Corrupted Cartridge Fixer Release

[skawo]

Yeah, it's unfortunate.
There's been someone with a Kirby Robobot copy that had just 1 bad block and it just wouldn't go away :/

 

[fishsticxz]

hi, just made an account so i could post on this thread. i found this after watching a video on youtube about 3ds cartridge corruption, though i had actually heard of it before too! just hadn't searched it up previously.

anyway, to the point. a year or two ago i noticed my smash cartridge wouldn't get recognized by the system, but after a few re-inserts it did show up, however the title art wasn't showing up on the home menu. watching the video made me finally realize this was the problem with the cart! i downloaded your tool and started running it in hopes it would revive, however i think my smash is just too far gone. i let it run for 2 entire days straight and it was still at 3% with millions of refreshes, and i had to skip some blocks it would get stuck on for long times. a lot of blocks did get fixed along the way though! if a hash exceeded 500 tries but i had seen the correct hash flash in a couple times i would let it run and it would eventually fix itself. i stopped the first run for now and downloaded the 100tries version because it was just taking too long.

i don't have high hopes but i do wanna see how much the situation can be improved. being able to boot would be awesome! i'm in it for the experience at this point, lol. i already tried after stopping the first run and the title now shows up in the home menu, which means something was improved! it did crash right after trying to boot it though.

when i'm done playing around with the smash cart, i'll run the verify on all my other games, which should be working. i've booted up my pokemon x and alpha sapphire a few times over the years so it seems that has kept them alive despite the odds. very sad that smash is one of the games in the bad batch of carts! things just arent made to last anymore, considering ds carts are basically immortal compared to some of these 3ds carts, smh.

thank you for making the tool, and developing and keeping it updated! it has the potential to save hundreds of cartridges if enough awareness is spread through the internet and irl communities. i'll try to remember to report back on my smash cart's improvement later, but like i said it's 99% likely a lost cause. hope you have a nice day!

 

[Kizux]

hi, just made an account so i could post on this thread. i found this after watching a video on youtube about 3ds cartridge corruption, though i had actually heard of it before too! just hadn't searched it up previously.

anyway, to the point. a year or two ago i noticed my smash cartridge wouldn't get recognized by the system, but after a few re-inserts it did show up, however the title art wasn't showing up on the home menu. watching the video made me finally realize this was the problem with the cart! i downloaded your tool and started running it in hopes it would revive, however i think my smash is just too far gone. i let it run for 2 entire days straight and it was still at 3% with millions of refreshes, and i had to skip some blocks it would get stuck on for long times. a lot of blocks did get fixed along the way though! if a hash exceeded 500 tries but i had seen the correct hash flash in a couple times i would let it run and it would eventually fix itself. i stopped the first run for now and downloaded the 100tries version because it was just taking too long.

i don't have high hopes but i do wanna see how much the situation can be improved. being able to boot would be awesome! i'm in it for the experience at this point, lol. i already tried after stopping the first run and the title now shows up in the home menu, which means something was improved! it did crash right after trying to boot it though.

when i'm done playing around with the smash cart, i'll run the verify on all my other games, which should be working. i've booted up my pokemon x and alpha sapphire a few times over the years so it seems that has kept them alive despite the odds. very sad that smash is one of the games in the bad batch of carts! things just arent made to last anymore, considering ds carts are basically immortal compared to some of these 3ds carts, smh.

thank you for making the tool, and developing and keeping it updated! it has the potential to save hundreds of cartridges if enough awareness is spread through the internet and irl communities. i'll try to remember to report back on my smash cart's improvement later, but like i said it's 99% likely a lost cause. hope you have a nice day!

I had to revive this account to post lol, I read about this on the fire emblem reddit (shoutouts to u/Peanut222link for their bi yearly reminders posts about Fire Emblem Echoes cartridges dying).

I started checking all my 3DS games and I ran into this issue with Smash Bros too, same issue, no banner and it would get stuck loading forever. I'm currently trying to fix it but I think these Smash cartridges are too far gone, left my 3DS on the entire night and still on 0%, still hasn't matched the first hash.

I might buy a battery for my second old 3DS and leave it running 24/7 plugged to a charger hoping one day it just gets fixed lol

EDIT: Also, which mode should I be using? I tried with the default which is "verifying EXEFS", which seemed to be very slow and didn't provide an ETA. If I hold B it will go to "Running through ROMFS refresh" which shows me an ETA (even if it's just stuck at 59m59s). I'm guessing the first one goes one block at a time, doing a refresh and checking if that block's HASH is a match, while the second one does a refresh but goes through all the block at one time to see how many of them matched?

EDIT 2: Also, while using the 1.4 version, is it worth leaving it overnight even if it shows the message "500 retries exceeded, press Y to skip to the next block"?

 

[skawo]

EDIT: Also, which mode should I be using? I tried with the default which is "verifying EXEFS", which seemed to be very slow and didn't provide an ETA. If I hold B it will go to "Running through ROMFS refresh" which shows me an ETA (even if it's just stuck at 59m59s). I'm guessing the first one goes one block at a time, doing a refresh and checking if that block's HASH is a match, while the second one does a refresh but goes through all the block at one time to see how many of them matched?

Default mode is fine. It just goes through all of the files, one at a time. The EXEFS contains the executable, but its hash applies to the entire file, so it can take a really long time to restore,

If it never seems to progress, you can try the 100 refreshes version.

Unfortunately, if the exefs doesn't get fixed, there's not much point in continuing, as it's vital for the game to work.

 

[ExtremeX]

I bought pokémon omega on a marketplace here in the netherlands and the guy sold me a corrupted cartridge... i was annoyed obviously cause the corruption was obvious he was at the pokemon centre at the pokemon storage once opened and going to the withdraw section it started to display "An error has occured, hold the power button"... so reset went to the 1st rival encounter and every single time it crashed there.. THEN I FOUDN THIS POST. you are a savior thanks for the work and support=) saved me money! had to do aprox 6 runs and then it was all good.

Post automatically merged: Jul 10, 2025

By the way even if it exceeded the 500 retry's don't skip it just let it keep running for me it managed to fix some hashes that seemed stuck to fix. 1 out of a billion or a million maybe he could be able to read it and correct it. Patience is very important i experienced with this.

 

[Cliffback]

Thank you so much for this! Just discovered my Omega Ruby had «died» and running the fixer three times got me to a passed verification and everything now works perfectly again!

True lifesaver!

 

[fumak0]

Hi! I just signed up to thank you for this tool. I just recovered a game that wasn't working.

On the other hand, have you tried reflowing the chip solder joints on the games you couldn't recover? Some games crash because of this.

Thanks again, and greetings from Spain!

 

[skawo]

If you're referring to the video by Voultar, the cartridge in it wasn't showing up in the 3DS Menu at all - and for the most part, cold solder joints would just result in that kind of behaviour, not a crash in-game.

 

[fumak0]

If you're referring to the video by Voultar, the cartridge in it wasn't showing up in the 3DS Menu at all - and for the most part, cold solder joints would just result in that kind of behaviour, not a crash in-game.

I wasn't saying this because of Voultar's video, but a bad solder can sometimes make contact and other times not.
It would be interesting to do the test.

 

[Kizux]

The battery I ordered for my main 3DS arrived, and the old one is currently on my second 3DS, so I will leave it trying to fix my copy of Smash Bros 24/7, here's hoping it will work.

 

[Linsomia]

Alpha Sapphire (German Version) got fixed (3 runs, verify doesn't work after 3 runs) with Version 1.3
Thank you very much

Post automatically merged: Aug 5, 2025

Alpha Sapphire (German Version) got fixed (3 runs, verify doesn't work after 3 runs) with Version 1.3
Thank you very much

 

[skawo]

Well, if the verify fails, you probably should run it a bit longer...

 

[pandavova]

Just verified all my 5 games, all verified successfully, last used them multiple years ago.
(TLoZ:ALBW, AC:NL, Alpha Sapphire, Paper Mario, Majoras Mask)

Any reason to do more refreshes on the cards if I don't plan to use them for a long time?

 

[skawo]

If they're fine, then there's no need.
I would probably go through a check like this at least once a couple of years though

 

[balemoc]

Just verified all my 5 games, all verified successfully, last used them multiple years ago.
(TLoZ:ALBW, AC:NL, Alpha Sapphire, Paper Mario, Majoras Mask)

Any reason to do more refreshes on the cards if I don't plan to use them for a long time?

Nice.

I lost 3DS Xenoblade, so now I've turned paranoid and feel like I should keep running the check every few months now on all the 3DS carts now.

 

[mtgforger]

First time using this on Omega Ruby. Stuck on "Verifying EXEFS" with refresh count currently over 800k. Is this supposed to happen? Is the cartridge unrecoverable? It showed up with just a slightly glitched out icon on godmode9 and otherwise is read fine. 3ds file is present, sav file is present, binary, trim, etc. too

 

[skawo]

Sounds like it can't fix the EXEFS, so if the cartridge doesn't work then it's probably toast, yeah :c

 

[mtgforger]

I've tried again and it's currently at over 2.3 million on verifying EXEFS. Is it safe to say that the cartridge is broken?

 

[balemoc]

I've tried again and it's currently at over 2.3 million on verifying EXEFS. Is it safe to say that the cartridge is broken?

I think so.
I've opened up the 3DS to see -2500000000 on my Xenoblade Chronicles and when I've tried to see if it could get to the title screen, it never did.
I've ran the cart at least 6 times, one session ran for 48hrs plus and it didnt even finish - just stuck on 1-hash


...i had to accept it faulty

 

[Smash4Saver]

Hey! Stumbled across this thread the other day and thought I'd give it a try on a broken Smash Bros cart I bought last weekend. When I first tried the game, the icon would appear on the bottom screen, but no graphic on the top screen. When I tried to play it, it would say "Game Card could not be read." I ran it through the program, and after a couple million refreshes and getting stuck on 5%, I stopped the process to see if any progress had been made. To my surprise, the game now displayed the top screen graphic and played music when on the 3DS home menu! It still wouldn’t run though but at least that’s progress. I put it back in and it's been running through refreshes now. It's been roughly 50+ hours. It's been stuck on 25% for the past 40 hours. At first I thought it was doomed, however it finally moved on from the Hash it had been stuck on for 18-ish hours. Now, it's been stuck on the same Hash for 24-ish hours. It's still digging through Hashes at an insanely fast rate (I think I'm at 150 million refreshes total now), but it's still not fixed the block. I would take it out and test it out except that I don't want to ruin 24 hours of progress on this one stubborn block. Is the cartridge cooked or should I keep going to see if the block finally gets fixed?