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Hacking Can't Boot Gateway Mode after install A9LH

  • Thread starter Thread starter jatikeren
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well, i may have a crazy idea, but if it works, it would be great. last we know, gateway doesn't use the latest native firm for their gateway cfw(iirc, they still use 10.6 firm), this would mean that you could totally do a sysdowngrade with K11 code exec using the appropriate CIA. also, last i know, gateway firm doesn't patch native firm partition writes, so with the downgrader, you SHOULD be able to downgrade properly native firm to 9.2 (if your sysnand is still in 9.2) and with that overwrite the native firm and be able to boot normally in 9.2 (using devmenu to simply install native firm won't work, since the loaded firm is higher than 9.2, so you need the arm11 downgrade method).

BUT before you do anything, i need to confirm if this crazy idea sounds like it could work, @d0k3 or @astronautlevel , do you think this would be a solution, assuming GW doesn't run latest firm (which i'm almost certain of) and that they don't patch firm partition writes (which i'm sure of) ?

if i get confirmation that this method could work, i'll try to write you instructions, but know that this is highly experimental territory and likely a brick hazard, so do this only if you're ready to get an hardmod in case it fucks up
 
Last edited by capito27,
astronautlevel said:
If you had your OTP, I would have told you to downgrade to 9.2 and use safea9lhinstaller to overwrite it, but since you don't, this is going to be harder.

I'll ask a couple of people and see if there's a fix.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

Is this an n3ds or o3ds?
Click to expand...
isn't it kinda irrelevant if it is a n3ds or o3ds ? since if he can downgrade to 9.2, the N3ds secret sector's second key won't matter, since k9l1 (firm 9.4 or less) still use the first key, and for a9lh to work, the first key must still be valid, so it's not relevant ?
 
capito27 said:
isn't it kinda irrelevant if it is a n3ds or o3ds ? since if he can downgrade to 9.2, the N3ds secret sector's second key won't matter, since k9l1 (firm 9.4 or less) still use the first key, and for a9lh to work, the first key must still be valid, so it's not relevant ?
Click to expand...
I was going to instruct him to uninstall a9lh, which requires the OTP on n3ds as it replaces the secret sector with the Nintendo one, whereas on the o3ds it just zeroes it out since it isn't necessary. I don't believe safea9lhinstaller allows you to uninstall a9lh without your OTP on n3ds (though you might be able to force it to, and since it still uses the first key it probably wouldn't matter like you said).

Also, in response to your first post, wouldn't that not work as even if NFIRM was downgraded, the GW launcher.dat will still launch the 10.2 NFIRM (which is hardcoded in the launcher.dat iirc), and thus not work with arm9 homebrew such as safea9lhinstaller? Realizing that is what made me give up on this originally, unless maybe he used an older launcher.dat that uses an older NFIRM, but I don't know if such a thing exists or would work with GW a9lh as I don't know enough about GW.

EDIT: I'm dumb, if you downgraded to 9.2 w/o firm protection it would overwrite NFIRM and remove GW a9lh. Sounds like it should work, then, since it'll be using the old arm9loader that uses the first key.
 
Last edited by astronautlevel,
astronautlevel said:
I was going to instruct him to uninstall a9lh, which requires the OTP on n3ds as it replaces the secret sector with the Nintendo one, whereas on the o3ds it just zeroes it out since it isn't necessary. I don't believe safea9lhinstaller allows you to uninstall a9lh without your OTP on n3ds (though you might be able to force it to, and since it still uses the first key it probably wouldn't matter like you said).

Also, in response to your first post, wouldn't that not work as even if NFIRM was downgraded, the GW launcher.dat will still launch the 10.2 NFIRM (which is hardcoded in the launcher.dat iirc), and thus not work with arm9 homebrew such as safea9lhinstaller? Realizing that is what made me give up on this originally, unless maybe he used an older launcher.dat that uses an older NFIRM, but I don't know if such a thing exists or is available as I don't know enough about GW.
Click to expand...
well, as to instructing him to uninstall a9lh, as per a9lh design, the secret sector's first key NEEDS to be valid (otherwise a test vector fails), and since a 9.2 native firm is gonna use that first key, all we got to do is simply to manage to propely flash a 9.2 native firm in the firm partition, and make sure all of his system and such titles are back to 9.2.
and to your second paragraph, if we manage to overwrite the firm0 partition with 9.2 firm, how do you think the gateway's a9lh will trigger :p
 
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capito27 said:
well, as to instructing him to uninstall a9lh, as per a9lh design, the secret sector's first key NEEDS to be valid (otherwise a test vector fails), and since a 9.2 native firm is gonna use that first key, all we got to do is simply to manage to propely flash a 9.2 native firm in the firm partition, and make sure all of his system and such titles are back to 9.2.
and to your second paragraph, if we manage to overwrite the firm0 partition with 9.2 firm, how do you think the gateway's a9lh will trigger :P
Click to expand...
See my edit :P

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

Also, iirc this is how daxtsu got off GW's a9lh when neither GW's NAND restorer, nor his hardmod, was working, so it should work.
 
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well, to uninstall GW's a9lh, you need to download and install the .cia file you can find here : https://github.com/Plailect/sysDowngrader/releases/
once you have that installed, you will need to find yourself a 9.2.0 downgrade pack (available on "that iso site"), MAKE SURE YOU TAKE THE APPROPRIATE ONE FOR YOUR REGION AND CONSOLE TYPE (N3DS or O3DS/2DS), ok ?
you need to copy all the files from the pack to "SDcardRoot:\updates\", in a way that you will have a bunch of files in your sd card, in the "updates" folder
once that's done, start the .cia file you installed, press "X" to test svchax, it's gonna ask you to reboot if it worked, if not it will show "Did not get am:u handle, please reboot"
then once you're ready, simply start the application, but this time press "Y", it's gonna downgrade your system and all you have to do is pray that it doesn't fail, if you were lucky enough it should have worked fine and you're back to 9.2 without gateway's a9lh and you can setup the community a9lh following @Plailect's guide.

Note : it seems like formatting your system before downgrading your system to 9.2.0 helps the downgrade process work properly without failing more likely, if you have a N3DS, i would advice you to do it, as if the downgrade failed, you would have a de facto brick, as you would be required to upgrade to latest version to fix it , but the broken secret sector would make it unable to boot on a N3ds, only a hardmod could fix it.
 
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capito27 said:
well, to uninstall GW's a9lh, you need to download and install the .cia file you can find here : https://github.com/Plailect/sysDowngrader/releases/
once you have that installed, you will need to find yourself a 9.2.0 downgrade pack (available on "that iso site"), MAKE SURE YOU TAKE THE APPROPRIATE ONE FOR YOUR REGION AND CONSOLE TYPE (N3DS or O3DS/2DS), ok ?
you need to copy all the files from the pack to "SDcardRoot:\updates\", in a way that you will have a bunch of files in your sd card, in the "updates" folder
once that's done, start the .cia file you installed, press "X" to test svchax, it's gonna ask you to reboot if it worked, if not it will show "Did not get am:u handle, please reboot"
then once you're ready, simply start the application, but this time press "Y", it's gonna downgrade your system and all you have to do is pray that it doesn't fail, if you were lucky enough it should have worked fine and you're back to 9.2 without gateway's a9lh and you can setup the community a9lh following @Plailect's guide.

Note : it seems like formatting your system before downgrading your system to 9.2.0 helps the downgrade process work properly without failing more likely, if you have a N3DS, i would advice you to do it, as if the downgrade failed, you would have a de facto brick, as you would be required to upgrade to latest version to fix it , but the broken secret sector would make it unable to boot on a N3ds, only a hardmod could fix it.
Click to expand...
okay first...
this is an O3DS...

and... the problem is.. how i can install CIA file in SysNAND GW Mode.. ???
so i run .3dsx files on SysNAND GW/Classic mode....and get like this.. and hang.. on this one..

DSC_0921.jpg
 
Last edited by jatikeren,
capito27 said:
well, i may have a crazy idea, but if it works, it would be great. last we know, gateway doesn't use the latest native firm for their gateway cfw(iirc, they still use 10.6 firm), this would mean that you could totally do a sysdowngrade with K11 code exec using the appropriate CIA. also, last i know, gateway firm doesn't patch native firm partition writes, so with the downgrader, you SHOULD be able to downgrade properly native firm to 9.2 (if your sysnand is still in 9.2) and with that overwrite the native firm and be able to boot normally in 9.2 (using devmenu to simply install native firm won't work, since the loaded firm is higher than 9.2, so you need the arm11 downgrade method).

BUT before you do anything, i need to confirm if this crazy idea sounds like it could work, @d0k3 or @astronautlevel , do you think this would be a solution, assuming GW doesn't run latest firm (which i'm almost certain of) and that they don't patch firm partition writes (which i'm sure of) ?

if i get confirmation that this method could work, i'll try to write you instructions, but know that this is highly experimental territory and likely a brick hazard, so do this only if you're ready to get an hardmod in case it fucks up
Click to expand...
I'd suggest you join us on freenode #Cakey. The only way to find out if this works is testing it, and for that you will need a hardmod tester or two. Is this about uninstalling GWs shitty A9LH implementation?
 
Hi i would like to know if it's possible to remove the gw arm9loadhax to launch directly luma thanks you

Envoyé de mon SM-G930F en utilisant Tapatalk
 
banzzai said:
Hi i would like to know if it's possible to remove the gw arm9loadhax to launch directly luma thanks you

Envoyé de mon SM-G930F en utilisant Tapatalk
Click to expand...
if you have the nand backup that you should have, loved and cherished in your hard drive before applying the a9lh implementation you just restore the nand using gateway launcher
 
IT FIX!!!!!!
YEAHH!!! A9LH GW REMOVED BY FLASH TIME MACHINE DATA PACKS!!!

Boot to SysNAND GW and UPGRADE to 10.3 from that so A9LH Removed !!! YEAH
 

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