I just found out my nephews 3DS I hacked for him stopped working so I need advice

[rustyshakelford]

really strange how they were gone from one moment to another... but you are doing your best. recova might be good somehow, but did you try chkdsk as mentioned in my post before? sometimes it really can be useful and i got my files recovered once from that too. it scans your hard drive for errors and if youre lucky it can recover everything. also its better than some shady paid recovery services that wont do much anyways...

I didn't try that yet. I thought that was only for faulty drives which mine is not. I will try it after iCare. It current;y says 5 hours left. Since last night, 2 D: USB are showing up on my comp when it used to only be one. I tried what you suggested and both my C drive and D drive SD had no errors.

 

[rustyshakelford]

I am currently running Recova and it's found 1875 files so far with 3 hours to go. Am I going to have to start a new thread to get help to restore the custom firmware on his 3ds or will you help here? I am going to need help depending on what files or folders are recovered to make sure everything goes in the right place. Will have to update luma and godmode again too.

 

[lone_wolf323]

I am currently running Recova and it's found 1875 files so far with 3 hours to go. Am I going to have to start a new thread to get help to restore the custom firmware on his 3ds or will you help here? I am going to need help depending on what files or folders are recovered to make sure everything goes in the right place. Will have to update luma and godmode again too.

https://3ds.hacks.guide/restoring-updating-cfw will be whats needed when restoring the cfw items. it should be a decent process compared to what you have done before.

 

[rustyshakelford]

https://3ds.hacks.guide/restoring-updating-cfw will be whats needed when restoring the cfw items. it should be a decent process compared to what you have done before.

I do have a 3 old backup of my nephews 3ds when it was only an 8GB card. Would I be able to just put that on the 32GB card and add the cia files and saves assuming I can't recover all the files that got formatted? This way, I wouldn't have to go through an involved reinstall.

 

[lone_wolf323]

I do have a 3 old backup of my nephews 3ds when it was only an 8GB card. Would I be able to just put that on the 32GB card and add the cia files and saves assuming I can't recover all the files that got formatted? This way, I wouldn't have to go through an involved reinstall.

you are not really reinstalling anything. Thats merely putting a boot.firm and a boot.3dsx on the card, and making that luma payloads if its not there.

 

[rustyshakelford]

you are not really reinstalling anything. Thats merely putting a boot.firm and a boot.3dsx on the card, and making that luma payloads if its not there.

Right now, nothing is on the 32GB SD card. Doing all the stuff in the link you showed me would put all of that on there. The same would happen by me not doing the link and just copy and pasting the contents of the old backup 8GB card I made for my nephews 3DS and then putting the cia and save files I recover and updating the luma correct?

 

[lone_wolf323]

Right now, nothing is on the 32GB SD card. Doing all the stuff in the link you showed me would put all of that on there. The same would happen by me not doing the link and just copy and pasting the contents of the old backup 8GB card I made for my nephews 3DS and then putting the cia and save files I recover and updating the luma correct?

yes, that is correct.

 

[rustyshakelford]

yes, that is correct.

Okay. i will see what Recova is able to get and if the files are named the same. A lot of these programs name them differently and I have no idea what the files are. The questions I will have will be things like what folder to i put the cias and saves in etc and I will also need a vid on how to add games again with fbi. I am sure there is a good youtube vid I can find. Hopefully, I am still able to download any games I can't recover.

So Recova is done and most of the files it's telling me can't be recovered because they were overwritten. I don't see how that's possible unless the card got formatted twice maybe? Like I explained before, the program coolme had me use was formatting a lot of stuff and started formatting my C drive before I stopped it. Not sure if it got stuck or what but it looks like most of the files can't be recovered. I will post pics here on what I was able to recover when the program is done recovering. I do have pics of what the other program saved so I will post those next.

 

[rustyshakelford]

The following pics are from the folder undefined and then vol 1 and then vol 3 and then vol 5. I am not sure if recova has the same files or different ones but it's taking a very long time to get them. The last shot is from recova what it looks like. Finally now starting with the 15th pic, this is what Recova was able to get. Looks like the same files named differently. If you are up to the challenge trying to figure out which ones are the CMD and which files I should replace on the backup 8GB card, let me know. I am assuming the saves just go in the proper folder and will work once the cias are installed again. What I am thinking though is that I will just have to redownload whatever games aren't showing up and he will just lose whatever saves aren't there. At this point, I just want to get it in working order again with as much of his stuff on there as I can realistically get.

 

[rustyshakelford]

Can you help me make his 3DS even better? Can you point me to the program that allows you to install games without the storage needing to be double? Can you point me to the best SNES, GBA, Genesis programs? Am I going to use any of the folders I posted pics of? Where do I put the sav files? CIA files? Should I just download all those games again instead? Can I just take CIA files from my 3DS and put in on his memory card? Where do I find the games I have on my SD card? What folder?

 

[JackTheFroster]

before everything, do not format your 3ds. as long as you have most of the .sav files, you can maybe restore them. and that might be only possible if you still have the "keys" to encrypt all games as they did before. if i read it correctly, the "key" changes if you format the 3ds. i wouldnt get rid of all the other recovered files yet, but i hope we dont need them anymore. the only problem i see here is, we dont know which save is for which game. means, you probably need to copy (and remember to copy, do not move them... just to be said) and overwrite a save file until it can be recognized from the game. could be painful but it might be worth it. otherwise, the question is which games are really necessary to get the saves from, you might just download 100% savegames and edit them with a save editor. another question is, do you have a list of all games that were installed? or do you remember them? and do you know if there was other important stuff that needed to be installed somehow? the easiest part is to just download all games as cia again and to install them. it would be harder to figure out which .app or other files would belong to which game and thats why the .sav files are the only important files for now.

after all that... to answer your questions:
0. what do you mean when you say "make his 3ds even better"? like install more helpful tools or anything else?
1. and what exactly do you mean by "without the storage needing to be double"? do you mean something like remote install so you dont need the cia on the sd card to be installed, but you can install them from your computer (like ftp or something)?
2. by snes, gba and genesis you mean emulators?
3. you probably will only use the files in the folders since the folder path was not recovered, thats why there are so many files with "_1_2_3_4..." and so on... so if you meant folders directly, no. if you meant the files, yes.
4. we care about the sav files later.
5. if you have any cia files, you can put them on your sd card and install them with fbi. or at least check what cia will be installedwith fbi and install them if you want them installed.
6. yes, you should download all games again.
7. if you want to install cia files that you still have on your 3ds, you can put them on his sd card and install them.
8. if you mean by your sd card not the one from your nephew, you can check with checkpoint which games are installed.
9. and if you want to know what folder the games are located on the sd card... im not sure if it helps since that are all files with "00000001" and i dont even know if the title id is somewhere to see. they are not that easy to figure out.

if you have any more questions, ask them first. i would say we start with setting up the sd card again and check if the sd card is not causing boot issues anymore. after that we try installing everything again and at the end we try recovering the saves and maybe more.

 

[rustyshakelford]

before everything, do not format your 3ds. as long as you have most of the .sav files, you can maybe restore them. and that might be only possible if you still have the "keys" to encrypt all games as they did before. if i read it correctly, the "key" changes if you format the 3ds. i wouldnt get rid of all the other recovered files yet, but i hope we dont need them anymore. the only problem i see here is, we dont know which save is for which game. means, you probably need to copy (and remember to copy, do not move them... just to be said) and overwrite a save file until it can be recognized from the game. could be painful but it might be worth it. otherwise, the question is which games are really necessary to get the saves from, you might just download 100% savegames and edit them with a save editor. another question is, do you have a list of all games that were installed? or do you remember them? and do you know if there was other important stuff that needed to be installed somehow? the easiest part is to just download all games as cia again and to install them. it would be harder to figure out which .app or other files would belong to which game and thats why the .sav files are the only important files for now.

after all that... to answer your questions:
0. what do you mean when you say "make his 3ds even better"? like install more helpful tools or anything else?
1. and what exactly do you mean by "without the storage needing to be double"? do you mean something like remote install so you dont need the cia on the sd card to be installed, but you can install them from your computer (like ftp or something)?
2. by snes, gba and genesis you mean emulators?
3. you probably will only use the files in the folders since the folder path was not recovered, thats why there are so many files with "_1_2_3_4..." and so on... so if you meant folders directly, no. if you meant the files, yes.
4. we care about the sav files later.
5. if you have any cia files, you can put them on your sd card and install them with fbi. or at least check what cia will be installedwith fbi and install them if you want them installed.
6. yes, you should download all games again.
7. if you want to install cia files that you still have on your 3ds, you can put them on his sd card and install them.
8. if you mean by your sd card not the one from your nephew, you can check with checkpoint which games are installed.
9. and if you want to know what folder the games are located on the sd card... im not sure if it helps since that are all files with "00000001" and i dont even know if the title id is somewhere to see. they are not that easy to figure out.

if you have any more questions, ask them first. i would say we start with setting up the sd card again and check if the sd card is not causing boot issues anymore. after that we try installing everything again and at the end we try recovering the saves and maybe more.

I already set up the SD card. Everything is working fine. Right now, I am in the process of downloading the games he had on the system. I have all of them from the recova program that could not be recovered. It listed all the games and I took screen shots. I will just redownload all of them again and install them with fbi.

I have no intent on formatting the 3DS and I have no idea why anyone would.
I am a little confused with the cia update files though. They aren't the full game plus the update right? Just the update correct? So I need to download the game and install it and then install the update? If I go to download a game and I see 3 different files and one is 1.6GB and the other is 1.9GB, can I assume that file has the latest update and or all the DLC?

You can see the sav files from the pics I attached correct? What folder do I put those into? What I mean is I want to add more games to it from like SNES and GBA etc. I found a program called snes9x but it seems you need to launch a different program on the 3DS to see the games. I want to make it as easy as possible for my nephew.

What I mean by not double is I remember not being able to install certain games because the SD card needed at least double the amount of storage left. For example, if I wanted to install a 2GB 3DS game, I would need at least 4GB of free space. That might have been solved already by an update I did.

My most important thing right now is to put those savs back and it doesn't matter that I don't know what games they are for. I just need to know the right folder to put them in.

Thanks for your help. I think everyone else checked out of this thread and I do thank everyone for their help even if they are done with helping me now.

 

[lone_wolf323]

I already set up the SD card. Everything is working fine. Right now, I am in the process of downloading the games he had on the system. I have all of them from the recova program that could not be recovered. It listed all the games and I took screen shots. I will just redownload all of them again and install them with fbi.

I have no intent on formatting the 3DS and I have no idea why anyone would.
I am a little confused with the cia update files though. They aren't the full game plus the update right? Just the update correct? So I need to download the game and install it and then install the update? If I go to download a game and I see 3 different files and one is 1.6GB and the other is 1.9GB, can I assume that file has the latest update and or all the DLC?

You can see the sav files from the pics I attached correct? What folder do I put those into? What I mean is I want to add more games to it from like SNES and GBA etc. I found a program called snes9x but it seems you need to launch a different program on the 3DS to see the games. I want to make it as easy as possible for my nephew.

What I mean by not double is I remember not being able to install certain games because the SD card needed at least double the amount of storage left. For example, if I wanted to install a 2GB 3DS game, I would need at least 4GB of free space. That might have been solved already by an update I did.

My most important thing right now is to put those savs back and it doesn't matter that I don't know what games they are for. I just need to know the right folder to put them in.

Thanks for your help. I think everyone else checked out of this thread and I do thank everyone for their help even if they are done with helping me now.

There are 3 fully different files when it comes to the game itself. The games updates, and if the game has DLC. Just be sure to check that its the same region as the game or it wont work. Ive seen that get overlooked by accident a fair bit.

 

[rustyshakelford]

There are 3 fully different files when it comes to the game itself. The games updates, and if the game has DLC. Just be sure to check that its the same region as the game or it wont work. Ive seen that get overlooked by accident a fair bit.

What if the game has different file sizes? For example, there is a rom of Luigi's mansion USA that is 183MB and another USA rom that is 262MB. What is the difference? Is the bigger rom the one with the update? Should I always download the biggest rom?
Also, do you know what file I put the savs that were recovered into?

 

[JackTheFroster]

I already set up the SD card. Everything is working fine. Right now, I am in the process of downloading the games he had on the system. I have all of them from the recova program that could not be recovered. It listed all the games and I took screen shots. I will just redownload all of them again and install them with fbi.

I have no intent on formatting the 3DS and I have no idea why anyone would.
I am a little confused with the cia update files though. They aren't the full game plus the update right? Just the update correct? So I need to download the game and install it and then install the update? If I go to download a game and I see 3 different files and one is 1.6GB and the other is 1.9GB, can I assume that file has the latest update and or all the DLC?

You can see the sav files from the pics I attached correct? What folder do I put those into? What I mean is I want to add more games to it from like SNES and GBA etc. I found a program called snes9x but it seems you need to launch a different program on the 3DS to see the games. I want to make it as easy as possible for my nephew.

What I mean by not double is I remember not being able to install certain games because the SD card needed at least double the amount of storage left. For example, if I wanted to install a 2GB 3DS game, I would need at least 4GB of free space. That might have been solved already by an update I did.

My most important thing right now is to put those savs back and it doesn't matter that I don't know what games they are for. I just need to know the right folder to put them in.

Thanks for your help. I think everyone else checked out of this thread and I do thank everyone for their help even if they are done with helping me now.

so good job with the sd card ^^ one less thing to do then.

cia updates should be marked as that. but even if the file is bigger as the game, doesnt mean it can be the game with dlc. i dont even know if a cia game is bundled with updates. but remember you can use the 3ds for game updates, so you just download and install the game cias. when connected with the internet, it asks to download the newest update for the game. if by any chance you dont want to or cant connect the 3ds to the internet, you have to download the updates too.

after installation of the game, the .sav files are located from the root of the SD Card:
X:\Nintendo 3DS\"long combination of numbers and letters"\"another long combination of numbers and letters"\title
from there on are many folders. they are named after the title ids. i attached a screenshot for an example.
for more information, i found a reddit thread:

for emulators, maybe try RetroArch. or if its too complicated to use and still not what you are searching for, try: New Super Ultimate Injector for 3DS

with the double amount of storage, either you can install and delete the cias and you back up those cias on the computer, or there could be another method to use ftp or something to install cias from your pc. not sure if you need it.

still, with the sav files its complicated. if you need any help with that, ask again ^^

and about the different sizes, games can be trimmed so the size gets smaller but you can still install the cias, or they are decrypted for citra emulator so you can use them with the emulator which seems to make the file smaller too.

 

[rustyshakelford]

so good job with the sd card ^^ one less thing to do then.

cia updates should be marked as that. but even if the file is bigger as the game, doesnt mean it can be the game with dlc. i dont even know if a cia game is bundled with updates. but remember you can use the 3ds for game updates, so you just download and install the game cias. when connected with the internet, it asks to download the newest update for the game. if by any chance you dont want to or cant connect the 3ds to the internet, you have to download the updates too.

after installation of the game, the .sav files are located from the root of the SD Card:
X:\Nintendo 3DS\"long combination of numbers and letters"\"another long combination of numbers and letters"\title
from there on are many folders. they are named after the title ids. i attached a screenshot for an example.
for more information, i found a reddit thread:

for emulators, maybe try RetroArch. or if its too complicated to use and still not what you are searching for, try: New Super Ultimate Injector for 3DS

with the double amount of storage, either you can install and delete the cias and you back up those cias on the computer, or there could be another method to use ftp or something to install cias from your pc. not sure if you need it.

still, with the sav files its complicated. if you need any help with that, ask again ^^

and about the different sizes, games can be trimmed so the size gets smaller but you can still install the cias, or they are decrypted for citra emulator so you can use them with the emulator which seems to make the file smaller too.

I will check out the reddit thread thanks but is that dealing with saves from an SD card that was recovered? I was asking if the bigger file already had the update since it is bigger than the same game but the rom is smaller. I am in the USA so does it matter if I download the EUR version? I forgot if it mattered or not. I can't update over the net because this 3DS used to be mine and I transferred the rights over to my new 3ds so when I go to update, it says it can't verify. I want to give him the easiest to understand and I saw SNES9x and was wondering if that would be an easy one for him. I have no problems redownloading and installing the games with FBI but I just hope I can figure out the saves thing.

 

[JackTheFroster]

I will check out the reddit thread thanks but is that dealing with saves from an SD card that was recovered? I was asking if the bigger file already had the update since it is bigger than the same game but the rom is smaller. I am in the USA so does it matter if I download the EUR version? I forgot if it mattered or not. I can't update over the net because this 3DS used to be mine and I transferred the rights over to my new 3ds so when I go to update, it says it can't verify. I want to give him the easiest to understand and I saw SNES9x and was wondering if that would be an easy one for him. I have no problems redownloading and installing the games with FBI but I just hope I can figure out the saves thing.

the region matters only for the savegames i think, i dont think you can recover your saves with another region installed since the title id changes, so you actually dont want the eur version unless the game or bundle isnt available for your region. and about the size difference, i tried explaining that already but: keep an eye on the description of the cia. if it says something like encrypted or decrypted, you just dont need worry about the decrypted one since that is only useful for a different topic. if it says spoofed, they only matter for old 3ds firmwares, so not useful for you. it also can happen that they are trimmed, that could be another reason why the size can be different. i dont think any cia found online is the basegame with the update included, but it can happen that you download a zip or rar with both, the basegame and the update cia, included.

oh and if i got it right, you made a system transfer. i think the problem is the nintendo network id then. i dont remember about the risks of fixing it. so i wouldnt touch it yet. if you want it fixed somehow, then at the very end.

 

[rustyshakelford]

the region matters only for the savegames i think, i dont think you can recover your saves with another region installed since the title id changes, so you actually dont want the eur version unless the game or bundle isnt available for your region. and about the size difference, i tried explaining that already but: keep an eye on the description of the cia. if it says something like encrypted or decrypted, you just dont need worry about the encrypted one since that is only useful for a different topic. if it says spoofed, they only matter for old 3ds firmwares, so not useful for you. it also can happen that they are trimmed, that could be another reason why the size can be different. i dont think any cia found online is the basegame with the update included, but it can happen that you download a zip or rar with both, the basegame and the update cia, included.

Okay so always get the smallest file? I am still confused why the same USA rom can have 3 different sizes. Which USA rom file should I be downloading? I will still download the update file and any DLC the game might have. I checked out the reddit thread and I understand how to find the game but the saves I was able to recover are only listed as 0000001 etc like the pics show. Are you telling me there is no way to just put the saves in a folder on my SD card and whatever game game it's from will just use it? The CF doesn't have a file just for saves? I am thinking screw the saves and just tell him they didn't make it. He will get over it.

 

[JackTheFroster]

Okay so always get the smallest file? I am still confused why the same USA rom can have 3 different sizes. Which USA rom file should I be downloading? I will still download the update file and any DLC the game might have. I checked out the reddit thread and I understand how to find the game but the saves I was able to recover are only listed as 0000001 etc like the pics show. Are you telling me there is no way to just put the saves in a folder on my SD card and whatever game game it's from will just use it? The CF doesn't have a file just for saves? I am thinking screw the saves and just tell him they didn't make it. He will get over it.

i think i got something wrong... what i told about the size differences mostly applies to .3ds files and not the cia. still, i dont know where the differences exactly are in the cia files, but i would personally download the biggest file. i dont know if anything changes in the end, i think the game would be bigger sized after the installation anyway. and thats what i meant with the saves being complicated, its not that easy. nintendo was not intending to make it easy because they never wanted you to mess with the files. thats why i said "you probably need to copy (and remember to copy, do not move them... just to be said) and overwrite a save file until it can be recognized from the game." in this comment:

before everything, do not format your 3ds. as long as you have most of the .sav files, you can maybe restore them. and that might be only possible if you still have the "keys" to encrypt all games as they did before. if i read it correctly, the "key" changes if you format the 3ds. i wouldnt get rid of all the other recovered files yet, but i hope we dont need them anymore. the only problem i see here is, we dont know which save is for which game. means, you probably need to copy (and remember to copy, do not move them... just to be said) and overwrite a save file until it can be recognized from the game. could be painful but it might be worth it. otherwise, the question is which games are really necessary to get the saves from, you might just download 100% savegames and edit them with a save editor. another question is, do you have a list of all games that were installed? or do you remember them? and do you know if there was other important stuff that needed to be installed somehow? the easiest part is to just download all games as cia again and to install them. it would be harder to figure out which .app or other files would belong to which game and thats why the .sav files are the only important files for now.

after all that... to answer your questions:
0. what do you mean when you say "make his 3ds even better"? like install more helpful tools or anything else?
1. and what exactly do you mean by "without the storage needing to be double"? do you mean something like remote install so you dont need the cia on the sd card to be installed, but you can install them from your computer (like ftp or something)?
2. by snes, gba and genesis you mean emulators?
3. you probably will only use the files in the folders since the folder path was not recovered, thats why there are so many files with "_1_2_3_4..." and so on... so if you meant folders directly, no. if you meant the files, yes.
4. we care about the sav files later.
5. if you have any cia files, you can put them on your sd card and install them with fbi. or at least check what cia will be installedwith fbi and install them if you want them installed.
6. yes, you should download all games again.
7. if you want to install cia files that you still have on your 3ds, you can put them on his sd card and install them.
8. if you mean by your sd card not the one from your nephew, you can check with checkpoint which games are installed.
9. and if you want to know what folder the games are located on the sd card... im not sure if it helps since that are all files with "00000001" and i dont even know if the title id is somewhere to see. they are not that easy to figure out.

if you have any more questions, ask them first. i would say we start with setting up the sd card again and check if the sd card is not causing boot issues anymore. after that we try installing everything again and at the end we try recovering the saves and maybe more.

 

[rustyshakelford]

i think i got something wrong... what i told about the size differences mostly applies to .3ds files and not the cia. still, i dont know where the differences exactly are in the cia files, but i would personally download the biggest file. i dont know if anything changes in the end, i think the game would be bigger sized after the installation anyway. and thats what i meant with the saves being complicated, its not that easy. nintendo was not intending to make it easy because they never wanted you to mess with the files. thats why i said "you probably need to copy (and remember to copy, do not move them... just to be said) and overwrite a save file until it can be recognized from the game." in this comment:

I don't know what you mean by this. Where am I putting the saves? What folder? My simple question is can I just put the save files that were recovered somewhere on my SD card and have them work? I don't need to know which game they are for. If that is not possible and there is no youtube video on how to do it, let's just forget it and I will download the biggest file cia(still not sure what the different sizes mean or encrypted or decrypted) and get the games that got erased back on it. I'll just download an emulator like this one and see how it plays. I wish I could just put the games right on the 3DS menu and so it's easy for him to find and he can move them into whatever folder he wants.