Hacking Question Help! I bricked my Switch by trying to boot into SXOS without microSD card installed

JayMoon

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Hello All!

Did I just permanently brick my Switch? If not, how do I fix it?

Current status of device:
Unable to power up (even after factory reset attempt 30 seconds+ hold), complete black screen but does get warm when placed in original charging dock.

How the incident happened:
I was trying to boot into SXOS via adapter and forget to put the microSD card back in the Switch, There was a coupe of red "BOOT.DAT?" screens that flashed before I realized the microSD card was missing. When I tried to boot up device again with mircoSD card installed this time, the device was unresponsive.

History of Switch device:
-Upgraded to 8.0.1 from 6.0 using ChoiDuJourNX around 4 weeks ago.(Not sure if this was a bad idea but didn't seems to cause any issues during the 4 weeks of very heavy use)
-Installed Retro-arch a week ago( I didn't have a chance to play very much but everything seems to be loading fine).

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
 

Risingdawn

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Hold power button down for 12 full seconds, put on charge for a bit and then try again, it's just soft locked, SX used to do it every now and then to me it just needs a few tries
 
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linuxares

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It's not bricked because of that. In the "worst case" you just open your Switch and disconnect the battery, wait about a minute and plug it back in again.
 

JayMoon

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Hi All,

Thanks for all the responses. I can confirm that my system will not restart via long power button press.

I can try to disconnect/reconnect the battery but I will need to buy the tri-tip screwdriver for that.

Is it possible that upgrading the system f using ChoiDuJourNX caused the issue?

Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
 

ricosuave0922

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Booting sx without a sd card just gives a no boot.dat screen and you just have to hard power it off and boot it back up with the sd card in. Done it a few times before by mistake when switching cards. It won’t brick your switch. When holding the power button to hard power it off you gotta hold it longer than you think. Everyone says 12 seconds but in my experience I’ve had to do 20-30 sometimes.
 

Andalitez

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Sounds like you are in RCM. Did you perhaps enable autoRCM?
What do you use to inject payloads?
The quickest way to check is using TegraRCM and plugging in the USB cable
 
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JayMoon

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Sounds like you are in RCM. Did you perhaps enable autoRCM?
What do you use to inject payloads?
The quickest way to check is using TegraRCM and plugging in the USB cable

Thanks for the suggestion!
My switch is working now and I can finally breath easy knowing I didn't permanently damage my switch.
It turns out that this was an RCM issue and the solution was to inject SXOS via TegraRCM

Video for fixing RCM battery drain issue:


Thanks everyone for the suggestions
 
Last edited by JayMoon,

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