ROM Hack Question Lost Incognito backup

[Laxure]

Hey guys
So long story short my sd card got corrupted shortly after using incognito on my switch, i lost the prodinfo backup so now i'm stuck with a console without personal info, any help i can get my prodinfo back? (I don't have a nand backup)

 

[hippy dave]

If you don't have it backed up it's gone for good, sorry. That's the danger of wiping irreplaceable information.

 

[Draxzelex]

Hey guys
So long story short my sd card got corrupted shortly after using incognito on my switch, i lost the prodinfo backup so now i'm stuck with a console without personal info, any help i can get my prodinfo back? (I don't have a nand backup)

Next time, use 90DNS

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Hey guys
So long story short my sd card got corrupted shortly after using incognito on my switch, i lost the prodinfo backup so now i'm stuck with a console without personal info, any help i can get my prodinfo back? (I don't have a nand backup)

Did no one tell you to back up the file? I always tell people to back it up in multiple locations. And definitely don't leave it on the Switch because malicious homebrew could steal it.
Got an emuNAND?

Next time, use 90DNS

That's not a perfect solution either. Honestly, it'd be best to use both so that you have a fallback. 90DNS relies on a DNS server to be kept up to date with every change to the firmware so that people aren't caught unaware by Nintendo adding more domains and bypassing the DNS, and it relies on the owner of the DNS server to not one day have a change of conscience and decide to remove the blocks. And it's important that people using it always remember to add it when connecting to a new wifi network, and if they forget just once, the damage could already be done.
Incognito however is zero trust, and in theory provides perfect protection against bans. That is as long as Nintendo don't think up another way to identify Switches other than the info that's in PRODINFO. And since the Switch is able to connect, but is rejected due to not being recognizable, Nintendo could start logging the data sent to the servers.

Having both pretty much leaves no way you could get flagged or banned. Moreover, cases like this are user error and can't be blamed on Incognito itself, which did its job perfectly. People shouldn't just install or run things that modify the system without being aware of the implications, and they should especially read the warnings for that particular thing before using it. There are multiple warnings on the Incognito GitHub as well as the thread here so there's no excuse for not reading them or ignoring the directions. Using 90DNS instead may have prevented this issue, but who's to say they wouldn't use some other system modifying homebrew without reading the instructions and ending up in a similar predicament or worse?

 

[Hayato213]

Not the end of the world, but then again you are fucked with no prod.info backup or NAND backup, atleast you don't have a completely bricked system, always have a NAND backup you can restore to.

 

[blawar]

sounds like you made 3 big mistakes in a row: 1) you ran exfat, 2) didnt have a nand backup 3) didnt have a prodinfo backup.

You should learn from this, and take a nand backup immediately before something happens that does brick your switch.

The readme states "have a nand backup" and backup the prodinfo file OFF of your SD card.

 

[Laxure]

Would it work if i could get a prodinfo backup from another switch and restore it on mine?

 

[hippy dave]

No.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Would it work if i could get a prodinfo backup from another switch and restore it on mine?

You didn't answer my question. Do you have an emuNAND?
And yes it is possible in theory but there's more to it than that.

 

[TheGlow]

Did no one tell you to back up the file? I always tell people to back it up in multiple locations. And definitely don't leave it on the Switch because malicious homebrew could steal it.
Got an emuNAND?

That's not a perfect solution either. Honestly, it'd be best to use both so that you have a fallback. 90DNS relies on a DNS server to be kept up to date with every change to the firmware so that people aren't caught unaware by Nintendo adding more domains and bypassing the DNS, and it relies on the owner of the DNS server to not one day have a change of conscience and decide to remove the blocks.

Also I tested 90DNS on my desktop first, luckily, because I have AT&T as my ISP and they have a "nice" feature where if you have failed dns requests it will retry with their own DNS for you. I had dig a bit to find more, and its disabled at the account level on their site, not even through any of the hardware.
As of now I still have never put any wifi details on my switch as I'm paranoid.
I am debating incognito to try hbg or pp for some updates. Still not sure how much to trust it.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Also I tested 90DNS on my desktop first, luckily, because I have AT&T as my ISP and they have a "nice" feature where if you have failed dns requests it will retry with their own DNS for you. I had dig a bit to find more, and its disabled at the account level on their site, not even through any of the hardware.
As of now I still have never put any wifi details on my switch as I'm paranoid.
I am debating incognito to try hbg or pp for some updates. Still not sure how much to trust it.

There is no trust involved, since you can run it while offline, back up your prodinfo and delete the homebrew, and there is no way your Switch would be recognized in that state so it's not possible to be banned. The most Nintendo could do is start allowing requests just for the purposes of logging data from Switches with patched PRODINFO, which you can stop by also using 90DNS. But there is little chance they would be able to identify Switches based on that alone, it might however be of use in helping them add measures in future firmware updates to detect and ban people even when they have a patched PRODINFO.

 

[TheGlow]

There is no trust involved, since you can run it while offline, back up your prodinfo and delete the homebrew, and there is no way your Switch would be recognized in that state so it's not possible to be banned. The most Nintendo could do is start allowing requests just for the purposes of logging data from Switches with patched PRODINFO, which you can stop by also using 90DNS. But there is little chance they would be able to identify Switches based on that alone, it might however be of use in helping them add measures in future firmware updates to detect and ban people even when they have a patched PRODINFO.

OK, thats good news. My paranoia is funky. So if my only intent of "online" is using homebrew shops, etc, Incognito should be fine? 90dns isn't as critical? I've been dabbling at home with my own pihole/dns server so I'd rather not mess that up and find out I shot myself in the foot.
and the usual keep prodinfo backedup on a few drives and online, then not on the card in case something can scan for it eh?

 

[The Real Jdbye]

OK, thats good news. My paranoia is funky. So if my only intent of "online" is using homebrew shops, etc, Incognito should be fine? 90dns isn't as critical? I've been dabbling at home with my own pihole/dns server so I'd rather not mess that up and find out I shot myself in the foot.
and the usual keep prodinfo backedup on a few drives and online, then not on the card in case something can scan for it eh?

You should definitely keep it backed up in multiple locations. It's pretty small so it won't take up much space on Dropbox/Google Drive etc. Encrypt it if you're worried (inside a zip/rar file should do nicely), but cloud storage should only be accessible by you anyway.

 

[TheGlow]

You should definitely keep it backed up in multiple locations. It's pretty small so it won't take up much space on Dropbox/Google Drive etc. Encrypt it if you're worried (inside a zip/rar file should do nicely), but cloud storage should only be accessible by you anyway.

I got you, I was thinking google drive. Perfect, I know what I'm doing this evening now.
I need to look into emunand at some point as well. I never access nintendo services so not sure I even need to yet.

 

[Laxure]

You didn't answer my question. Do you have an emuNAND?
And yes it is possible in theory but there's more to it than that.

Yea sorry i don't have an emunand as i have a quite small sd card

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Yea sorry i don't have an emunand as i have a quite small sd card

I'm afraid you're out of luck, at least until a public method to use someone else's PRODINFO becomes available.
Replacing only the device id, device key, private key, device and client certs, client cert hash, client cert size and the serial number with ones from another Switch's PRODINFO, as well as updating the hashes might be enough, as those are all the things Incognito changes, but even if it works, with your Switch pretending to be someone else's, there's no guarantee that there's no mismatching information left in the system that will get you banned quickly.
Here are all the things Incognito changes and their addresses: https://github.com/blawar/incognito/blob/master/source/main.cpp#L164
The first hex number is the offset and the second one is the size. Then there are 2 hashes that need to be updated.
You can compare with the list on this page: https://switchbrew.org/wiki/Calibration (device ID isn't listed here for some reason)

You can't just take the full PRODINFO from another Switch, since there are other console-unique things in it such as calibration data, cartridge slot key/cert, eticket key/cert (not sure if that one is console unique), and maybe other things. But if you combine the right parts from another Switch with yours, it should work. I just don't know exactly which parts are linked together and need to match. Obviously using a modified PRODINFO in itself is not an issue. But which combination of parts results in working online? And doesn't make things worse?

 

[Deleted User]

Hey Guys... I hope you could help me...
I lost my prodinfo.bin backup too. In my case, i have a nand backup... BUUUUUUUUUUUUUT, when i restore it, my switch don't turn on. After the boot image (SXOS) all it shows is a black screen. I can boot on hekate, but Atmosphere don't boot too. If I turn of autoRCM and try to boot the original firmware, I got black screen after the nintendo logo...
Anyone here have an idea for a solution?

 

[Andalitez]

Hey Guys... I hope you could help me...
I lost my prodinfo.bin backup too. In my case, i have a nand backup... BUUUUUUUUUUUUUT, when i restore it, my switch don't turn on. After the boot image (SXOS) all it shows is a black screen. I can boot on hekate, but Atmosphere don't boot too. If I turn of autoRCM and try to boot the original firmware, I got black screen after the nintendo logo...
Anyone here have an idea for a solution?

Sounds like a fuse mismatch
The nandbackup you restored is possibly too low for the fuses you've burnt.

What firmware were you on before the restore?

 

[Roamin64]

If you didn't touch your SD card since it was corrupted, there might be a way to recover files from it. Usually when cards corrupt, only the File Allocation Table (FAT) gets corrupted and most likely not all files that were written on it.. It's usually still possible to read every sector of your card and with luck, to find the file in there. What I would try would be to hex edit a valid prodinfo file from someone / somewhere else. I don't own a switch, but I would think prodinfo as a fixed size, and possibly a header? Hex edit a prodinfo, if it has a header then that's a starting point to recover the file. Hex edit your corrupted SD card and then search for the header of prodinfo on your card, if you find it, and know the size of a prodinfo file, you can then extract it from the sectors.

Unless you have written a lot of files back to the card, that prodinfo is still on there somewhere.. Just that no file table knows where it starts. If you've written stuff back on the card, there still a slight chance that you haven't overwritten it. How big is a prodinfo? Something small like 32k? 256k? The smaller it is the more chances of recovering it.

When corruption happens on storage (unless physically the storage media is broken) most of the time only the table that tells the OS where on the storage files begin (the FAT) usually gets damaged.. Erasing each sector of a storage media takes time because it has to write each and every byte to 00. This means erasing a 4gb file would need to send a command to the storage to write 00, 4 000 000 000 times to erase a file.. What happens is simply that the table erases the file from its list, pretending all 4gb is now empty, when it really isn't, but until new data is written over it, the old data is still there just not properly listed in the table.

Unless your switch was actually writing the prodinfo when it crashed, it's data was still there after it corrupted. If you haven't touched the sd card since, it's still there. I'm almost certain there are recovery tools out there that could try and rebuild the FAT.. The very first thing I would do before attempting anything would be to make a dump of your sd card it it's current state, with broken FAT. Dump every sector into a file, make copies of the file and start working on one.
Dump SD card (I don't remember if the hex editor "hxd" can search and save sectors, but there is one (sadly it's not free) that surely can (I'll try and find you the name soon).

I recovered a very old ff7 save on my psp a few years back doing exactly this. On the psp, everything on the card was corrupted in the os.. Dumped the card through the psp/usb to my pc, searched for the ff7 save header and within minutes I got my save back. Glad I could continue my game from like 15 years ago on pc. Hope you get to recover your prodinfo..

Edit :

I would probably use https://hddguru.com/software/HDD-Raw-Copy-Tool/ to dump the sd card , and hex workshop to hex edit the dump or sector edit the sd card.

 

[Deleted User]

Sounds like a fuse mismatch
The nandbackup you restored is possibly too low for the fuses you've burnt.

What firmware were you on before the restore?

I don't remember... but i think it was something near 5.0