Let's try to take each of the steps here separately as the title seems to mismatch with the text a bit.
red light - This will only happen if you have an image on the roboRIO. In the image, it checks the rails for shorts and makes the power LED red. It will also send status to the Driver Station (check the lightning tab that should also have a red bar next to it) and it'll tell you which rail it's detecting a short on. We can focus attention there.
I'm going to make some assumptions here. Correct me if I'm wrong. You're trying to image a roboRIO you had ready for a past game to get this year's image on the roboRIO. You're running into issues with that (and it's what you specifically care about right now) and you're looking at anything to potentially explain why. The red power LED is a potential sign so you're focusing on this though you'd prefer focus on the image. Is that correct?
If so, I'd want to know what happens when you try to boot into safe mode. What do you see on the LEDs? If you have it flashing the STATUS LED 3x, what happens when you try to flash via USB in that state?
