Hacking SWITCH NOOB PARADISE - Ask questions here

[Blythe93]

And then I come at this point, launching CFW: There is nothing listed in the list when I click "Launch".


I'm doing something wrong, but I can't figure out what it is, the microSD now looks like this:
- atmosphere (folder)
- bootloader (folder)
- emuMMC (folder)
- switch (folder)
- hbmenu.nro
- hekate_ipl.ini

hekate_ipl.ini is in the wrong folder, it should be in bootloader folder instead (mentioned here under Instructions, 4. step).

 

[dreampeppers99]

As @BigOnYa said, you should stick to the written guides. In addition to the guide he linked above, I'd suggest the PC method. Also note that you don't really need to update your sysNAND in order to dump firmware files from it in order to update the firmware on your emuNAND - you can find files on a certain site we aren't allowed to link here (quick Google search is all it takes to find it). Just download the files and extract them to your SD card in a folder that you'll easily find once launch Daybreak on your emuNAND.

Also, if you have a custom theme installed, uninstall it.
If you have cleared your prodinfo in the past, restore it. If you have a blank prodinfo, Atmosphere will crash as soon as you connect to the Internet. Make sure to set up DNS MITM instead in order to block Nintendo servers.

Post automatically merged: Feb 13, 2024

That isn't really effective unless you blocked Nintendo servers with DNS MITM or some other way.


Which firmware do you have on unmodded OS? You might have updated your unmodded OS to 17.0.1 and run into this issue that was introduced with firmware 17.0.0 few months ago.

You can fix it by updating your CFW to the latest version first. I'd recommend using the PC method instead of Switch method because AIO updaters, while convenient, may cause even more issues. After that, boot into Atmosphere 1.6.1 or higher (1.6.2 is currently the latest one) on sysNAND. If it works, great - now you can boot into emuNAND without problem. Don't forget to update your emuNAND's firmware via Daybreak after that. You can follow this or this guide. Note that you can find firmware files on a certain site we aren't allowed to link here (quick Google search is all it takes to find it). Just download the files and extract them to your SD card in a folder (name it firmware or something) that you'll easily find once launch Daybreak on your emuNAND.

Additionally, make sure to get the latest sigpatches and/or sys-patch module (which requires Tesla + nx-ovlloader) as well, as you'll need those for game backups to work.
Some games may stop working and will probably need to be reinstalled. I personally use DBI Installer, sthetix made a great video explaining its features and how to use it.

Good luck!

Thanks @Blythe93 it worked! (just copied the updated files)

> That isn't really effective unless you blocked Nintendo servers with DNS MITM or some other way.

I'm curious about this, even when the switch is on airplane mode is it possible that it gets updated?

Also, what happened to me usually happens when i forgot to charge the ns, do you know any explanation for it?

 

[impeeza]

Thanks @Blythe93 it worked! (just copied the updated files)

> That isn't really effective unless you blocked Nintendo servers with DNS MITM or some other way.

I'm curious about this, even when the switch is on airplane mode is it possible that it gets updated?

Also, what happened to me usually happens when i forgot to charge the ns, do you know any explanation for it?

yes you can upgrade offline using Daybreak homebrew included on Atmosphère.

 

[Blythe93]

even when the switch is on airplane mode is it possible that it gets updated?

Unless you can surely say that airplane mode will stay on and won't be turned off by accident, it won't be updated. It's easy enough to disable airplane mode, therefore mistakes happen. With DNS MITM, you should be safe unless Nintendo adds a new domain that isn't blocked by the filter list (I'm yet to see that happen personally). As for the 90DNS, unless it goes down, you're safe (again, yet to see that happen).

Also, what happened to me usually happens when i forgot to charge the ns, do you know any explanation for it?

If your battery gets drained and you charge your Switch afterwards, it'll probably boot into original firmware. If the update happened during charging, it means that it has means to connect to the Internet. If you aren't using your Switch for playing legit online games on sysNAND original firmware, I'd suggest that you delete all wireless connections, disable auto updates and sending error information. If you're using wired connection (on the OLED dock or through a USB LAN adapter on the old dock), I believe that there are settings to disable that as well (or set up 90DNS), but I'm not sure since I'm yet to use wired connection on my Switch.

In any case, you shouldn't let your Switch battery run out. I usually charge mine around time it hits 30% or so.

 

[bupeapoop]

If you have a RAW partition based EmuNAND you need to backup that using a tool like EmuTool or dd (in linux) and also backup all files on the visible partition of the card.

If you have a File Based EmuNAND or you don't have one, simply transfer the files from a card to another.

Formatting es FAT32 should be done on Hekate's NYX for the best performance.

I personally keeps a copy of my sd card on my secondary HHD and update it using Free FILESYNC anh NYX's UMS once at month. So if I need to have the SD on a new one, or go back to a point in time simply copy the backup to the new card (I am using File Based EmuNAND) and that's all

Thanks for taking the time to get back to me.

Your answer is leads me onto one more question. With me being new to Jailbreaking, I'm unsure whether or not I have a RAW partition based EmuNAND or a File Based EmuNAND? I followed the NH Switch Guide so whatever way they set it up is the way I've went ahead and set it up.

I do like the ide a of your backup SD Card being backed up once a month using Free FileSYNC and NYX's UMS. I'll need to look further into this going forward.

 

[impeeza]

That guide do not create a EmuNAND and make all on the SysNAND, so if you only follow that guide you don't have EmuNAND so by copying the full content of the cart to another place will make a backup. and restoring on to a new card will allow you to get bak in the state of that moment.

 

[Blythe93]

That guide do not create a EmuNAND and make all on the SysNAND

They have guides for creating emuNAND and sysNAND CFW, with emuNAND being the recommended one, as it can be seen here.
Since you probably have partition based emuNAND, I suggest following this guide. I suggest going with the NxNandManager method and, if you're only making a backup to restore later, you can stop at step 9. Otherwise, if you want to move the backup to a new SD card, continue the process til the end.

Additionally, I remember editing one of my .ini files, so if your games do not work anymore on the SD card with the restored backup, path to the emulated Nintendo folder (sometimes called Emutendo) needs to be updated based on the folder structure on your SD card. I can help you out with it if you get stuck.

I'm unsure whether or not I have a RAW partition based EmuNAND or a File Based EmuNAND? I followed the NH Switch Guide so whatever way they set it up is the way I've went ahead and set it up.

Definitely partition based emuNAND. If you're using Windows and you plug your SD card into the PC, Windows might complaining about an unreadable drive, asking you to format it before you can use it. Do not format it, that's your hidden partition emuNAND. The other drive that appears is where you put your Atmosphere, Hekate, all the homebrew apps, modules and alike.

 

[dreampeppers99]

Unless you can surely say that airplane mode will stay on and won't be turned off by accident, it won't be updated. It's easy enough to disable airplane mode, therefore mistakes happen. With DNS MITM, you should be safe unless Nintendo adds a new domain that isn't blocked by the filter list (I'm yet to see that happen personally). As for the 90DNS, unless it goes down, you're safe (again, yet to see that happen).


If your battery gets drained and you charge your Switch afterwards, it'll probably boot into original firmware. If the update happened during charging, it means that it has means to connect to the Internet. If you aren't using your Switch for playing legit online games on sysNAND original firmware, I'd suggest that you delete all wireless connections, disable auto updates and sending error information. If you're using wired connection (on the OLED dock or through a USB LAN adapter on the old dock), I believe that there are settings to disable that as well (or set up 90DNS), but I'm not sure since I'm yet to use wired connection on my Switch.

In any case, you shouldn't let your Switch battery run out. I usually charge mine around time it hits 30% or so.

Thanks @Blythe93 let's say the system is totally offline, is it possible for a new game to update the system as in the wii era?

 

[Blythe93]

Thanks @Blythe93 let's say the system is totally offline, is it possible for a new game to update the system as in the wii era?

As far as I'm aware, it's not possible. If the game requires higher firmware, it'll just result in an error saying that system needs to be updated in order to play the game. Some installers are able to downgrade the firmware requirement during installation, but even that's a hit or miss.

I've heard that it's possible to update your firmware via cartridge, but I can't find a definite proof of that. As far as I can tell, it's not possible to update your system firmware via game cartridge because they always contain what they refer to as the base game and, optionally, an additional game update (not a firmware update) and that's pretty much it.

I remember that you could update your Wii offline by inserting a game which requires higher version, which was kinda neat to have - your game would work no matter which firmware you had installed.

Sadly, that makes collecting physical Switch games nowadays a tiny bit problematic due to the fact that you need to connect to the Nintendo servers in order to update your system firmware to the latest available. Probably won't be a problem for many years to come, but stuff can happen and render your console, if unmodded, being unable to update to the firmware your game requires you to be on.

Someone else can correct me if I'm wrong and I'd like to be wrong, as a matter of fact.

 

[Draxzelex]

As far as I'm aware, it's not possible. If the game requires higher firmware, it'll just result in an error saying that system needs to be updated in order to play the game. Some installers are able to downgrade the firmware requirement during installation, but even that's a hit or miss.

I've heard that it's possible to update your firmware via cartridge, but I can't find a definite proof of that. As far as I can tell, it's not possible to update your system firmware via game cartridge because they always contain what they refer to as the base game and, optionally, an additional game update (not a firmware update) and that's pretty much it.

I remember that you could update your Wii offline by inserting a game which requires higher version, which was kinda neat to have - your game would work no matter which firmware you had installed.

Sadly, that makes collecting physical Switch games nowadays a tiny bit problematic due to the fact that you need to connect to the Nintendo servers in order to update your system firmware to the latest available. Probably won't be a problem for many years to come, but stuff can happen and render your console, if unmodded, being unable to update to the firmware your game requires you to be on.

Someone else can correct me if I'm wrong and I'd like to be wrong, as a matter of fact.

Ask and you shall be answered. In the early days of the Switch scene, it was commonly known that Nintendo Switch game cartridges housed firmware updates. The evidence for this comes from rajkosto in his ChoiDujourNX thread. He lists several common games with every firmware available at the time. Back then, that info was more useful because this was before Deja Vu and other hypothetical exploits were released so lower firmware versions held higher value as there was no telling what the future may bring. But as time went on and Deja Vu was released along with no other exploits, many people gave up waiting for a new exploit and just mindlessly updated to the latest firmware. To this day, that information is still kinda useless because after 4.1, there isn't really any valuable firmware worth updating to apart from the newest. That is why people stopped collecting data on what firmware was on what cartridges. If your console was hackable, the firmware was irrelevant and if your console was patched, there was no way to downgrade to a hackable firmware.

 

[RedColoredStars]

Did you try downloading and using the sigpatches from the three cats site? Mine was also green when I downloaded the sigpatches from the thread on the gbaforums but when I used the three cats sigpatches "ctest" turned orange for me.

I just tried them and low and behold ctest turned orange which means the sigpatch for it is working correctly. So now, the question is, what is different about the three cats patches, the patches in the sigpatches topic, and the ones I made myself that make the three cats ones work as intended but not the other two? Hmmmmm. Very interesting.

@Blythe93 @impeeza Any ideas?

Edit: I'll continue this in the sigpatches topic.

 

[dreampeppers99]

As far as I'm aware, it's not possible. If the game requires higher firmware, it'll just result in an error saying that system needs to be updated in order to play the game. Some installers are able to downgrade the firmware requirement during installation, but even that's a hit or miss.

I've heard that it's possible to update your firmware via cartridge, but I can't find a definite proof of that. As far as I can tell, it's not possible to update your system firmware via game cartridge because they always contain what they refer to as the base game and, optionally, an additional game update (not a firmware update) and that's pretty much it.

I remember that you could update your Wii offline by inserting a game which requires higher version, which was kinda neat to have - your game would work no matter which firmware you had installed.

Sadly, that makes collecting physical Switch games nowadays a tiny bit problematic due to the fact that you need to connect to the Nintendo servers in order to update your system firmware to the latest available. Probably won't be a problem for many years to come, but stuff can happen and render your console, if unmodded, being unable to update to the firmware your game requires you to be on.

Someone else can correct me if I'm wrong and I'd like to be wrong, as a matter of fact.

thank you for the full detailed help

 

[Blythe93]

@Blythe93 @impeeza Any ideas?

I've compared the two and with the obvious out of the way i.e. three cats sigpatches having sys-patch and hekate_ipl.ini files, the only difference were between their fs_patches and loader_patches.

fs_patches:

• These are unique to GBATemp's sigpatches:
  1E2C64B1CCE27824999B9DC2276701696C9569CBC607501D65CC1386CE485B65.ips
795F5A5EB0C6779EF2D5763E0052B3FB605C796869FE268F0C58714861EFCAEC.ips
• The rest of the files are shared.

loader_patches:

• These are unique to GBATemp's sigpatches:
  0f3850b7ce489f6a8faee9ad301013f66c74e7c8f8d1b7038ab7fe8ba9d5ac24.ips
4D9C6D6993BF5BF058843BE072C9819598865C79BF87674C63B6D248FA7A0BA4.ips
11733BF70FA36F44C3B83E94668EAF3C748E5EF0F4B986B59945F40BF4F3EE2C.ips
• These are unique to Three Cat's sigpatches:
  4710D7157A50D5B71C1A6942DAA82903FCF5C5FCFD0FDB5F2D9DD2ED418DEB5F.ips
• The rest of the files are shared between the two.

I don't have my Switch at the moment to test it, but I guess that 4710D7157A50D5B71C1A6942DAA82903FCF5C5FCFD0FDB5F2D9DD2ED418DEB5F.ips could be the reason why ctest is Patched on sys-patch. Why there's a difference between the two, I don't know. impeeza probably does something differently when creating his sigpatches so he might know what's going on here.

UPDATE: Even patches.ini files are different between those two different sigpatches, so I doubt that's the only issue here. I've checked the three cat's sigpatches and they indeed work properly according to sys-patch.

 

[RedColoredStars]

UPDATE: Even patches.ini files are different between those two different sigpatches, so I doubt that's the only issue here. I've checked the three cat's sigpatches and they indeed work properly according to sys-patch.

I believe patches.ini files are the same except for the order of some of it's contents. I tried changing around ips files, patches.ini, hekate ini, etc. from the different versions and the ones I created myself. No matter what I interchanged with what else, the one, single file that made sys-patch log change to orange for me was replacing the ctest patch for fw 18 (as that is what both my sysMMC & emuMMC are on), which is 184A3F5734F456D0718FA35D15D8410A9BDFC537.ips. That kinda tells me that If a person wants to use sigpatches only, and wants ctest patched, it's possible that the current ctest sigpatches from impeeza do not work. Otherwise the log would be orange.

Anyway. We should probably continue this in the sigpatches thread.

 

[baobao43]

I have been looking everywhere and still can't find a tutorial for how to use Ninostyle's New character models mod on switch. I am sorry to keep pestering but if anyone can point me in the direction of a link or explain I would greatly appreciate it. This is the mod I want to use. https://www.nexusmods.com/finalfantasy7/mods/4

The Project Omnislash mod is great and all but this art style is much more my preference.

 

[bupeapoop]

They have guides for creating emuNAND and sysNAND CFW, with emuNAND being the recommended one, as it can be seen here.
Since you probably have partition based emuNAND, I suggest following this guide. I suggest going with the NxNandManager method and, if you're only making a backup to restore later, you can stop at step 9. Otherwise, if you want to move the backup to a new SD card, continue the process til the end.

You're right. There's guides for creating both emuNAND and sysNAND CFW. I went with their "Recommended for New Users" option which was emuNAND CFW. It seems this was the wiser of the two options.

Thanks for the guide. This is perfect and exactly what I need. I'm following the process as we speak. I simply need a backup in the event that something goes wrong with my primary SD Card. This has happened once before and I never had a backup SD at the time. I don't plan on making that mistake for the second time.

A couple quick questions in relation to the backup procedure. Do you recommend taking frequent backups (say monthly?) or would it be best to keep things the way they are with this current backup now that I'm at a working baseline? Secondly, should I install my backup games onto my primary SD card AND THEN take a backup or would you advise keeping things simple and install the games again manually onto the backup SD if there comes a time when I ever need to use it?

Additionally, I remember editing one of my .ini files, so if your games do not work anymore on the SD card with the restored backup, path to the emulated Nintendo folder (sometimes called Emutendo) needs to be updated based on the folder structure on your SD card. I can help you out with it if you get stuck.

Can you remember what .ini file this was and what it was you had to edit? I'll take a note for safe keeping in the event this occurs?

Definitely partition based emuNAND. If you're using Windows and you plug your SD card into the PC, Windows might complaining about an unreadable drive, asking you to format it before you can use it. Do not format it, that's your hidden partition emuNAND. The other drive that appears is where you put your Atmosphere, Hekate, all the homebrew apps, modules and alike.

You're right. Whenever I plug my SD card into my Windows machine, it immediately pops up with a message stating that the drive is unreadable and advices me to go ahead and format the drive. I simply choose to ignore this prompt since the SD Card is still readable/writeable.

 

[impeeza]

I believe patches.ini files are the same except for the order of some of it's contents. I tried changing around ips files, patches.ini, hekate ini, etc. from the different versions and the ones I created myself. No matter what I interchanged with what else, the one, single file that made sys-patch log change to orange for me was replacing the ctest patch for fw 18 (as that is what both my sysMMC & emuMMC are on), which is 184A3F5734F456D0718FA35D15D8410A9BDFC537.ips. That kinda tells me that If a person wants to use sigpatches only, and wants ctest patched, it's possible that the current ctest sigpatches from impeeza do not work. Otherwise the log would be orange.


Anyway. We should probably continue this in the sigpatches thread.

Continuation on https://gbatemp.net/threads/sigpatc...kate-fss0-fusee-package3.571543/post-10393647

 

[Blythe93]

Do you recommend taking frequent backups (say monthly?) or would it be best to keep things the way they are with this current backup now that I'm at a working baseline?

Personally, other than initial clean NAND backup that I've made prior to hacking, only other backups I make are when I update my SD card contents, more specifically whenever a new (problematic? e.g. from 16.1.0 to 17.0.0) firmware is released. I dump my emuNAND as well as my SD card contents (minus the folder where the games are stored, I find it easier to reinstall them rather than backing them up all the time). And that's pretty much it. If you had a file based-emuNAND, I making a backup more often would be understandable as it's probably more prone to data corruption than partition-based emuNAND.

If you feel the need to make monthly backups, go ahead. To me, personally, that isn't really necessary if you have a decent SD card (I have a SanDisk Extreme 256GB on both Switches) that you've previously tested with h2testw for possible defects and unless you have a file-based emuNAND (which you don't). Again, this is all coming from my personal experience.

Secondly, should I install my backup games onto my primary SD card AND THEN take a backup or would you advise keeping things simple and install the games again manually onto the backup SD if there comes a time when I ever need to use it?

If you have a spare external HDD to keep your Switch game backups, I'd keep their NSP and XCI files there. I've only installed the games that I plan to play in a near time on my SD card so, currently, it's only about half full. if you feel like installing the games all over again is a hassle, do make a full backup of your SD card with the games installed as well. I'd rather keep things simple and make a backup without games installed to it, and keep the game files on a separate HDD(s).

Can you remember what .ini file this was and what it was you had to edit? I'll take a note for safe keeping in the event this occurs?

Sure, it's the emummc.ini file, located in emuMMC folder. Contents of mine are the following:

[emummc]
enabled=1
sector=0x2
path=emuMMC/ER00
id=0x0000
nintendo_path=emuMMC/ER00/Nintendo

sector and id parameters are set automatically when you restore the backup, I believe. I don't remember setting them up manually, but it shouldn't be hard to find the values with the NxNandManager. path and nintendo_path I had to adjust as it wasn't set properly for me when I restored my backup when I was switching from old to a new SD card.

First, make sure that these folders exist. On my original setup, the folder within emuMMC wasn't called ER00 but something else, and that's the case for you as well. Restoring via NxNandManager expected me to have a Emutendo folder, which should be a Nintendo folder for emuNAND. Mine was named the same, i.e. Nintendo, but it was located inside the folder that was renamed to ER00 after the restore.

 

[RookieHaxer]

I'm having an issue with modding Smash Bros. All of a sudden, every time I try to start a match, the game crashes at the loading screen. For awhile now, the game would occasionally crash after I exited out of the Mod Manager. Because of this, last night I was recommended to run the Fix Archive in Hecate, but it just says “Done! No change was needed”. So then yesterday I wanted to play a Mecha Sonic mod in the Boss Battles mod but the game kept crashing at the loading screen. It at first gave me an error message in regards to c06 effects being unloaded or something. So I decided to look at the Mecha Sonic mod page and it seemed that a number of people have been having issues with the mod. So I read some of the comments and tried to do some of the suggested solutions involving deleting duplicate lines in the config file but nothing worked. I also tried overwriting the old one-slot plugin with the updated one-slot plugin for 13.0.2 but that didn't work either. Now my game is at the point where it always crashes at the loading screen even when I'm not using any modded characters or stages and I don't know what to do? And just to be clear, the Mecha Sonic mod did work for me in the past, it's just recently where the mod started crashing even when it's the only character mod I have turned on.

After speaking with a few people on GameBanana, they suggested that I may have outdated/conflicting plugins. So I tried installing the latest version of Skyline as well as downloading and installing all of the latest versions of my plugins as well as deleting libcss_slot_redirection.nro (I think that is meant to work with Smashline2 but I'm pretty sure that most of the mods I use are Smashline1) But the game still crashes at the loading screen even when I have no mods involved. I don't know what else to do? I have the crash report attached here. Does anyone have any suggestions of what I can do?

Here's some information on my Switch if it helps:
-2017 Model (not Oled or Lite)
-Smash Version: 13.0.1
-ARCropolis Version: 3.14.0
-Firmware: 17.0.1
-Atmosphere Version: 1.6.2

Edit: Never mind, I think I figured out the problem. I'm on 13.0.1 but the one-slot effects plugin that I was using was for 13.0.2, after I deleted it, things seem to be working now. I also had an unnecessary plugin.nro file for some reason that I deleted as well.

 

[jgs88]

hekate_ipl.ini is in the wrong folder, it should be in bootloader folder instead

Thanks, it worked!