Hacking Updated my DSi and now my R4i gold doesn't work

WombatRombat · Feb 23, 2020

Recently dusted off my DSi and I found that all but one game wasn't working. I tried to install multiple versions of a game and it still didn't work. So my next train of thought was to just update my DSi since that may be the problem... I know, very stupid.

So now I get a message saying "An error has occurred. Press and hold the Power Button to turn the system off blah blah" whenever I run my R4 cartridge

So I googled around and apparently I just have to update the firmware of my R4.

I tried to put a picture but I couldn't but it's an R4i gold with the link for r4ids (dot) com NOT .cn. This is also the old R4i so it's not V2.0 or anything crazy.

So I tried installing a bunch of firmware but nothing seem to be working, any help is appreciated!

PS. My DSi version is 1.4.5U. I also read around that there's some homebrew method or something that works but it seemed so way over my head haha. Not sure if it works or what it is lol

Thank you so much <3

izy · Feb 23, 2020

https://gbatemp.net/threads/ds-i-3d...-ds-i-games-and-ds-i-menu-replacement.472200/

Try this

WombatRombat · Feb 23, 2020

squee666 said:
Try this

Sorry I'm totally new to this but which instructions should I follow? I don't really know what CFW is and I don't think I have Unlaunch or anything. I just plug in my R4 with the SD card and pick this "Danny Phantom" game from the menu and my R4 will load. (I can still access the menu and pick the "Danny Phantom" game, it's just that after I pick the game, the screen goes black and the error message comes)

Should I be following "Set-up (NON-CFW)" or the Flashcard setup or something else. And do I need these CFW stuff and everything included as well

Thank u for the help

KleinesSinchen · Feb 23, 2020

WombatRombat said:
Sorry I'm totally new to this but which instructions should I follow? I don't really know what CFW is and I don't think I have Unlaunch or anything. I just plug in my R4 with the SD card and pick this "Danny Phantom" game from the menu and my R4 will load. (I can still access the menu and pick the "Danny Phantom" game, it's just that after I pick the game, the screen goes black and the error message comes)

Should I be following "Set-up (NON-CFW)" or the Flashcard setup or something else. And do I need these CFW stuff and everything included as well

Thank u for the help

For the record: Pretty much all DSi updates did was blocking flashcarts (with the not meaningful "An error has occurred…" message) and blocking some known exploits. The only reason to update a DSi is unlocking "Data Management" option by accessing the defunct shop and redownloading already purchased software (if any).

See https://dsibrew.org/wiki/System_Menu → DSi updates are useless.
==============

Okay, now to you actual problem: Seems your flashcart is blocked by 1.4.5 – like many others. The last DSi update is/was devastating for many older carts. Your flashcart needs a firmware update (if available). This is not the kernel software that shows the ROM selection menu. The home menu "Launcher" throws the error screen before the flashcart even got a chance to start the kernel software. No matter what you put on the micro-SD inside the flashcart… it will not start on your DSi anymore.

Any existing firmware update has to be applied by a console not blocking your cart in it's current state. This can be

DS-Lite|Phat → No whitelist check at all
DSi on low firmware version → Your cart passes the whitelist check
O3DS on very low firmware version → Your cart passes the whitelist check

---or---

Any DSi and 2|3DS system with custom firmware (CFW) → Whitelist check disabled

===========
If you are willing to modify your DSi – which is an easy process (https://dsi.cfw.guide/) – it should unblock your flashcart… and provides in form of the already mentioned TWiLight Menu++ an alternative bypassing the need for a flashcart altogether.

If you follow dsi.cfw.guide you end up with more options than ever before… but you will have to do some reading to get familiar with all this. If anything is unclear or you need help, just ask again.

Good luck and have fun!

Edit:
Clarification: If you go for the route of installing CFW on your DSi, you do not need to update the flashcart firmware anymore. Flashcart firmware updates occasionally fail and may brick a cart. Why risk this, if it works without?

NightScript · Feb 23, 2020

squee666 said:
https://gbatemp.net/threads/ds-i-3d...-ds-i-games-and-ds-i-menu-replacement.472200/

Try this

Installing TWiLight Menu++ on the flashcart wouldn't help if you can't boot into the flashcart itself

WombatRombat · Feb 24, 2020

KleinesSinchen said:
For the record: Pretty much all DSi updates did was blocking flashcarts (with the not meaningful "An error has occurred…" message) and blocking some known exploits. The only reason to update a DSi is unlocking "Data Management" option by accessing the defunct shop and redownloading already purchased software (if any).

See → DSi updates are useless.
==============

Okay, now to you actual problem: Seems your flashcart is blocked by 1.4.5 – like many others. The last DSi update is/was devastating for many older carts. Your flashcart needs a firmware update (if available). This is not the kernel software that shows the ROM selection menu. The home menu "Launcher" throws the error screen before the flashcart even got a chance to start the kernel software. No matter what you put on the micro-SD inside the flashcart… it will not start on your DSi anymore.

Any existing firmware update has to be applied by a console not blocking your cart in it's current state. This can be

DS-Lite|Phat → No whitelist check at all

DSi on low firmware version → Your cart passes the whitelist check

O3DS on very low firmware version → Your cart passes the whitelist check

---or---

Any DSi and 2|3DS system with custom firmware (CFW) → Whitelist check disabled

===========
If you are willing to modify your DSi – which is an easy process – it should unblock your flashcart… and provides in form of the already mentioned TWiLight Menu++ an alternative bypassing the need for a flashcart altogether.

If you follow dsi.cfw.guide you end up with more options than ever before… but you will have to do some reading to get familiar with all this. If anything is unclear or you need help, just ask again.

Good luck and have fun!

Edit:
Clarification: If you go for the route of installing CFW on your DSi, you do not need to update the flashcart firmware anymore. Flashcart firmware updates occasionally fail and may brick a cart. Why risk this, if it works without?

Hello, thanks for the help! So I followed the tutorial and I installed unlaunch and when I was following the HiyaCFW route I ran into some errors. However for some reason I decided to randomly go through unlaunch and then go to the DSi launcher and my R4 boots up normally!

But now there's my second problem. For some reason only one game on my R4 seems to work and the new games I'm trying to play like Pokemon White are just stuck on white screens. I'm not sure what's wrong or if my R4 is broken but I don't think so since at least one game (a Yu-Gi-Oh game) seems to work. So I tried looking for the most up to date kernel but the website seems to be down so I'm not sure what to do. This is my R4

KleinesSinchen · Feb 25, 2020

WombatRombat said:
Hello, thanks for the help! So I followed the tutorial and I installed unlaunch and when I was following the HiyaCFW route I ran into some errors. However for some reason I decided to randomly go through unlaunch and then go to the DSi launcher and my R4 boots up normally!

But now there's my second problem. For some reason only one game on my R4 seems to work and the new games I'm trying to play like Pokemon White are just stuck on white screens. I'm not sure what's wrong or if my R4 is broken but I don't think so since at least one game (a Yu-Gi-Oh game) seems to work. So I tried looking for the most up to date kernel but the website seems to be down so I'm not sure what to do. This is my R4

So there is some progress. Good to hear.

And… yeah, the R4 clones and their disappearing websites. You can find a lot of kernel software on linfoxdomain:
http://www.linfoxdomain.com/nintendo/ds/

I suggest running the full write/read test to make sure the micro-SD is working. Any existing file system corruption may also cause trouble.

Copy all your data from the SD to a computer. Reformat the SD to FAT32, 32kb cluster size, if bigger than 32GB and using Windows with guiformat.
Check your SD Windows, Linux, OS X.
- If you get any errors replace the SD.
- If you get no errors copy your files back on the SD.

Also a good idea is simply using another micro-SD for testing different kernel versions without touching your barely working (but still booting) current micro-SD.
=================

About the errors with the custom firmware: Please give a little more detail what is actually happening. HiyaCFW/SDNAND may boot into "An error has occurred" when more than 2GB of free space remain on the console SD. Filling the SD with dummy files gets rid of this as well as replacing "Launcher" (HiyaCFW/SDNAND) with TWiLight Menu++. This is all covered on the guide.

Simply booting "Launcher" (real SysNAND) from the unlaunch filemenu also does not run into this problem (as you already found out). Unlaunch gets rid of most restrictions and if your only goal is using the R4 you can simply assign Launcher to "NO BUTTON" in unlauch without even having Hiya or TWL++. Note that unlaunch applies non-optional patches (no Health and Safety Screen, no music and no sound in Launcher).
=================

If you can't get the R4 working again: TWiLight Menu++ is a very good alternative.

NightScript · Feb 25, 2020

KleinesSinchen said:
hiyaCFW/SDNAND may boot into "An error has occurred" when more than 2GB of free space remain on the console SD. Filling the SD with dummy files gets rid of this as well as replacing "Launcher" (HiyaCFW/SDNAND) with TWiLight Menu++. This is all covered on the guide.

this is incorrect. It's only when the free space makes the free space counter in the DSi overflow into the negative numbers. For example, 1-2 GB is fine, 3-4 makes the 32-signed bit integer overflow. 5-6 GB is fine, 7-8 makes the 32-signed bit integer overflow

They just need to add 1-2 GB worth of free space in order for it to work again.

KleinesSinchen · Feb 26, 2020

maorninja said:
this is incorrect. It's only when the free space makes the free space counter in the DSi overflow into the negative numbers. For example, 1-2 GB is fine, 3-4 makes the 32-signed bit integer overflow. 5-6 GB is fine, 7-8 makes the 32-signed bit integer overflow

They just need to add 1-2 GB worth of free space in order for it to work again.

Technically it's not incorrect. When more than 2GB are available Launcher (HiyaCFW) may boot into error. Since the exact details do not really matter for this thread and just filling the SD until less than 2GB are free (same advise on dsi.cfw.guide at the moment) works, I chose to express it very simple and omit the information from here.

But thanks for reminding me to do a more systematic test.

Plasmaster09 · Feb 27, 2020

WombatRombat said:
Hello, thanks for the help! So I followed the tutorial and I installed unlaunch and when I was following the HiyaCFW route I ran into some errors. However for some reason I decided to randomly go through unlaunch and then go to the DSi launcher and my R4 boots up normally!

But now there's my second problem. For some reason only one game on my R4 seems to work and the new games I'm trying to play like Pokemon White are just stuck on white screens. I'm not sure what's wrong or if my R4 is broken but I don't think so since at least one game (a Yu-Gi-Oh game) seems to work. So I tried looking for the most up to date kernel but the website seems to be down so I'm not sure what to do. This is my R4

View attachment 197507

Option one: replace the R4's kernel (the software thing, the thing running the main menu and whatnot- if I know anything it's probably some variation of TTMenu) with YSMenu. It's what I use and it works rather well.
Option two: do what you did but don't go the HiyaCFW route. Instead, do Twilight Menu ++ via Unlaunch.. If it works, it'll likely be BETTER than the flashcard anyway!

Hacking Updated my DSi and now my R4i gold doesn't work

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