Hacking The CTRNAND FIRM is invalid or corrupted.

ununique

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Recently I got a refurbished N3DS and it came with 11.3, so I used the Soundhax method on the guide to install boot9strap, Luma3DS, update to 11.5, etc. Everything had been working well until yesterday when the system crashed in the middle of a CIAngel download and a screen came up that said:

"An error has occurred:
The CTRNAND FIRM is invalid or corrupted.
Press any button to shutdown"

I've went into GodMode9 and restored my SysNAND backup a couple of times now but I keep getting crashes followed by that same message at random points. (And once without even doing anything - my first boot after one of the SysNAND restores went straight to the error screen.) I've tried multiple MicroSD cards and have used H2testw to make sure the cards aren't bad but no changes.

Any ideas on how to fix this? Or is it possible it's bad NAND and I need to send the system in to Nintendo? Not sure that it will help, but below is a picture of one of the crashes that led to the "CTRNAND FIRM is invalid or corrupted" message.

2017-09-18 16.17.10.jpg
 

ununique

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Make a new backup then try a CTR transfer using Decrypt9, see if you still get errors
Thanks for the suggestion but now it seems to be crashing on me before I can even get a backup or restore completed. At this point I tried just running the uninstall scripts from the guide to take it back to stock but even that's giving me errors.
 

Quantumcat

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Thanks for the suggestion but now it seems to be crashing on me before I can even get a backup or restore completed. At this point I tried just running the uninstall scripts from the guide to take it back to stock but even that's giving me errors.
That's a really bad idea. It can't be B9S' fault. Removing CFW could mean you have problems and no way to fix them.
 

ununique

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That's a really bad idea. It can't be B9S' fault. Removing CFW could mean you have problems and no way to fix them.
My thinking was that I might just need to send it in for repair, which is why I finally tried the uninstall script.

can you post the errors?
When it crashes, it's a data abort exception similar to the one in the picture in the first post. I also tried updating B9S (I have 1.2 installed and 1.3 is out now) but I get a "FIRM crypto fail" error from SafeB9SInstaller.

It might have kept crashing, even if you'd kept it stock. How long did you use it for while it was unmodded?
Not long at all, I intended to mod it when I ordered it.
 

Gcentrex

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Alright, it's starting to look like that's going to be what I'll have to do. Thanks for your help! :)

I'm going to guess your loading godmode9 via Luma's chain loader, instead use godmode9 as the boot.firm and make one last try at recovering your system and make sure your using godmode9 v1.4
 

BL4Z3D247

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@ununique, regarding the "FIRM crypto fail" error SafeB9SInstaller gives you: if the above suggestion doesn't work here is something I found that will hopefully help you get the installer working.

  1. This error is almost certainly unrelated to any kind of CTRTransfer as that error is unrelated to the CTRNAND partition.
  2. This error is caused by an inability of SafeB9SInstaller to access the SHA register (a hash of the first 0x90 bytes of the encrypted OTP), which is needs to decrypt the secret sector in order to restore it to stock.
  3. I'd wager this error is due to some kind of non-standard or old arm9loaderhax implementation being installed.
  4. This error can always be fixed just by placing the aeskeydb.bin from Updating to boot9strap in the /boot9strap/ folder on your SD card, then running the installer again. This fix works because this aeskeydb.bin contains the OTP key and IV from Boot9 to allow us to encrypt and hash the copy of the first 0x90 bytes of the decrypted OTP that Boot9 places in ITCM on boot. This means we do not need access to the SHA register at all.
  5. Bonus: This also means that having Boot9 allows us to install A9LH without downgrading to 2.1.0. This is, of course, made irrelevant by the fact that sighax and boot9strap exist.
From Updating to boot9strap:

N1fEODF.png
 

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