How to reaktivat license after sd-card error on Raspberry Pi

Submitted by NP_Swedendro on #1

Hi 
My Raspberry Pi's SD card failed.
I've installed the latest version, but now I can't get my license to work.
What are the steps to reset a Raspberry Pi 5B to factory settings? With an existing license

Best regards, Nils Petter

Submitted by Michael on Tue, 2026/06/23 - 08:19

#2

You can just paste in the same license key you received via email when you purchased originally.

Submitted by NP_Swedendro on Tue, 2026/06/23 - 21:59

#3

Hi again
We had a thunderstorm, which may have caused the SD card to fail.
When I boot up with a new SD card and a fresh installation, the server doesn’t appear as a wireless device—it doesn’t show up on the Wi-Fi network.
I’ve tried booting into Raspberry OS, and the Wi-Fi works then.
I took a screenshot of the startup screen: brcmfmac mmc1:001:1: direct firmware load for brcm/brcmfmac43455-sdio.raspberrypi,5-model-b-bin failed with error -2
See screenshotBootscreen RB Pi 5

Best regards

Submitted by Michael on Wed, 2026/06/24 - 09:01

#4

That message error can be ignored,it is no problem.

I double check this by doing:

  1. Format an SD card using the sdcard formatter software (uncheck quick format so its slower and more through)
  2. Downloaded the pi5 initial img from here
  3. Wrote the img file with win32disk imager
  4. Booted the pi and saw the CloudHub_xxx wifi network was there. 

  5. Joined that network and saw the server listed in the virtualhere client

    Give that a try. Perhaps your new sdcard is corrupted or something

Submitted by NP_Swedendro on Wed, 2026/06/24 - 17:22

#5

Hello
It's working now. I used EaseUS Partition Master before to format the SD card, and after I used SD Card Formatter, it worked.
Thanks for the quick solution