Corrupted Cartridge Fixer Release

[rave420]

Had a cartridge of NSMB2 inserted into my 3DS since I first bought it, occasionally played the game but mostly used it as a "slot saver" type thing to stop the slot from getting all dusty and dirty over time. Anyways, long story short, after 3 years of not using the cart I tried playing the game today, and it reliably hangs as soon as I got through the splash screen. Tried the cart in my 2nd 3DS, same story, hangs in exactly the same place. Made me think of this thread, and I downloaded the cart fixer.

Strangely enough, it ran through the whole cart, no issues reported whatsoever, went faster than I thought it would. Ran it a couple more times to be sure. Since the tool didn't find any errors I thought the cart was a write-off, and assumed it had unrelated issues. Just for shits and giggles I thought I'd try running the game one last time, and surprise surprise, the cart runs fine now, on both of my 3DSs. Went ahead and dumped it, thought I might as well at this point. The dump went fine (wish I would have tried while the card was still corrupted). I don't really know why that worked, maybe just the act of reading data from non-corrupted parts of the cart "fixed" other parts of the cart before the fixer tool could pick them up as corrupted? I have no idea, the tool reported no errors and the cart works once again. Brilliant!

I'm starting to think that the simple act of occasionally reading data from the cart, applying some power to it (by way of using it in the 3DS of course), instead of leaving it on a shelf for years on end, might have certain "protective" effects against this type of corruption. Any thoughts ?

 

[skawo]

The refresh function is called every 10000 reads, every time you put the cartridge into the 3DS and every time you shut the 3DS off - so you've inadvertently manually caused some refreshes just trying to verify that it wasn't working. I did the same thing with the Paper Jam cartridge that led me down the path to making the fixer in the first place, as suddenly it started to boot whereas it previously would not :v

Also, the tool will not report any errors if it fixes everything in one go - I guess either the fiddling or running it through the fixer once must've just nudged it back into a working state.

 

[splaca]

I wanted to fix my brothers cartridge that stopped working, its a copy of Pokémon Omega Ruby, but when I try and verify it, it says that verification failed, what should I do? I promised my brother to fix it so we could play together and I don't know what to tell him now, he's gonna be upset, very upset, he's gonna cry that he lost everything on it.

Even if the cartridge itself is beyond recovery (which might be soon to be sure about), it's still quite possible you can salvage the save file, for example by using the homebrew application Checkpoint.

 

[ghjfdtg]

Just as an example but some higher end data center SSDs tell you not to leave them powered off for longer (let's say months since it varies). This is because the SSD does flash management in background to make sure all the data is good. I don't believe 3DS games have such a sophisticated flash management which is why they need the refreshes. It's basically manual flash management and if you don't do it often enough the data will go unrecoverable bad. This also explains why the game got corrupted despite being powered.

I think there should be a pinned warning in this forum to check your game collection yearly because the situation seems to escalate if the claim with 14 out of 15 games dead (as claimed on the previous page) is true.

 

[4d1xlaan]

I think there should be a pinned warning in this forum to check your game collection yearly because the situation seems to escalate if the claim with 14 out of 15 games dead (as claimed on the previous page) is true.

you could hand people a letter directly into their hands telling them this, and they still wouldnt read it, tbf

 

[Jesus_Afton1987]

How many times have you let the corruption fixing process run?

Sorry for not replying, I was busy with University but I left it run once and then I ran it again 4 other times and it still gives me this error message

 

[skawo]

Try to run it while holding Y and see how many blocks are reported as bad.

 

[Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa]

Ran it 8 times on my robobot cartidge and finally got a success!
I'm now trying the game and it stopped randomly crashing

 

[Jesus_Afton1987]

Try to run it while holding Y and see how many blocks are reported as bad.

I did what you said and as I held down Y the game just booted up like normal as if nothing happed

 

[skawo]

...I meant, in the tool. Hold Y while starting the fixer.

 

[Jesus_Afton1987]

...I meant, in the tool. Hold Y while starting the fixer.

Oh alright sorry for that

 

[brambles9]

​

the one cart I tried, which is one of 4 non-functional smash cartridges, and is the one in the worst condition, did improve. Just barely. After 3 hours, now the splash picture that shows up when you hover over the game and the little jungle it plays are back. I don't expect if I run it more times it'll become playable though. It made it to a grand total of 1% before it gave up, 2,000,000 refreshes in. Next I'm running the one in the best condition, which can both open and run the main menu of the game, but if you try to go into any gamemode, it'll lode infinitely. This includes things like looking at the trophy menu. I have confirmed that at least none of the saves are corrupted.

 

[Sunomakino]

Quick question, would the cartridge fixer also be able to repair corrupted save files? Since I have an old Omega Ruby cartridge that has a corrupted save file on it with a shiny starter that I wasted 10 hours soft resetting to get. Sadly, I didn't know that turning off the 3ds after saving corrupts the save file so out of curiosity, I just wanted to find that out before installing the fixer.

 

[skawo]

If the save file is stored on the same chip as the actual game - which is not always the case - then you could theoretically run the process on the save file (selecting it, then holding SELECT and choosing one of the hash calculation options).

Not sure it would actually work if the save was corrupted by means other than the bit rot, though.

tldr; dunno

 

[4d1xlaan]

your best bet is to dump the save file and check in pkhex if it's able to read the party data. if it's not able to read the file because it thinks it's invalid, then it might still be possible to extract the data and implant it into a valid save file, so you could share the file on here and see if anyone can manage to extract the data

and no, turning off the console after saving doesn't corrupt the save file. something else caused that. you would have had to turn off while saving, then the current save file wouldnt save correctly, and it would load the backup save file instead. given what we know then it's more likely hardware damage and it's just not able to read the save from the chip though, so save file backup tools might not be able to backup the save file either

you're saying you saved, then shut off the console, and immediately it complained that the save file was corrupted? or did it sit unused for years?

 

[Sunomakino]

your best bet is to dump the save file and check in pkhex if it's able to read the party data. if it's not able to read the file because it thinks it's invalid, then it might still be possible to extract the data and implant it into a valid save file, so you could share the file on here and see if anyone can manage to extract the data

and no, turning off the console after saving doesn't corrupt the save file. something else caused that. you would have had to turn off while saving, then the current save file wouldnt save correctly, and it would load the backup save file instead. given what we know then it's more likely hardware damage and it's just not able to read the save from the chip though, so save file backup tools might not be able to backup the save file either

you're saying you saved, then shut off the console, and immediately it complained that the save file was corrupted? or did it sit unused for years?

Yeah, I tried PKHex but it couldn't read it, same with poke bank. I have the cartridge for about almost 4 years now and have bought it second hand so I'm not 100% sure on how old it is in total. I did play the game once before I decided to shiny hunt for a Treecko and I never really had any issues with corruption up until now, not to mention the game wasn't altered in any way so I chalked it up to the issue being turning the 3DS off right after saving before going to sleep, only to be greeted with a corrupted save file error message the next morning when booting up the game again. Only things I haven't tried so far is this tool to see if it's a hardware issue, and also the data extraction method that you mentioned, if these don't work then I'll just have to start from scratch and shiny hunt for a new one. I would upload the corrupted save on here, but the site doesn't seem to support the format, but thanks for the information!

 

[4d1xlaan]

Yeah, I tried PKHex but it couldn't read it, same with poke bank. I have the cartridge for about almost 4 years now and have bought it second hand so I'm not 100% sure on how old it is in total. I did play the game once before I decided to shiny hunt for a Treecko and I never really had any issues with corruption up until now, not to mention the game wasn't altered in any way so I chalked it up to the issue being turning the 3DS off right after saving before going to sleep, only to be greeted with a corrupted save file error message the next morning when booting up the game again. Only things I haven't tried so far is this tool to see if it's a hardware issue, and also the data extraction method that you mentioned, if these don't work then I'll just have to start from scratch and shiny hunt for a new one. I would upload the corrupted save on here, but the site doesn't seem to support the format, but thanks for the information!

put the file in a .zip and it should allow it, unless it doesnt let you put attachments if your account is too new

but yeah, corruption showed up the next day, it can't really be bit rot. the problem here happens because carts are unused for years, never plugged in, so the data is never refreshed

a lot of people had problems even in 2015 with omega ruby and alpha sapphire and save file corruption, it was assumed it was a hardware problem like a bad batch of carts or something

 

[Sunomakino]

put the file in a .zip and it should allow it, unless it doesnt let you put attachments if your account is too new

but yeah, corruption showed up the next day, it can't really be bit rot. the problem here happens because carts are unused for years, never plugged in, so the data is never refreshed

a lot of people had problems even in 2015 with omega ruby and alpha sapphire and save file corruption, it was assumed it was a hardware problem like a bad batch of carts or something

That would most likely explain. Thanks a lot for the help and here is a copy of the save file for anyone interested in having a look at it that I extracted via checkpoint but I doubt it can be repaired by this point.

 

[4d1xlaan]

That would most likely explain. Thanks a lot for the help and here is a copy of the save file for anyone interested in having a look at it that I extracted via checkpoint but I doubt it can be repaired by this point.

merry late christmas

I suggest not using this cartridge anymore and using a digital copy instead

 

[brambles9]

Update: I have now tried 4 different smash cartridges. The first one, which was the one in the worst condition, was only slightly improved after 3 hours, before the program gave up. The other 3 all seem to be in perfect working order now. None of them have corrupted saves, so we're good there. The two medium-bad ones took 3 hours each, while the somewhat good condition one took 30 minutes.