Corrupted Cartridge Fixer Release

[Kwyjor]

Does anyone know

Yes, someone probably knows.

DS cartridges do not have this refresh mechanism, so no, this does not work for DS cartridges. DS cartridge failures seem to be vanishingly rare in comparison to begin with.

 

[Hellblaz3r]

Yes, someone probably knows.

DS cartridges do not have this refresh mechanism, so no, this does not work for DS cartridges. DS cartridge failures seem to be vanishingly rare in comparison to begin with.

You so much for the fast reply. You're a godsend. Now to spend the entire weekend testing all my 3DS collection.

 

[SargeSmash]

You so much for the fast reply. You're a godsend. Now to spend the entire weekend testing all my 3DS collection.

I did this, too, was about 60-ish carts. No wonky ones except for Codename: S.T.E.A.M., thankfully.

 

[gnmmarechal]

Finally time for me to put this tool to the test, sadly - went through my 3DS collection and a number of games do not work in the slightest, ugh. Mainly the games I played the least - which I suppose makes sense... Here's to hoping I can salvage some of them..

 

[Kwyjor]

went through my 3DS collection and a number of games do not work in the slightest, ugh.

Could you please name the specific titles, for reference? Some titles seem to be much more susceptible than others.

 

[gnmmarechal]

Could you please name the specific titles, for reference? Some titles seem to be much more susceptible than others.

Both of my Smash carts, some game called Shinobi, one of my Pokémon X cartridges - the rest I've not yet verified but they work *enough* for me to be able to get into the game, I shall be going through my entire cart collection.

- Shinobi : seems to have been refreshed by this and came back to life
- Smash Bros: Shows up in the Home Menu, doesn't boot - both copies act the same, and both get stuck, this tool doesn't seem to have done anything for it.
- Pokémon X: Even worse than Smash, doesn't show up in the Home Menu, can't seem to ever get it to do so - shame, because I'd really like to dump the save, but ah well...
- Mario Kart 7: Initially didn't even show up, a refresh later and it works fine apparently.
- Omega Ruby: Initially booted when I tried today, save was fine - now it doesn't, verification does fail, I'm hoping to recover this particular save... but I don't have much hope. Tried fixing the cart, no luck. Fortunately, I did find a save backup from 2019.
- Pokémon Y: Worked fine, but a quick verification showed a couple issues. A quick refresh later and it seems fine, though.

I'll be updating with the rest as I continue testing them all.

 

[Hanneskills]

Sorry if this is a stupid question.
How long can it take to fix a cartridge? My pokémon X threw a "Game card cannot be used" error after not being used for AGES. I'm currently trying to fix the cart using this tool, it's been at 0% for a while and I just got told that it has exceeded 500 retries.
Just wanna make sure it's working/I'm doing it right D:

 

[skawo]

It can take a while, especially since it sounds like it's fixing the exefs.

 

[Hanneskills]

Thanks for the quick reply! It's been running thorough ROMFS refresh for about half an hour now for with 0% progress. I do see a lot of movement on my bottom screen, but I'm not sure if that's good a good sign or just standard things happening. I wish I had some better knowledge about what exactly I'm doing rn? I find it very impressive that you managed to create this tool, whether it ends up saving my cartridge or not!

 

[skawo]

Does sound like it's doing its thing, but the cartridge is corrupted quite heavily. Might not work, but, keep it at it a bit longer, I guess.

 

[Hanneskills]

Does sound like it's doing its thing, but the cartridge is corrupted quite heavily. Might not work, but, keep it at it a bit longer, I guess.

I'll run it overnight, it's currently at 3% and I've skipped 3 times after it gave me a 500+ attempts error. What should I do if it doesn't progress overnight? Am I cooked or should I try other features? Currently just doing "Fix cartridge corruption". Even if it has the slightest chance of succes, I'd love to try it. Don't really care that much for the save file, would just love to get the cartridge working again.

 

[skawo]

If it's struggling that much, there's probably not much to be done sadly

 

[Imperator77]

Made an account just for this tool! Just want to share my experience:

My Smash cart was just too far gone it seems: First off, I did not know that it can take HOURS(!). [That, or my game is too far gone]. I was running it and it was running the EXEFS refresh, I started it at about 10 pm last night or so and had it going for about an an hour and had to go to sleep so I left it running but did not leave it plugged in to the charger and it had died in the middle of the refresh. So I had restarted my 3DS, ran the tool again at about 5am today and noticed that this time it was going through the ROMFS refresh, I thought that was kind of weird, but I thought nothing of it. Fast forward to basically now where I had given up on it, after approx 22 million refreshes and 18 hours.

I had tested out my entire Library, including the notorious ones Like Pkmn OR/AS, Puzzle Dragons, and FE Special Ed. I still have FE: Echoes somewhere that I have to dig out and test. Luckily smash was the only one that would not boot up at all. I still need repair/verify those mentioned titles just to be on the safe side and give them a 100% "fresh start" on life.

I should note that I was able to successfully transfer my save to a digital version of Smash using the Checkpoint tool before even trying the cart saver, in a worst case scenario. I also bought a working copy of Smash on eBay and transferred my save to that as well. I ran the verify function on the working copy, failed, ran the repair, verified again and successfully passed! All of that took ~15 minutes. Is it safe to say that my orig copy is un-repairable? It hasn't been powered on since like 2016 or so. I REALLY wanted it to work as I'm sure most of you understand we can become sentimental about our originally purchased carts.

A very concerning problem that I'm having now is that the cart slot is now intermittently not reading carts at all, or taking noticeably long time to read/unread when they are taken in and out. Is this normal? Takes about 3 seconds for the game to be recognized after inserting. After cycling different games in and out, I THINK it is getting faster and faster, could just be my imagination.

I will be verifying those other games and letting you know the results!

Also, is there a way to auto-skip the blocks that have had over 500 refreshes? I feel like it would be a very handy option. Thanks again! ^^

 

[skawo]

A very concerning problem that I'm having now is that the cart slot is now intermittently not reading carts at all, or taking noticeably long time to read/unread when they are taken in and out. Is this normal? Takes about 3 seconds for the game to be recognized after inserting. After cycling different games in and out, I THINK it is getting faster and faster, could just be my imagination.

Hm, well... In my experience, the 3DS has just always done that sometimes? Occasionally you insert the game and it just keeps thinking about it. The 3DS system menu is kinda slow.

I have added version 1.4 with a skip option:
https://github.com/skawo/GodMode9-with-Cartridge-Fixer/releases/tag/1.4

 

[balemoc]

I'll run it overnight, it's currently at 3% and I've skipped 3 times after it gave me a 500+ attempts error. What should I do if it doesn't progress overnight? Am I cooked or should I try other features? Currently just doing "Fix cartridge corruption". Even if it has the slightest chance of succes, I'd love to try it. Don't really care that much for the save file, would just love to get the cartridge working again.

Of all the 3DS cartridges I've checked, only Xenoblade Chronicles X has gone into the millions of retries, at one point even showing a -9million.
The last time I ran it on XCX, it was 2 days ago (I'm still hoping) and I left it running for 48hrs. For the last 24hrs, it was stuck on 1-hash number.
So ...I think it's about time I truly retire this one off the shelves.

Since discovering this tool after XCX couldn't be read, I've lost all motivation of collecting hard copies of 3DS games now, and to just stick to the games I still enjoy (mainly tbhe Monster Hunter titles). Selling all the ones I've check and verified, that I probably wont play in the near future

I hope you have more luck with recovery

Post automatically merged: Jul 4, 2025

Cartridge-Fixer/releases/tag/1.4

I have added version 1.4 with a skip option:
https://github.com/skawo/GodMode9-with-Cartridge-Fixer/releases/tag/1.4

I got to ask: Do you reckon there's a way to hash check and recover using external source (.3DS files) of the same title - Or is every cartridge unique in the hash numbers it contains?

(My brain is illustrator/pixel pusher focused, and I couldn't figure out programming at all during my Game Dev course, let alone electronic engineering)

 

[Imperator77]

Thanks for that update! Is there any hope left for my og smash cart? Not sure if leaving my 3DS to run out of battery did anything to it

And the issue with the slow reading of carts is more than that. Whenever I remove a cart, the top animated title screen goes away but the game icon stays at the bottom screen. The only workaround that I discovered was if i do a soft reboot (press power then go to the home screen) the new cart I have inserted will properly show up.

 

[skawo]

Like I said, it's always been a bit inconsistent. Maybe yours needs a clean, or something.

 

[ch4d1]

@skawo First of all, thank you very much for the tool. Any idea how to deal with stuck blocks that will be skipped after 20 retries? My Animal Crossing was heavily corrupted, and it took me about three days to fix (almost) all the blocks. However, there are still a few blocks that seem to be stuck, and the tool automatically skips them (without auto skip on). Any idea how to force it to keep retrying until they change?

Just for the record, I also found my Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam Bros. to be corrupted. It’s gotten so bad that the block hash only changes after about 3 minutes… so there’s almost no hope. In gm9, the title itself is already corrupted too, which is kind of funny to see.

 

[skawo]

The blocks that get skipped after 20 retries are the ones whose hash doesn't update. Meaning, they're permanently stuck as bad, there's nothing that can be done, unfortunately.

 

[ch4d1]

The blocks that get skipped after 20 retries are the ones whose hash doesn't update. Meaning, they're permanently stuck as bad, there's nothing that can be done, unfortunately.

So in your opinion, it’s not really worth trying to refresh the blocks for longer? Sad... I’d guess only about 0.2% of the blocks are bad… But hey, better than all of them being bad, and at least the game can be played again. Just took 3 Days Thank you again