Hacking Question Legit games, then SX-OS, the factory reset, safe?

[RooDBwoY]

Folks,

first up, cracking little set of tutorials and devs taking their own time to help us people make an already great console even more interesting.

I have a question about restoring and wanted to run it through the risk factor forum.

• I'm on firmware 5.1.0.
• I bought a few carts initially then started buying on eShop and re-purchased the games I already had so I didn't have to carry them about.
• Sold carts to a mate.
• All 8 games worked well, including all game saves.
• I then bought SX-OS 1.4, deleted all network connections, turned on airplane mode, installed SX0OS and activated it offline.
• The console has not had airplane turned off since, even in OFW mode.
• I used the latest Checkpoint home-brew app to backup all my game saves and have them on my Mac/PC.
• I then replaced my genuine SanDisk 200GB SD card, because it went faulty while copying some XCI files to try out new backup games. This obviously involved copying downloaded XCI versions of my previously-purchased games as they were installed on the old SD card.
• Some games work fine, while some complain a software update is needed (you can ignore and play) and others complain and there is no way round updating them.

Now, as a minimum I want to start playing my purchased games again and don't mind losing SX-OS functionality and backups for a while, until there is a reliable and easy (Homebrew/GUI) way of updating games offline. It's only a matter of time until some genius works out what Nintendo are doing and writes something, so I wonder if the following is safe and will avoid a ban?

1. Remove SD card and format in Mac/PC.
2. Factory reset Switch.
3. Start from scratch with clean SD cards.
4. Sign into Nintendo stuff and re-download all my legit games.
5. Live without my old game saves.

Will the factory reset of the device kill off all remnants of proof I used the soft mod and I can carry on legit without ban worries?

Cheers in advance folks.

 

[jakkal]

nobody knows
factory reset does not delete logs

if you dont want to get banned dont mod your system

 

[Kubas_inko]

Factory reset won't help you once logs are created. What you should have done was:
1. Stock NAND backup.
2. Use whatever CFW offline
3. Once you want to go online, restore your backup.

Also, try a low level programmer on that 200GB sd. You might be able to still save it

 

[jaysea]

How is the current way to update games offline not reliable and easy?
You should have made a nand backup prior to using SX. That way you could revert to your image which will be a lot better than factory reset.
High chance factory reset and going online afterwards will result in a ban, but as jakkal said you do not mod your system if you do not want to get banned.

 

[RooDBwoY]

Ok, so a factory reset is not a factory reset then. Fair enough.

Not sure why everyone thinks a NAND backup will help. So, you roll back in time to your NAND backup, at which point there is a gap or duplicate in the logs uploaded so with all the work Nintendo have done they'd be stupid to ignore that from a ban perspective, surely.

Which method do you recommend to update games offline, jaysea? The devmenu method? I literally have no interest in any online gameplay (too old and cumbersome to compete) so the only online functionality I'd ever need is firmware and software updates. If there's a good Homebrew/offline way of doing that, I'm a happy man.

 

[Kubas_inko]

Ok, so a factory reset is not a factory reset then. Fair enough.

Not sure why everyone thinks a NAND backup will help. So, you roll back in time to your NAND backup, at which point there is a gap or duplicate in the logs uploaded so with all the work Nintendo have done they'd be stupid to ignore that from a ban perspective, surely.

Which method do you recommend to update games offline, jaysea? The devmenu method? I literally have no interest in any online gameplay (too old and cumbersome to compete) so the only online functionality I'd ever need is firmware and software updates. If there's a good Homebrew/offline way of doing that, I'm a happy man.

Factory reset is factory reset. It will restore your device to factory presets.
Factory reset on any device won't make you downgrade, thus not factory resetting it. Yet it is considered a factory reset...
Nowhere is written that factory reset reverts to state when you got the device.

If you are offline, how can there be a gap in logs?

Safest, yet pretty dangerous, way of updating games is via nsp updates. Easiest is to go to OFW and just update them.
But if you have no interest in online, why won(t you just go online and update your games?

Also use account without NNID for any non-purchased games.

 

[RooDBwoY]

Ok, so this back and forth could go on for a while but suffice it say, a factory fresh device would not come with my personal logs or cached information on it. One of the primary things to get scrapped when something is factory reset is all the cached and logged information. If that isn't the case with the Switch then I won't bother with the risk

 

[Kubas_inko]

Ok, so this back and forth could go on for a while but suffice it say, a factory fresh device would not come with my personal logs or cached information on it. One of the primary things to get scrapped when something is factory reset is all the cached and logged information. If that isn't the case with the Switch then I won't bother with the risk

They are important for Nintendo, so they can keep them on there for how long they want.
Again, same goes for FW version.

Straight from wiki:
"Note: a factory reset may only hide data from the operating system so it appears it no longer exists. This is not the same effect as data deletion, and may not therefore be wholly suitable in situations where the device changes ownership."
Yet it is still a factory reset.

 

[cyndor]

Which method do you recommend to update games offline, jaysea? The devmenu method? I literally have no interest in any online gameplay (too old and cumbersome to compete) so the only online functionality I'd ever need is firmware and software updates. If there's a good Homebrew/offline way of doing that, I'm a happy man.

Update firmware with ChoidujourNX, updates games with their respective nsp. You can do both of these while staying completely offline.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Ok, so this back and forth could go on for a while but suffice it say, a factory fresh device would not come with my personal logs or cached information on it. One of the primary things to get scrapped when something is factory reset is all the cached and logged information. If that isn't the case with the Switch then I won't bother with the risk

There is probably nothing personal in the logs, at most it contains the games you've played.
I see your point though, and I don't know why it doesn't clear the logs, since the logs are sent to Nintendo anyway (if that option is enabled), there shouldn't be any point in keeping it on the device.

If you've only used .xcis you may be safe(ish) going online in the normal, non-SX OS. .xcis are essentially 1:1 with the cartridges they were dumped from (to my knowledge), and as long as they don't see that a thousand people have the same "cartridge" inserted at the same time, they don't have a lot to go on. .nsps however are obviously not legitimate and all it takes for Nintendo to check that is to compare with your purchase history, plus as they are still installed when going into non-SX OS, but not accessible due to wrong signatures etc. that's another red flag if Nintendo were to check that.

And there's still the matter of error logs, which if they contain anything homebrew related or anything that could give away that your system is hacked that could still be grounds for a ban. We still have no idea how they actually detect hacked systems (but they likely have multiple methods), so going online is never 100% safe, but I believe that .xcis are the safest way to pirate if you care about online. Better yet if they are dumps of your personal carts or carts of friends, it's a whole lot less suspicious that way and less likely to trigger some automatic detection (unless you both try to go online using the same "cartridge" at the same time, then all bets are off)

But if the alternative is staying offline forever, does it really matter if you go online to grab your games and then get banned? At least you got what you needed. Right now you're just stuck with offline so a ban wouldn't make any difference anyway.
We may never have a 100% stealthy CFW, but I sure hope someone is working on stealth patches. Ban risks is why I haven't bothered to hack my Switch yet. But once you have hacked it you pretty much just have to accept that you are going to get banned at some point.

 

[RooDBwoY]

Fair do's. I've done so much reading about this but the thing I wasn't sure about risking a ban was whether the logs were actually purged if I blew away the device and started again. Incidentally, I'd already turned off the sharing info with Nintendo option and that was definitely before I did SX-OS.

So, simplest thing for me right now is to find an NSP source to manually install all the game updates, then I'm sorted. And stay offline for good.

Cheers for the comments folks!

 

[Kafluke]

Everyone and OP are all correct. There is no ban proof method if you did any modding. I use SX OS and i just press the update button. Done. There is no "safe" method. Buy another switch and dont do any "hacking" at all if you dont want to be banned.