Hacking Question Hekate black screen and Atmosphere "fatal error". Please help

[Deleted member 284059]

Hi all,

Really hoping to get some help resolving this. Some info:

• Hacked my switch last year (and backed up NAND)
• Updated switch to use exFAT
• Updated to 8.1.0 using ChoiDuJourNX back in July to play Fire Emblem 3H
• Auto RCM is enabled

To push my payloads, I've always used TegraRCM on PC or Rekado on my phone. Recently bought a dongle (RCMLoader)

A few weeks ago, Hekate stopped launching. When I push the payload, it remains a black screen. I hear the windows disconnect chime after pushing payloads.
When I push the Atmosphere primary.bin, I get weird lines across my screen and the error (hard to read) is something like "ERROR Fatal error: exception occurred!". (screenshot attached)
If I launch the atmosphere payload without an SD, I get the "failed to stat stage2 (atmosphere/fusee-secondary.bin)!" error, so I guess the SD is being detected.

Some things I've tried:

• reformatting my micro sd & tried multiple cards (sandisk, lexar, adata) formatted as exFAT and fat32
• I get the files from sdsetup, and have even tried downloading and preparing the sd files manually
• Tried launching hekate without an sd card, since apparently it does not rely on any files?
• memloaderv3 freezes after selecting any of the options (so unable to mount using HacDiskMount)

What should I try next, any advice?

Thank you!

 

[Resaec]

If there were a problem with the exploit or data Atmosphere wouldn't get that far.
The lines on screen are very strange and would lead me to assume a hardware problem. Does every graphical output produce these lines?

When testing (and using your Switch) you only need to go with fat32. exFAT is only another layer of likely problems.
You should try vanilla Atmosphere and Hekate from Github.
Before you start opening your Switch and go hardware, check all software possibilities.

Did you overclock? I would guess this is could be (overvoltage) damage to the GPU.

 

[Deleted member 284059]

If there were a problem with the exploit or data Atmosphere wouldn't get that far.
The lines on screen are very strange and would lead me to assume a hardware problem. Does every graphical output produce these lines?

When testing (and using your Switch) you only need to go with fat32. exFAT is only another layer of likely problems.
You should try vanilla Atmosphere and Hekate from Github.
Before you start opening your Switch and go hardware, check all software possibilities.

Did you overclock? I would guess this is could be (overvoltage) damage to the GPU.

Thanks for the reply!
Launching atmosphere, memloader or ReiNX have the weird lines while SX does not (black screen with red "boot.dat?"). I'm really not sure why this would be the case lol.
I just happened to be on exfat since launch, I don't necessarily prefer one over the other. I have heard though that exFAT is way more prone to get corrupted.
I tried downloading Atmosphere 0.9.4 and Hekate nyx 0.8.2 directly from github and set up the SD manually, same result. I never overclocked.

Another note: launching the memloader payload & navigating on the Switch always caused it to freeze. Same thing happened when using the Tools tab in TegraRcmGUI.
BUT when I tried launching memloader from command prompt TegraRcmSmash + sending over the .ini files to connect via USB instead, it always fails to connect & reattempts over and over (but at least it's not freezing).

 

[Deleted member 284059]

Update: Hekate versions 3.2 and below work. Those do not depend on the sd. Now when in hekate and I try to check the SD status, I get "FatFS Error: NOFAT Failed to mount SD card (FATFS Error 13). Make sure that a FAT partition exists". Maybe it is a hardware issue after all..

 

[Resaec]

Do you still have lines on the screen? I would guess so.

Assuming patience:
In case you still have lines on screen I would try to take the Switch apart, clean the screen ribbon cable by light cleaning on the contacts and repeated insertion and removal of the cable. (be super careful)
At the same time you can try to (reasonably) push the sdcard on to the board while booting to try and check if the contacts or connectors are bad.

I have read about cases where the sdcard mount breaks after repeated use. I haven't had any reason to take my own Switch apart until now so I can't speak from experience.