Hacking Hardware Homebrew Hacked 3DS bricked, Red Light

[HayHotshot]

A while back I hacked my 3ds and it was working perfectly. Loaded a bunch of DS roms through TwilightMenu and was playing through Pokemon Silver for the first time. Eventually my 3ds kept crashing and giving me weird errors. Until I got the red light, so I looked it up and found all I had to do was replace the boot.firm file with the latest Luma release. I did that and boom my 3ds worked again, until it crashed again and couldn't boot with the red light. Cycle repeated a few times till I couldn't get it to boot at all. Obviously the next step from the troubleshooting guide I was reading was to replace the micro sd card I was using. So I replaced the 128GB Sandisk card with a new 128GB Samsung card. Formatted it and then copied everything over and replaced the boot.firm file. Currently even with the new micro SD card I'm stuck without the 3ds turning on and getting the red light. Not really sure where to go from here, any advice would be appreciated.

 

[Deadman85555]

A while back I hacked my 3ds and it was working perfectly. Loaded a bunch of DS roms through TwilightMenu and was playing through Pokemon Silver for the first time. Eventually my 3ds kept crashing and giving me weird errors. Until I got the red light, so I looked it up and found all I had to do was replace the boot.firm file with the latest Luma release. I did that and boom my 3ds worked again, until it crashed again and couldn't boot with the red light. Cycle repeated a few times till I couldn't get it to boot at all. Obviously the next step from the troubleshooting guide I was reading was to replace the micro sd card I was using. So I replaced the 128GB Sandisk card with a new 128GB Samsung card. Formatted it and then copied everything over and replaced the boot.firm file. Currently even with the new micro SD card I'm stuck without the 3ds turning on and getting the red light. Not really sure where to go from here, any advice would be appreciated.

Never had this problem. But are you sure the battery isn't bad?

 

[HayHotshot]

Never had this problem. But are you sure the battery isn't bad?

I'm fairly certain the battery is not the issue. Never had an issue with it before and is doesn't look swollen at all. Due to the red light I'm led to believe the issue is, "Red: Your 3DS was able to find boot.firm on both your SD card and on internal memory, but both files are corrupted". So something to do with boot.firm or possibly the micro SD cards I'm using. I know boot9strap 1.4 is working as when I remove the micro SD card and try to boot I get the magenta light, "Magenta: Your 3DS was not able to find boot.firm on your SD card. It was able to find boot.firm on internal memory, but the file is corrupted". So I just need to figure out why when I put a new boot.firm on the micro SD card it is still being read as corrupted. Again that's why I tried a new micro SD card to no avail.

 

[PabloMK7]

When you say your LED is red, you mean the notification LED (hinge in all models, except old 2DS, which is at the top) or the power LED (in the bottom)?

EDIT: Nevermind, it looks like you are talking about the notification LED. Try to clean the SD contacts and the SD reader (blow into it so it has better connection for at least getting the console to boot). It is very strange that the nand firm file is corrupted tho. You can also try with smaller SD cards (less or equal than 64GB) and see if you get it working with those.

 

[HayHotshot]

When you say your LED is red, you mean the notification LED (hinge in all models, except old 2DS, which is at the top) or the power LED (in the bottom)?

EDIT: Nevermind, it looks like you are talking about the notification LED. Try to clean the SD contacts and the SD reader (blow into it so it has better connection for at least getting the console to boot). It is very strange that the nand firm file is corrupted tho. You can also try with smaller SD cards (less or equal than 64GB) and see if you get it working with those.

I bought a new micro SD card reader for my model 3DS. Gonna look into swapping that in to see if that's the issue and I will also try cleaning all the contacts with some isopropyl alcohol. Will try and update when I get to it today or tomorrow most likely.

 

[WoCheck]

Did it ever work? I'm currently having the same issue with mine.

 

[maplemiyazaki]

did you ever figure out a solution? made an account just for this, exact same thing is happening with mine right now. no matter how many fresh boot.firm files i try, it reads them all as corrupt and displays the red led. i've tried formatting and have used multiple micro sd cards but nothing yet.

 

[a_username_that_is_cool]

did you ever figure out a solution? made an account just for this, exact same thing is happening with mine right now. no matter how many fresh boot.firm files i try, it reads them all as corrupt and displays the red led. i've tried formatting and have used multiple micro sd cards but nothing yet.

Try H2TestW. Your SDCard itself might be corrupted.

 

[maplemiyazaki]

Try H2TestW. Your SDCard itself might be corrupted.

both micro sd cards passed h2testw.

edit* all 3 micro sd cards passed.

 

[a_username_that_is_cool]

both micro sd cards passed h2testw.

edit* all 3 micro sd cards passed.

Hmm... try reinstalling b9s, then cleaning your microsd slot if that doesn't work.

 

[maplemiyazaki]

Hmm... try reinstalling b9s, then cleaning your microsd slot if that doesn't work.

thanks, will do

Post automatically merged: Jun 25, 2023

Hmm... try reinstalling b9s, then cleaning your microsd slot if that doesn't work.

you are my hero. this lead me down the path of opening the back and noticing the sd card reader on the 3ds was bad. have a replacement coming. thanks for saving me some sanity