Homebrew New 3DS with CFW won't turn on: Blue light simply turns on then back off

[PKMWM1]

I have tried almost everything. Whenever I try to turn on my 3ds, the blue light simply flashes on then immediately turns off. I have tried removing the battery, replacing the boot.firm, letting it fully charge, blowing on the SD card, removing the game cart, etc, but it is not even turning on. It does this even if I remove the SD card completely. After a while, it did turn on, but after about a minute on the home screen, the whole 3ds just froze. I held the home button to force it to turn off, but now I'm stuck in the same place where the blue light simply turns on and turns off. How do I fix this, does it just fix itself over time, or is there something I can do right now. Any help would be appreciated.

P.S. I am on Luma3ds v9.1. I have no interest in updating to Luma 10.X because I still use NTRCFW Selector for loading cheat plugins and the latest luma broke that program.

 

[Lacius]

There's a problem reading the Luma3DS boot.firm, or the boot.firm is not compatible with your setup. Delete boot.firm from the root of your SD card and replace it with 10.0.1 (or redownload 9.1 if you want). If it doesn't work, do it with 7.1. If that doesn't work, do 7.0.5.

If none of that works, reformat your SD card and retry the above steps.

 

[TurdPooCharger]

Sigh, person #7. Don't skip anything.

• CFW: I formatted my 2ds's sd card and now it wont turn on [post #17]

If it boots SafeB9SInstaller, go ahead and update to the latest boot9strap v1.3 to ensure your current B9S isn't outdated.

Complete the CTRNAND Luma3DS for booting without SD card.

If you want to use multiple FIRM payloads, like have both Luma v9.1 and v10.1, etc, you can later substitute boot9strap with fastboot3ds once everything is up and running again.

 

[PKMWM1]

There's a problem reading the Luma3DS boot.firm, or the boot.firm is not compatible with your setup. Delete boot.firm from the root of your SD card and replace it with 10.0.1 (or redownload 9.1 if you want). If it doesn't work, do it with 7.1. If that doesn't work, do 7.0.5.

If none of that works, reformat your SD card and retry the above steps.

But it still won't turn on even if the SD card is removed. It still has the exact same problem

 

[Lacius]

But it still won't turn on even if the SD card is removed. It still has the exact same problem

If the SD is removed, then that's to be expected. It can't read the Luma3DS boot.firm from the SD card if the SD card is missing.

Once everything is working again, you need to put the Luma3DS boot.firm onto the CTRNAND so it can boot without the SD card.

 

[PKMWM1]

If the SD is removed, then that's to be expected. It can't read the Luma3DS boot.firm from the SD card if the SD card is missing.

Once everything is working again, you need to put the Luma3DS boot.firm onto the CTRNAND so it can boot without the SD card.

I copied all of the contents off, formatted the SD card, copied it back and it still won't turn on. I tried all the versions of Luma you suggested but I just can't get past the blue light turning off immediately. Any other suggestions?

 

[Lacius]

I copied all of the contents off, formatted the SD card, copied it back and it still won't turn on. I tried all the versions of Luma you suggested but I just can't get past the blue light turning off immediately. Any other suggestions?

Did you format the SD using guiformat?

 

[TurdPooCharger]

I copied all of the contents off, formatted the SD card, copied it back and it still won't turn on. I tried all the versions of Luma you suggested but I just can't get past the blue light turning off immediately. Any other suggestions?

What program did you use to reformat your SD card? What settings were used on that card? Was your empty card hardware tested with H2testw? Did you add both Luma3DS v7.0.5 arm9loaderhax.bin and SafeB9SInstaller renamed as boot.firm?

 

[PKMWM1]

Did you format the SD using guiformat?

No, I used SD card formatter. I will try Guiformat. Are there any settings that I need to input into guiformat? Such as volume label, quick format etc.?

 

[TurdPooCharger]

No, I used SD card formatter. I will try Guiformat. Are there any settings that I need to input into guiformat? Such as volume label, quick format etc.?

The SD Association's SD Memory Card Formatter is used to revive softlocked or badly formatted SD cards not recognized by Windows File Explorer, so long as the underlying fault is software based. It can also be used on other flash memory including USB pen drives, Compact Flash, Memory Stick, etc. That program doesn't have the fine tune control reformatting SD cards to be compatible with the 3DS, especially for cards larger than 32 GB.

Because it's possible to badly reformatted an SD card that is detectable in [Windows / Linux / Mac] but unreadable or even perform poorly with slow read/write speeds on the 3DS, I suggest you start over with the quadruple reformatting technique with all four (4) of those programs in that specific order to avoid this scenario.

Side Note
If your card is 128 GB or larger, you can elect to use 64 KB (65536) cluster size as long as GBA VC, theme shuffle, FTP, and FBI-Bloop works out for you.

• Weird Problem W/ GBA Injects (VC on 3DS)
  • And the bunch of other threads in the "References regarding GBA VC graphical glitch bug" spoiler.
• Doesn't FBI - Remote Install work with SD cards >64 gb?

Do not use 64 KB cluster size on 64 GB or smaller card.

***

Once you quadruple reformat, continue on with step 3 in the previously mentioned post.

 

[PKMWM1]

Okay. I think I got it to work.

Edit Nevermind. After formatting and copying the files, the 3ds turns on again, but after trying to launch Pokemon Crystal, it just shut off and now it is back to being in the state where the blue light just turns on then back off. I don't know what else to do. Every time I manage to get it working, it crashes again and ends up locked up. It happens after a minute or two on any software of the home menu

 

[Lacius]

Okay. I think I got it to work.

Edit Nevermind. After formatting and copying the files, the 3ds turns on again, but after trying to launch Pokemon Crystal, it just shut off and now it is back to being in the state where the blue light just turns on then back off. I don't know what else to do. Every time I manage to get it working, it crashes again and ends up locked up. It happens after a minute or two on any software of the home menu

Have you tried using a different SD card?

 

[PKMWM1]

Have you tried using a different SD card?

Not yet. I bought this SD card back in March because my previous one broke. So I'd be surprised if it broke already. Plus, the SD card seems to work fine when in the computer. I'm copying them over to my spare SD card right now, so I'll let you know how that goes. In the meantime, can you show me how to make it so my 3ds can boot up without the SD card?

 

[lone_wolf323]

Have you actually used the h2testw test to confirm your sd card isnt corrupt or fake? Everyone seems to take that for granted that since its new its fine. Well since technology aint perfect. There is never a guarantee that its working flawlessly. And for your case. Its something you should want to check.

 

[PKMWM1]

Tried copying the data to a brand new SD card. The 3DS still won't turn on. I've started the think that the 3ds is just broken and will need to be replaced.

 

[Quantumcat]

Test both of them with H2testw: https://3ds.guide/h2testw-(windows)

Until you do, no one can give you any other advice because we'll just assume your cards are defective or fake.

Also, if you bought the cards from ebay, or an Amazon third party seller, or from a website that isn't associated with a brick and mortar store, there's a high likelihood of them being fake cards, or at least poor quality enough to start getting corrupted quickly.

 

[PKMWM1]

got this error after formatting:
Error reading file 'E:\18.h2w', offset 0x1ac00000.
(The device is not ready. Code 21)
Writing speed: 15.5 MByte/s
Reading speed: 14.3 MByte/s
H2testw v1.4

 

[TurdPooCharger]

got this error after formatting:
Error reading file 'E:\18.h2w', offset 0x1ac00000.
(The device is not ready. Code 21)
Writing speed: 15.5 MByte/s
Reading speed: 14.3 MByte/s
H2testw v1.4

This isn't a typical error message. Are you using a (micro/standard) SD card-to-USB adapter like this, or is the computer you're using really old like Windows 95, 98, 2000?

Bad reader adapter can derp mid read or write. Older computers have SD/MMC slot readers that don't support reading cards larger than 32 GB.

 

[PKMWM1]

This isn't a typical error message. Are you using a (micro/standard) SD card-to-USB adapter like this, or is the computer you're using really old like Windows 95, 98, 2000?

Bad reader adapter can derp mid read or write. Older computers have SD/MMC slot readers that don't support reading cards larger than 32 GB.

I was using a standard micro USB card reader like the one you posted. But I ran the test with just a regular microUsb adapter (One that look like a standard SD card but has a slot for a microUSB card that you can then plug into other devices) and it came up with no errors.

 

[TurdPooCharger]

I was using a standard micro USB card reader like the one you posted. But I ran the test with just a regular microUsb adapter (One that look like a standard SD card but has a slot for a microUSB card that you can then plug into other devices) and it came up with no errors.

It's possible for the micro-to-standard SD card adapter like this to fail from worn out contact pins. However, most of the time the computer will outright fail to communicate with the card if connection is bad.

(Micro)SD-to-USB card reader are also known to fail like in this example. Failure from adapter is more sinister as there are no clear indications of data corruption until it's too late.

• Is my SD card faulty [post #10]

It's best to default to using the computer's built-in SD slot reader whenever you can so to reduce points of failure.. If your computer supports USB 3.0 speeds or doesn't have a SD slot, try to buy high quality card USB adapters buy like this Anker brand.

***

If you can do at least one clean scan run on an initially empty card in H2testw with no reported errors, that means the problem is not [directly] your card. It's most likely bad reader writing corrupt data. Try another SD card reader on a different computer if you can, and redo the quad reformat on that computer until your replacement SD-to-USB adapter arrives.

 

[PKMWM1]

I'm starting

It's possible for the micro-to-standard SD card adapter like this to fail from worn out contact pins. However, most of the time the computer will outright fail to communicate with the card if connection is bad.

(Micro)SD-to-USB card reader are also known to fail like in this example. Failure from adapter is more sinister as there are no clear indications of data corruption until it's too late.

• Is my SD card faulty [post #10]

It's best to default to using the computer's built-in SD slot reader whenever you can so to reduce points of failure.. If your computer supports USB 3.0 speeds or doesn't have a SD slot, try to buy high quality card USB adapters buy like this Anker brand.

***

If you can do at least one clean scan run on an initially empty card in H2testw with no reported errors, that means the problem is not [directly] your card. It's most likely bad reader writing corrupt data. Try another SD card reader on a different computer if you can, and redo the quad reformat on that computer until your replacement SD-to-USB adapter arrives.

I don't think that is the problem, I have tried 2 Sd cards, one fresh out of the package, 2 different micro USB adapters, and 2 different computer ports. I also use these same adapters for my other SD cards including a different 3DS, and have never had any difficult problems. I am starting to think that either the 3DS's micro USB port is damaged somehow, making it hard to read any SD card, or that the root of the problem isn't with the SD card at all