Corrupted Cartridge Fixer Release

[kazuya8]

Im sorry for maybe asking a question that has already been answered, but how would I try the 100 Refresh version? Im currently at work and dont have that much time on my hands, so I can probably only try it later today.

Oh and it would mean the world to me if this cartridge can be fixed, my dad used to play this game with me and he recently passed away... So I hold a lot of fond memories not only to the savefile but the cartridge itself as we bought it together...

Sorry for your loss... save file itself might be possible to dump with one of the few apps like checkpoint for example. You cant try.

 

[rave420]

Recently picked up a legitimate "but dead" Alpha Sapphire Cart for $2 in pretty great condition. Figured it was a long shot, but got excited when GM9 recognized the cart at least. Ran the fixer like three times super quick, and got the game to boot. There wasn't much refreshes total considering, so maybe something important that is crucial for the game starting up got bunged up, whatever the case it's working. What a steal! Let's see if it will continue to work.

 

[balemoc]

Recently picked up a legitimate "but dead" Alpha Sapphire Cart for $2 in pretty great condition. Figured it was a long shot, but got excited when GM9 recognized the cart at least. Ran the fixer like three times super quick, and got the game to boot. There wasn't much refreshes total considering, so maybe something important that is crucial for the game starting up got bunged up, whatever the case it's working. What a steal! Let's see if it will continue to work.

If you did the fix and then the check with positive results, then it should be all good.

I'm getting paranoid though, so I've got the cartridges being checked on a 3DS - *solely for checking now - far too often than I would have expected to when I bought hardcopies

 

[rave420]

@balemoc: The card verifies just fine for now. I took that opportunity to create a legit dump of alpha sapphire for myself, the failing card giving me all the justification I need for my "piracy". Hey, cheap and more importantly legitimate pokemon bank access for HOME purposes, what more can I ask for?

I will run the refresher again next week and see if anything else crops up, but I think I'm out of the woods for now.

I said this before but I'll say it again @skawo: Thank you for your research / implementation / time and care, you are saving cartridges from the landfill, and are keeping money in my pocket

 

[teasea]

Just wanted to thank everyone esp. @skawo for their work on this - luckily for me, I only had issues with one cart (MHG, UK release) and after several runs of the refresher, it reports as normal. Many thanks for that.

I do have a small question about the issue more generally - I understand that regular DS carts are less susceptible to this, but how about Vita carts? I have a number of those still sealed that I haven't got round to playing yet, so it would be nice to know.

 

[kazuya8]

nds carts use different type of memory, they should be more reliable for long term.

as well, i would like to thank for this app, it might save a lot of cartridges now and the future. thank you!

so far i tried to use it with two games; smash bross male and dragon quest joker, both japanese versions and unfortunately they couldnt be saved, even i used app for 48h...

 

[TemplarioK1]

I'll leave an account of how I "circumvented" the problem.

First, please forgive my Google Translate English.

I bought a Pokémon Y advertised as defective for around R$50.00 ($9.00). It appears normally on the initial screen, allows language selection, and the initial video plays normally until the "press start" screen. At that point, it freezes. I repeated the process several times, but nothing changed.

It gives me about 39,980 hashes with problems (this is at the beginning of the process; from about 3% onward, it has one or two defective hashes). However, the app in version 1.4 isn't generating the log for me, and the "gm9/out" folder doesn't even exist on my SD card. I've now installed the 100x version to test, but before that, I played around with the files a bit.

One thing I noticed was that mods work. I installed the Portuguese translation, and on the initial language selection screen, I noticed it worked. So I was playing Citra on my PC. I downloaded a ROM from the internet, got the dump from my cartridge, and did some tests. Both accepted the translation, but the dump obviously wouldn't get past the "press start" screen. I tried extracting the ROM files from the downloaded ROM and playing all the content as a mod, and the emulator wouldn't even open any of the ROMs anymore. Then, looking at the files, I noticed one in particular that makes up about 58% of the game's size, and I left only that file as a mod. Both ROMs started working again, and the dump from my cartridge got past the "press start" screen and started the game normally. I did the same on my old 3DS, and it worked too.

This isn't a fix; I just wanted to share it as an idea. I read in previous posts about a Smash Bros. game that started working again, but Dr. Mario couldn't be selected. In theory, just taking his files and playing them as a mod should solve the problem.

Again, please forgive my Google Translate English.

 

[Prickly_Shrub]

Dude thank you for this, I was able to get my first pokemon game ive had since I was a kid to work again!

 

[seapoaks]

Hi skawo, thank you very much for this tool!


I currently own 10 Nintendo 3DS cartridges, and one of them — Bravely Default — was not working properly.

The game was detected by the system, but it would remain indefinitely on the 3DS loading screen. The manual also did not work: when I tried to open it, the system reported that the cartridge had been disconnected.

After many attempts to open both the game and the manual, the manual suddenly worked once — but only in English and French. Switching to Spanish caused an immediate crash.

Later, I noticed that the game itself started to boot, but it would crash if I pressed A or Start to skip cutscenes. If I waited patiently and let everything load naturally, I could reach the loading screen and start the game, but it would still crash when opening AR mode or during the fairy intro video.

Interestingly, it felt like the more I used the cartridge, the better it behaved.

While researching possible causes, I found Voultar’s video and your post here on the forum. After reading your explanation, I realized that my observations actually made sense.

I did not want to mod my 3DS, but given the chance to recover the cartridge — and the lack of any official tools — I decided to proceed.

After each new run of Cartridge Fix, more chunks are repaired. I can now open and play the game normally. Verification is still not at 100%, so it is a partial fix, but the improvement is significant.

I created this forum account specifically to thank you and to document the issue I experienced.

Thank you again for your excellent work!

 

[PacoTV]

Hi Skawo, Just wanted to thank you for these tools.
You helped fully restore my Mario Kart 7 cartridge that started failing and my Fire Emblem Awakening that didn't even show the home screen animation now booting and showing a lot of progress.
My games mean a lot to me and I'm so happy these games have a fix that's so easy to use, sincerely thank you for your work.

 

[Ternias]

Hi skawo or anyone else who knows about this..

I used the most recent version (1.4) to try and restore my copy of Pokemon Alpha Sapphire.
Before using the tool I after opening the game I got the 3DS loading screen and then the 'An error occurred' message.

I ran the tool 4 times and verified after each run and got the message verification failed.

If I run the Restore tool now I immediately get an error which says that restoring failed.

However, if I boot the game now I'm able to get past the loading screen and I can start the game and walk around for maybe 15 seconds before I get an error.

The error I get now is attached to this post.

Does this mean the cartridge is unsavable or are there still any options I might not know about?

Thanks a lot for creating the tool and providing any insight..

 

[skawo]

Huh, so the restore function itself immediately errors out (not verify)?
That's odd... that indicates some kind of connection issue, I think? Try cleaning the cartridge first and trying again?

 

[Ternias]

Yes that's correct.
I'll try again tonight and record the process / provide pictures of the errors it gives.
I'll also run the 100 Times versions as well and update you.

Thanks a lot for the response (and tool in general of course!).

 

[comokepa]

@skawo Thanks a million for sharing.

As the tool might seemingly be running for a very long time on some cartridges, it’d be nice to have the option to auto-turn off the displays after a while in order to prevent burn in.

I am trying to fix a cartridge and the tool has been running for 12 hours with only 2% of the progress bar full. “Current” and “Expected” hashes keep changing so, as per the readme, I assume it is still doing its thing.

 

[madao3ds]

Hi there I just got for the first time a used 3DS game that was giving me this error even tho I have custom firmware It would give me this error on 2 different devices ( never had a problem with games before). This tool seems helpful but i have reached like crazy number of refreshes. Should I have any expectations this in the end will work ? its been 2 hours and its still 20% some get really stuck on the refreshes.

Good thing it's ebay I can just return it

 

[skawo]

Seems normal. It can take a very long time depending on the amount of corruption. If it has progressed to the ROMFS it should at least launch now, I think.

 

[madao3ds]

Seems normal. It can take a very long time depending on the amount of corruption. If it has progressed to the ROMFS it should at least launch now, I think.

Thank you so much for first creating this tool, without this I would just return the game back. I don't mind waiting at all, would rather just deal with it once. SInce i have another new 2DS XL that I can use while this 3ds is doing this. If this is now completely and fixed and passes the verify. What should I do to maintain this cartridge (and all my rest of 3ds games) to not happen again ?

 

[skawo]

Just running verify once in a while (couple years) should do it.

I will say though, you may have to run the tool again after the first pass finishes. It shouldn't take as long to get though it the second time, but, yeah, it almost always requires multiple passes.

 

[madao3ds]

Just running verify once in a while (couple years) should do it.

I will say though, you may have to run the tool again after the first pass finishes. It shouldn't take as long to get though it the second time, but, yeah, it almost always requires multiple passes.

Thank you so much for clarifying mate, I will put reminder every 3-4 months to do this with all the 3ds games. Does this do anything for DS games ? Althought never had an issue with them

 

[skawo]

It does not.