Corrupted Cartridge Fixer Release

[duranman]

I assume the actual game doesn't work though, right?

unfortunately it had some issues. Black screen on start up. When I checked the fix report by holding Y it seemed to bring up 1432 lines of unfixable blocks. But the save was intact, so I just moved it to a digital version.

 

[WingsThePhoenix]

an update on my pokémon Y cartridge: we got it down to 115 corrupted blocks and decided to keep going until i hit a proper softlock.
it actually went pretty well! only one trainer crashed me between where i left off (just getting the kanto starter from sycamore) to where i am now: the first team flare grunt fight in glittering cave. which crashed me the same way other trainers did.
back to the fixer, we'll see how this goes!

 

[CapybaraFan11]

Just made a new account to say thank you for this tool, I thought my Smash cartridge was lost before I found this!

 

[Deleted member 712440]

My Kirby Planet Robobot cart was severely corrupted (took about 4 hours to get through the repair using this tool), but it worked pretty well. I'm pretty sure it fixed >90% of all corrupted hash's. The game (before the repair) used to crash whenever I loaded anything from the file select screen, but now I could make it a little ways through the first stage before it crashed yet again...
Really respect the work that went into making this, and I can definitely tell that it works, but my cart might be a little too far gone lol

 

[skawo]

Try a few more times, maybe it'll get there!

 

[Deleted member 712440]

I tried twice, leaving the system alone for 5 hours on the second try, and it still hadn't got past the first mismatched hash. Considering there were more than 10 mismatched hashes after that (some of them being very slow at reloading), I think it would probably take an extremely long time to get through them all...

 

[smtcatboy]

Thank you so much for this tool. I work at a game store, and this past week we sold a game and had it returned due to immediate crashing. I remembered I had seen this program a few weeks ago and shared it with my boss, and we've managed to fix 5 games completely so far.

Those being:
3 Puzzle and Dragons
1 Miitopia
1 Persona Q

We're currently working on.. 4 other PQs, an Omega Ruby, and 3 Robobots. The OR seems to load into game, but fails verification. PQs and Kirbys are probably dead though. This will be an amazing tool for checking incoming inventory, though, so thank you again.

 

[skawo]

Nice! Very concerning there is so many failing carts, though :s

 

[MopSec]

Hi guys,
I've been struggling with a very weird issue for the past few days and I've reached the point where I need to ask for help before I go insane
Basically, I have an original cartridge of Pokemon Y but I've also got the game installed as a CIA on my N3DSXL. I've started a new save on the cartridge and noticed shortly after starting the game that it always crashes with a generic ErrDisp screen when I equip a specific piece of clothing on my character. At first, I thought it was a problem with my edited save file but I imported that very same save into the CIA version of the game and there it works perfectly fine.
So I figured that I am dealing with a corrupted cartridge and GM9 also can't verify the cartridge, which seems to support that theory. Now I ran the cartridge fixer a number of times but the end result never changed. The verification doesn't work and the game still crashes with that same ErrDisp screen.
Now I've enabled logging in the cartridge fixer for the last few attempts and now I'm even more confused.
I have 15 logs and most of them contain nothing except for
"CORRUPTION FIX LOG ON C:/0004000000055E00_v00.3ds"
which I figure most mean that the cartridge is actually okay. Some of the logs additionally contain
"
Unfixable: 5008c000
Unfixable: 5008d000
"
though. Does that mean my cartridge is unfixable even though that error doesn't show up in every attempt?

I've also tried reflowing the solder joints of the NAND chip but didn't change anything.

 

[skawo]

Unfixable shows up when the same block is stuck on the same hash value for more than 10 refreshes.
Not sure why it wouldn't show up on certain attempts, though.

Try running the fixer with logging on again and see whether those blocks show up in the most recent one.

 

[MopSec]

Ooooh I get it now! The fixer creates multiple log files per attempt, right? Seems like it always creates 3 files for me, and the first one always contains those two unfixable errors. Seems like the cartridge is done for afterall

 

[skawo]

That's really unfortunate, since it's just two blocks.
Try running the 100 refreshes version, maybe that'll get them unstuck?

 

[Deleted member 702243]

Nice! Very concerning there is so many failing carts, though :s

It's really not that many, considering millions of cartridges produced and sold and only a handful reported or noticed broken so far. Even a couple hundred or thousands of failed carts worldwide for a game is a small percentage of the total

I mean, if games were failing this easily after just a few years of being unused, people would have noticed a problem with physical carts a long time ago, and the problem of 3ds games being unreliable would have been a bigger topic

Not that this isnt a real problem, though. It will get worse over the next decades of games just sitting there never receiving power, for sure. The chances of a game going bad over a few years unused are low, but over a few decades? The chances add up. It's a good idea to spread the word for people to at least put their games in regularly to refresh them if they dont want them going bad, or it will eventually be a lot of dead carts

Especially for used games stores like this who have a lot to lose if their inventory can just expire lol

 

[skawo]

Well, I can't imagine this thread is getting a whole lot of attention, either :v

 

[ghjfdtg]

You can see people complaining about crashes left and right. Yes, many of them are SD card corruption but how many are broken games? It's difficult to say but the number of people who had broken games in this thread alone is alarming indeed. The most alarming part is that games less than 10 years old from the production date are also failing. The leaked specification says data retention for a minimum of 10 years.

 

[Deleted member 702243]

Well, I can't imagine this thread is getting a whole lot of attention, either :v

Gotta bring it up in more gaming spaces, I think this problem will only be known by word of mouth. Otherwise people have no way to know until it's too late

It needs to be mentioned more often and be kept in the spotlight otherwise too many people just never know. and major gaming news outlets covering it would help too

You can see people complaining about crashes left and right. Yes, many of them are SD card corruption but how many are broken games? It's difficult to say but the number of people who had broken games in this thread alone is alarming indeed. The most alarming part is that games less than 10 years old from the production date are also failing. The leaked specification says data retention for a minimum of 10 years.

Left and right isnt a quantity, it's easy to see a couple hundred people complaining on social media and think it's a lot. but we don't hear about the millions who don't have issues

 

[MopSec]

That's really unfortunate, since it's just two blocks.
Try running the 100 refreshes version, maybe that'll get them unstuck?

Doing three rounds with 100 refreshes didn't help either

 

[skawo]

Alas.
Added to unrecoverable.

 

[moon_rabbit]

Just like the NAND in the WII-U is dying, cartridges are destined to die at some point.
However, their actual lifespan will be much longer than expected, and I expect them to last 50+ years under normal circumstances.

We need long-lasting archives in this world.

----------

From what I've read, the 3DS doesn't seem to do Bit-Perfect test or hash verification.
Users only realize something is wrong with the cartridge after it crashes. lol

 

[ghjfdtg]

I can see DS games lasting 50+ years because most of them use mask ROM but not 3DS games. A few are failing not even 10 years after production.