Hello! I recently bought my first 3DS console, an Old XL model from a local seller however it's been having many issues that are just completely ruining the experience for me. I will describe them and go through all that I've done so far to fix it.
So the first thing I did upon booting the console was performing an update of both Luma3DS and well as bootstrap9, followed by factory resetting the console as I wanted to start from the beginning. One thing that I've already noticed right after is that the camera was broken, accessing it through the camera app resulted in an unresponsive black screen and using the L and R buttons would freeze the console.
The first major issue was when attempting to play a GBA Virtual Console inject, launching the game resulted in a black screen and the console would become unresponsive, tried another GBA inject, same thing, looked through the internet and the only cause for this seemed to be an outdated Luma but that was just updated, someone suggested to check if DS mode worked, which I promptly did by trying to load the DS Internet Settings which to my surprise resulted in the same unresponsive black screen.
I spent a long time troubleshooting this, I went through the section in the 3DS hacks forums that went over a broken DS mode, applied the TWLfix to no avail, tried reflashing the NVRAM. None of the common solutions seemed to work, I stumbled across this thread with someone in a similar situation (my DS Mode is Still bricked!). It seemed then to me that a CTRTransfer was the only other software solution I could pursue, so I did so, more than once, when the first failed I performed a Type D9 Transfer as well, but the results were the same, attempting to launch DS Mode resulted in that same black screen no matter what. That thread suggested it may be a hardware issue related to the camera, a notion supported by the DS_mode_unbrick guide in the 3DS Hacks Wiki.
I then ordered tools, to open up the 3DS at a later date to check on the camera, but for now decided to play some 3DS games. I attempted to play Mario Kart 7, but booting the game resulted in unrelated issue, an infinite loading wheel, no matter how much time I waited the game was stuck with the title "Mario Kart 7" with the wheel on the bottom right just loading infinitely. I remembered CTGP existed and so I figured I'd try to maybe launch the game from that? I don't know exactly how I thought that'd work but I did install CTGP but upon booting the launcher, the unresponsive black screen, again. By that point I was just confused but then I read that CTGP uses the extended memory mode. To confirm that this was the issue I got a game that utilizes such mode, Super Mario Maker, and as expected, black screen on that too.
There was a section in the region change guide that goes over fixing this, Fixing locale-related issues, I did follow it, but no success in fixing, I then tried a system format and a tinyformat but none could fix the extended memory applications not booting.
I am genuinely at a loss of what to do or what to even try, in a leap of faith I just tried restoring my first sysnand backup from before the first CTRTransfer but that didn't do anything either. I suspect a Hardware issue, when the issue was with DS Mode I figured for sure the camera was the culprit but now I really do not know the extent of this issue. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
As an update, I performed a hw-test and it returned 0 RAM errors
Did some further testing today, I fixed the Extended Memory applications not booting by downgrading Luma, DS Mode and GBA injects are still broken however
So the first thing I did upon booting the console was performing an update of both Luma3DS and well as bootstrap9, followed by factory resetting the console as I wanted to start from the beginning. One thing that I've already noticed right after is that the camera was broken, accessing it through the camera app resulted in an unresponsive black screen and using the L and R buttons would freeze the console.
The first major issue was when attempting to play a GBA Virtual Console inject, launching the game resulted in a black screen and the console would become unresponsive, tried another GBA inject, same thing, looked through the internet and the only cause for this seemed to be an outdated Luma but that was just updated, someone suggested to check if DS mode worked, which I promptly did by trying to load the DS Internet Settings which to my surprise resulted in the same unresponsive black screen.
I spent a long time troubleshooting this, I went through the section in the 3DS hacks forums that went over a broken DS mode, applied the TWLfix to no avail, tried reflashing the NVRAM. None of the common solutions seemed to work, I stumbled across this thread with someone in a similar situation (my DS Mode is Still bricked!). It seemed then to me that a CTRTransfer was the only other software solution I could pursue, so I did so, more than once, when the first failed I performed a Type D9 Transfer as well, but the results were the same, attempting to launch DS Mode resulted in that same black screen no matter what. That thread suggested it may be a hardware issue related to the camera, a notion supported by the DS_mode_unbrick guide in the 3DS Hacks Wiki.
I then ordered tools, to open up the 3DS at a later date to check on the camera, but for now decided to play some 3DS games. I attempted to play Mario Kart 7, but booting the game resulted in unrelated issue, an infinite loading wheel, no matter how much time I waited the game was stuck with the title "Mario Kart 7" with the wheel on the bottom right just loading infinitely. I remembered CTGP existed and so I figured I'd try to maybe launch the game from that? I don't know exactly how I thought that'd work but I did install CTGP but upon booting the launcher, the unresponsive black screen, again. By that point I was just confused but then I read that CTGP uses the extended memory mode. To confirm that this was the issue I got a game that utilizes such mode, Super Mario Maker, and as expected, black screen on that too.
There was a section in the region change guide that goes over fixing this, Fixing locale-related issues, I did follow it, but no success in fixing, I then tried a system format and a tinyformat but none could fix the extended memory applications not booting.
I am genuinely at a loss of what to do or what to even try, in a leap of faith I just tried restoring my first sysnand backup from before the first CTRTransfer but that didn't do anything either. I suspect a Hardware issue, when the issue was with DS Mode I figured for sure the camera was the culprit but now I really do not know the extent of this issue. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Post automatically merged:
As an update, I performed a hw-test and it returned 0 RAM errors
Post automatically merged:
Did some further testing today, I fixed the Extended Memory applications not booting by downgrading Luma, DS Mode and GBA injects are still broken however
Last edited by SamNosferatu,
