]

I’m using a Jetson Orin Nano Developer Kit (8GB). After I selected “Reset Settings” from the UEFI configuration menu, the board stopped displaying any output (HDMI/DP), even with a known-good SD card flashed with JetPack 5.x, 6.0, 6.1, and 6.2.

Symptoms:

• Board powers on: fan spins and LED lights up.
• No UEFI screen or OS boot appears on the display (tested with multiple monitors and cables).
• Holding ESC during boot does nothing.

I also tried flashing the board via SDK Manager, but it fails with:

“The connected Jetson device is not ready for flash. The issue is likely related to a non-optimal USB connection.”

(Image of error: see attached)

I’ve used different USB-C cables, ports, and even tried recovery mode via jumper/screwdriver method. No change. The device appears dead aside from the power LED and fan.

Questions:

• Is it possible the UEFI reset bricked the board or corrupted QSPI?
• Can I reflash QSPI without needing UEFI access?
• Any way to recover the display output or force a bootloader recovery?

This is a new board and worked fine before the UEFI reset. Any guidance or help would be much appreciated!

[jameskuo]

Looks pretty similar to the issue mentioned Here: Assertion issue in UEFI during boot

In some cases, reset UEFI settings might cause the Nano not able to boot, unless you re-flash the QSPI. Instructions can be found the post mentioned above.

[dthonangi2023]

Update: I’ve tried both methods to recover my Jetson Orin Nano (8GB) after the UEFI “Reset Settings” issue:

1. QSPI-only flash:

sudo ./flash.sh -c bootloader/generic/cfg/flash_t234_qspi.xml jetson-orin-nano-devkit internal

• This failed with Error: failed to generate images and tegrarcm timeouts.

2. Full flash (QSPI + SD card):

sudo ./tools/kernel_flash/l4t_initrd_flash.sh --external-device mmcblk1p1 \
  -c tools/kernel_flash/flash_l4t_external.xml \
  -p "-c bootloader/t186ref/cfg/flash_t234_qspi.xml --erase-all" \
  --showlogs --network usb0 jetson-orin-nano-devkit internal

• This also failed. The system couldn’t find /dev/mmcblk* and returned multiple timeouts and board info errors.

I’ve verified:

• Jetson is in recovery mode (lsusb shows 0955:7523)

• USB cables and ports are good

• Host PC is Ubuntu 20.04 with SDK Manager 2.1 and JetPack 6.2

Still unable to flash. Attached are photos of the logs/errors from both attempts.

Any help or additional steps to force QSPI recovery would be appreciated.

---

Would you like help isolating the exact cause of the tmp.bct open failed or generating the image failure? It’s usually recoverable.

[jameskuo]

Hi:
Failing on QSPI flashing is strange.
Please power cycle the Nano board and try again. That should fix timeout in USB write issue.
Also, please share serial log for debug. Ref

[dthonangi2023]

Hi, thanks again for your help.

I’ve tried the suggested steps power cycled the Jetson Orin Nano, reconnected everything, confirmed it’s in recovery mode (lsusb shows 0955:7523), and used both l4t_initrd_flash.sh and flash.sh with JetPack 6.2.

Unfortunately, I’m still getting:

ERROR: might be timeout in USB write.
Error: Return value 3
Parsing board information failed.

Here’s what I’ve already done:

• Verified good USB-C data cable (not charge-only)
• Used rear USB ports (no hub)
• Tried multiple flash attempts with and without SD card
• Confirmed JetPack 6.2 files were extracted correctly

I’ll be setting up serial debug using a USB-to-TTL cable soon and will share boot logs once I have them.

Meanwhile, do you recommend trying a QSPI-only flash command as a workaround?

Appreciate your continued support!

[dthonangi2023]

I’ve attached the serial debug log captured from the Jetson Orin Nano using the USB-to-TTL adapter.
From the log, it looks like the board is reaching UEFI firmware but not finding a valid OS to boot. There’s also an assertion failure in the FvbNorFlash driver, which could point to flash corruption or missing firmware.
Please let me know if you’d like me to flash JetPack to the SD card or perform any additional steps.
jetson_log.txt (36.0 KB)

I’ve reflashed the 256GB SD card with JetPack 6.2 and powered on the Jetson Orin Nano. There was no display output even after waiting for 10 minutes, so i connected the serial debug interface again to check the boot process.

The attached log was captured after flashing the SD card with JetPack 6.2. Please have a look and let me know the next steps.
jetson_log1.txt (36.0 KB)

[jameskuo]

Hi:
From the log you provide, the issue is Assert 3 in the mentioned post.
In this case, l4t_initrd_flash shouldn’t be able to flash. Nano will not able to boot during the flashing process.
From the log you provided, the flashing process is not finished, the UEFI is still in Jetpack 6.0. I think you’ll need to run sudo ./flash.sh -c bootloader/generic/cfg/flash_t234_qspi.xml jetson-orin-nano-devkit internal to flash QSPI and make sure the flashing process is finished without timeout issue.
Also, please share the serial log during flashing.

If the cmd is running into timeout, power cycle the Nano device might help.

[dthonangi2023]

Hi,

Thanks for the clarification. I removed the SD card and reattempted flashing with JetPack 6.2 using the command you provided:

sudo ./flash.sh -c bootloader/generic/cfg/flash_t234_qspi.xml jetson-orin-nano-devkit internal

The board was in recovery mode, but I still encountered the same USB write timeout issue. I also power cycled the Jetson and used different cables, but no success.

I’m attaching the images of logs captured during the process. Please let me know if you need further info or if I should try flashing JetPack 5.1.3 first as a fallback to initialize QSPI.

[jameskuo]

Hi:
I never tried to flash QSPI using BSP from SDK manager. Please try:

1. Download Driver Package (BSP) and Sample Root Filesystem from download center Link
2. Follow the step from Link to setup flashing env.
3. After setup (sudo ./apply_binaries.sh), flash QSPI again:
   sudo ./flash.sh -c bootloader/generic/cfg/flash_t234_qspi.xml jetson-orin-nano-devkit internal

[dthonangi2023]

Hi,

Thanks for the suggestion. I followed the steps to manually set up the flashing environment using the BSP and Sample Root Filesystem from the download center. I ran sudo ./apply_binaries.sh successfully, and then attempted to flash QSPI using:

sudo ./flash.sh -c bootloader/generic/cfg/flash_t234_qspi.xml jetson-orin-nano-devkit internal

However, the flash keeps failing with a USB write timeout error. I’ve already retried using multiple USB cables and different ports (including rear ports), and confirmed the device is properly in recovery mode (lsusb shows NVIDIA Corp. APX). Still hitting the same issue.

[jameskuo]

Please try to disable autosuspend on the host PC, though it should be done in the scripts.

Cannot flash Jetson AGX Orin (JetPack 5.1.1)

Hi @MatzzV Please try to disable autosuspend on your host PC and see if the flash works. sudo -s echo -1 > /sys/module/usbcore/parameters/autosuspend

[dthonangi2023]

Thank you so much for your help and guidance throughout the setup process. Everything is working smoothly now on the Jetson Orin Nano. I really appreciate your support!!!