Hacking Botched CFW install - No SysNAND on O3DS

choiuno

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Hi everybody! Sorry for the lengthy post!

I'm looking for some advice. A couple of weeks ago I was following Plailec's guide for CFW on an Old 3DS, but something failed at some point and I stopped. I was kind of busy so I couldn't manage to continue to troubleshoot until now, but as I said, a few weeks have passed so I don't know exactly which part of the guide went wrong. I'm guessing that it was somewhere around part 4, when you have to format twice the NAND.

Anyway, here is my actual status:

  • I'm left with a O3DS that CAN boot to the menu only if the SD Card with the files is inserted, but the menu shows a SysNAND folder. (Since I'm booting from the SD I assume the folder should say EmuNAND).
  • If there's not and SD Card, the O3DS will power up and the LED will flash blue and a black screen. (I'm guessing I no longer have a SysNAND).
  • I can use the browserhax exploit to run the Homebrew Launcher but any tool that I run from it hangs or it just return to the menu.
  • I have all the NAND backups that the guide instructs to do, but I don't know which to flash or how since I wasn't able to run EMUNAND9

In conclusion, I don't know how to return to a clean state so I can start the guide from the beginning.

I would really appreciate any ideas or suggestions! :)

Cheers
 

Hayleia

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  • If there's not and SD Card, the O3DS will power up and the LED will flash blue and a black screen. (I'm guessing I no longer have a SysNAND).
You're guessing wrong. It's just that arm9loaderhax runs before any NAND (sys or emu/red) so it looks for your payload on your SD card before booting anything, and if you don't have an SD card, then it doesn't boot anything.
You can try booting to sysNAND through Luma's keys, I think it's L or R to go to sysNAND (I just never do it).

  • I'm left with a O3DS that CAN boot to the menu only if the SD Card with the files is inserted, but the menu shows a SysNAND folder. (Since I'm booting from the SD I assume the folder should say EmuNAND).
Maybe it's actually your sysNAND. If you followed the guide to the end, you sent your emuNAND to sysNAND and only kept your sysNAND.
 
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CheatFreak47

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@choiuno
A9LH requries an a SD Card to be inserted with a A9LH payload on it to to do anything. Without an SD card and payload, the 3DS just shuts off.
A9LH boots Luma3DS which is a CFW that boots you into CFW SysNAND or EmuNAND. Plailect's Guide sets you up with a CFW SysNAND setup unless you deliberately skip parts of the guide to avoid that. (i'm assuming you didn't skip anything and did exactly as you're told, like a good cfw noob does)

And for the record, CFW SysNAND is fine now because you no longer need an EmuNAND once you have A9LH, since A9LH itself is brick protection by way of booting before the home menu does and all A9LH CFW have firm protection which prevents system updates from wiping A9LH.

Basically you just do everything you would on an EmuNAND on the new SysNAND, and if something goes wrong, use A9LH + Decrypt9 to restore a NAND backup.

If you're unsure of the setup you have, you could post some pictures of your Decrypt9 menu and your Luma3DS configuration (which you access by holding select while powering on) and I could give you more details.
 

choiuno

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Maybe it's actually your sysNAND. If you followed the guide to the end, you sent your emuNAND to sysNAND and only kept your sysNAND.

Unfortunately I wasn't able to follow the whole guide, because a step failed (I don't remember which :( )


You're guessing wrong. It's just that arm9loaderhax runs before any NAND (sys or emu/red) so it looks for your payload on your SD card before booting anything, and if you don't have an SD card, then it doesn't boot anything.
You can try booting to sysNAND through Luma's keys, I think it's L or R to go to sysNAND (I just never do it).

I wasn't aware of that! If I turn on with a SD Card it will boot straight to the menu (it has a SysNAND Folder). If I press L on power up, CakesFW 138 menus shows up and I can boot to CFW (also has SysNAND folder).


If you're unsure of the setup you have, you could post some pictures of your Decrypt9 menu and your Luma3DS configuration (which you access by holding select while powering on) and I could give you more details.

First time I heard of Luma3DS, but I tried to boot while holding select but no configuration is shown, it boots straight to menu.
 

CheatFreak47

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Unfortunately I wasn't able to follow the whole guide, because a step failed (I don't remember which :( )
I wasn't aware of that! If I turn on with a SD Card it will boot straight to the menu (it has a SysNAND Folder). If I press L on power up, CakesFW 138 menus shows up and I can boot to CFW (also has SysNAND folder).

First time I heard of Luma3DS, but I tried to boot while holding select but no configuration is shown, it boots straight to menu.

Hmm, well, can you at least re-read the guide and figure out what step failed?
That's rather important. From the sound of it, you do have A9LH set up, and you'd just need to switch to Luma3DS, which is actually quite easy.
 
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choiuno

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@CheatFreak47

I'll re-read the guide, but I'm afraid it has changed a bit (maybe a lot) from when I tried it. I can see now that they use Luma3DS, before was CakesFW, so I don't know if it is the same. I'll guess I'll check one of the older revisions of the guide.

Is there a way no know if my 3DS NAND is fine or formatted/erased? Is there any alternative method to run Decryp9 to restore a NAND backup? Maybe a payload or something like that, I can't run any homebrew from the launcher, they all crash.
 

CheatFreak47

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@CheatFreak47

I'll re-read the guide, but I'm afraid it has changed a bit (maybe a lot) from when I tried it. I can see now that they use Luma3DS, before was CakesFW, so I don't know if it is the same. I'll guess I'll check one of the older revisions of the guide.

Is there a way no know if my 3DS NAND is fine or formatted/erased? Is there any alternative method to run Decryp9 to restore a NAND backup? Maybe a payload or something like that, I can't run any homebrew from the launcher, they all crash.

There's nothing wrong with your SysNAND, you probably just don't have an EmuNAND anymore as the guide typically instructs.
Just set up Luma3DS, it's pretty easy to do, check out the new Part 5 of Plai's guide for information on setting up Luma.

You already seem to have A9LH so you don't need to do the stuff for setting up SafeA9LHInstaller or anything like that.
Just replace the arm9loaderhax.bin payload with the one from, delete the cakes folder and bootCTR stuff and place the new Luma folder on the SD card- maybe move the payloads you want to load optionally into Luma/payloads and rename them to what it says in the guide.

It's not very difficult, I'm sure you can figure it out. You could also read through the Luma3DS wiki if you'd like some information about how Luma Works.
The information is out there, it's up to you to soak it all in! ^_^
 

The Catboy

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It sounds like everything went perfectly with your A9LH install, You should just be able to set up Luma3DS and have it running on your sysNAND.
Everything you've described just sounds like a normal A9LH install.
 

choiuno

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You already seem to have A9LH so you don't need to do the stuff for setting up SafeA9LHInstaller or anything like that.

I was re-reading the guide and backtracking my steps and I think I have a clue where I got stuck, it was in Part 5 of the Plailect's guide. Here's a cached link, because the page doesn't exist anymore: Part 5 (arm9loaderhax & Cakes) .
Not sure if it was Section II (where SafeA9LHInstaller get installed, so funny you mention) Section IV, so I'm not sure if I have arm9loaderhax, is there a way to tell?

It could be Section IV where it failed, because the 1st step is "open Decrypt9 from arm9loaderhax by holding Start on boot", again when I followed the guide it must have been the X button (but I can't verify since the page is deleted), because the setting in my boot_config.ini is:
[KEY_X]
path = /a9lh/Decrypt9WIP.bin


If I power up holding X i get just a black screen, but If hold Y or B I do get to boot up EmuNAND and Uncart respectively, just as my boot_config.ini files says. So my guess is that was the step where I got stuck. I tried the troubleshoot guide but I couldn't figure out what to do, so I told myself I'll do it later, and here we are, almost 2 months later of that day, yikes!
 

choiuno

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Sorry for the double post, I tried with the latest Decrypt9WIP (Decrypt9WIP-20160505-163551) and now it boot to it when I press X! I was using Decrypt9WIP-20160118-224111, it was the latest version when I did the guide, maybe it was a faulty/buggy one. Now I don't know If I should follow the rest of the guide or just switch to Luma3DS! Any thoughts?


It sounds like everything went perfectly with your A9LH install, You should just be able to set up Luma3DS and have it running on your sysNAND.
Everything you've described just sounds like a normal A9LH install.

Do you believe that if I finish Plailect's guide as it was intended I will be able to switch to Luma3DS after that?
 

Zan'

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Sorry for the double post, I tried with the latest Decrypt9WIP (Decrypt9WIP-20160505-163551) and now it boot to it when I press X! I was using Decrypt9WIP-20160118-224111, it was the latest version when I did the guide, maybe it was a faulty/buggy one. Now I don't know If I should follow the rest of the guide or just switch to Luma3DS! Any thoughts?




Do you believe that if I finish Plailect's guide as it was intended I will be able to switch to Luma3DS after that?
From what it sounds like you are actually done setting up everything.
If you run Decrypt9 it will probably tell you that your SD card is set up without emuNAND.
You can just follow Step 5 for Luma3DS and you should be good to go.
(You are probably far enough where you just need to download Luma3DS and set it up.)
 
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XiaoDii

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It looks like u r almost there. The situation u descrided here seems to indicate u have a9lh installed. And the carshing of homebrew apps is possibly caused by the incompatibality of *hax on patched cfw. I think u can use the cia version of hbl to launch homebrew apps.
 

choiuno

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Hey guys, I finished Plailec's guide and now I have a fully functional 3DS with CFW SysNAND, I even dumped a game using Uncart, converted to CIA, installed it using FBI and all seems to work great! Maybe later i'll give it a shot to Luma3DS but for now CakesFW works good.

Thank you all for your help and advice, you're great! If there's a mod around here, you can close the thread.

:)
 
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