Hacking So...is my N3DS dead?

[kingaz]

Try updating Decrypt9, boot into it, and restore a previous NAND.bin with the (Keep A9LH) option. PLEASE TRY THIS! THIS could fix the problem when decrypt9 is saying the FIRMS are corrupted - which, if you have Arm9loaderHax, they are supposed to be!

My second part of this (do the first thing first), have you ever downgraded with Gateway?

Look through the thread. I believe that many have suggested this, and 3DSnoob claims to have done it properly.

 

[Deleted-236924]

Another thing to add to my list of reasons why not to go pure sysnand with a9lh.
I keep saying to keep using emunand, but nobody listens to me.

 

[Hitsuagaya]

Out of curiosity what reason was it that your 3ds got bricket and was there any way you could have avoided it?

 

[3dsn00b]

Out of curiosity what reason was it that your 3ds got bricked and was there any way you could have avoided it?

This remains a mystery. It could have been a cia install, A9LH or just general hardware fault. I've got A9LH on a few other consoles and they all seem fine so I don't think it's A9LH. We can't really avoid certain things sometimes as in my case. But always keeping multiple back ups of your OTP and sysNAND's would make sure you have the highest chances of recovering from a soft-brick. If it's a hard-brick, well there little you can do about that.

 

[Deleted User]

This remains a mystery. It could have been a cia install, A9LH or just general hardware fault. I've got A9LH on a few other consoles and they all seem fine so I don't think it's A9LH. We can't really avoid certain things sometimes as in my case. But always keep multiple back ups of your OTP and sysNAND's would make sure your you have the highest chances of recovering from a soft-brick. If it's a hard-brick, well there little you can do about that.

Did you update decrypt9 and restore a NAND.bin yet with the "Keep A9LH" yet? If not, please try it out as "FIRM0 corrupt message in Decrypt9 (non-critical)" is just a common sign that you installed A9LH since your current FIRMS are supposed to be corrupted if using A9LH

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

Look through the thread. I believe that many have suggested this, and 3DSnoob claims to have done it properly.

Hasn't been stated in OP. Sure, 3dsnoob did try updating Luma but not Decrypt9 at all. And "FIRM0 corrupt message in Decrypt9 (non-critical)" is a sign that he installed A9LH since FIRMS are SUPPOSED to be corrupted but he is using an older version of Decrypt9

 

[3dsn00b]

Did you update decrypt9 and restore a NAND.bin yet with the "Keep A9LH" yet? If not, please try it out as "FIRM0 corrupt message in Decrypt9 (non-critical)" is just a common sign that you installed A9LH since your current FIRMS are supposed to be corrupted if using A9LH

Thanks for your continued help SirBeethoven but I sent my 3DS into Nintendo for repairs this morning. I'll wait for them and report anything interesting that they might have to say that can shed light on what the problem was.

 

[Deleted User]

Thanks for your continued help SirBeethoven but I sent my 3DS into Nintendo for repairs this morning. I'll wait for them and report anything interesting that they might have to say that can shed light on what the problem was.

Ok. I'm still trying to figure out what happened. Please update us when you get it back. Try updating Decrypt9 and restoring a NAND.bin with "Keep A9LH" if they weren't able to fix/send you a new one.

 

[Hitsuagaya]

In your original post you said you tried restoring your backups and they were corrupted? Say they weren't would that have fixed the problem?

 

[Razor83]

Just thinking outside the box here - I believe both the MCU and the WiFi's EEPROM can be written over I2C.

What if select homebrew accidentally wrote to the MCU or the WiFi EEPROM over I2C? If they became corrupted the system might not boot anymore, even though the NAND would be fine. A9LH likely doesnt require the MCU or WiFi EEPROM to work, so that would explain A9LH still loading.

Just a thought....?

 

[3dsn00b]

Ok. I'm still trying to figure out what happened. Please update us when you get it back. Try updating Decrypt9 and restoring a NAND.bin with "Keep A9LH" if they weren't able to fix/send you a new one.

Will do

In your original post you said you tried restoring your backups and they were corrupted? Say they weren't would that have fixed the problem?

From what others have said, the corruption is normal. This is an effect of A9LH. So, the corruption is to be expected.

Just thinking outside the box here - I believe both the MCU and the WiFi's EEPROM can be written over I2C.

This is plausible as I read a few threads about the 3DS not being able to boot into home menu because of Wifi or Camera software/hardware malfunctions.

 

[Margen67]

Hmmmm.....

So a9lh-fast-loading, seamless, REQUIRES SD card to boot up, thus making recovering from catastrophic failure very difficult...

MenuHax+EmuNand--slower to load, (very rarely) hangs on boot, doesn't touch any system files, remove SD card to recover from catastrophic failure....

Maybe there IS a good reason to NOT go with a9...

This is no reason to not use A9LH.
There is no way of knowing whether or not this was user error, and telling by the thread it most likely was..

Another thing to add to my list of reasons why not to go pure sysnand with a9lh.
I keep saying to keep using emunand, but nobody listens to me.

Once again, this is not a valid reason.
You cannot prove that this was A9LH's fault.

Do you think Plailect's guide would recommend SysNAND if it was faulty?

If it's as buggy as you think it is why hasn't everyone's A9LH updated SysNAND 3DS bricked yet?

 

[Deleted-236924]

Once again, this is not a valid reason.
You cannot prove that this was A9LH's fault.

Do you think Plailect's guide would recommend SysNAND if it was faulty?

If it's as buggy as you think it is why hasn't everyone's A9LH updated SysNAND 3DS bricked yet?

1: The maker of the guide wouldn't know if it was faulty, the same way we don't know for sure. You cannot prove this wasn't A9LH's fault either.
I never said this was specifically A9LH's fault either. Just that there may be things you can still do to break things when running on updated sysnand mode that *possibly* could be avoided by running emunand.

2: The world isn't all black and white.

If they had been on emunand, we could have ruled some things out. For now we know they installed a game with BBM, and then everything broke to the point where even restoring nand backup doesn't work.

If this had been on emunand, then they could have replaced the SD card with a different one and checked to see if it worked again. With emunand there would have been very little to no writes done to sysnand. If this had happened while using emunand, we could have known this was likely a hardware failure.

But for so many people to all have the same or similar failure recently? This isn't just one person, there's been two or three more referred to in this thread.


P.S.: Get off your A9LH updated sysnand master race high horse. What's so bad about recommending people to keep using emunand for safety purposes?


There is no way to tell whether this was user error or not, yet you proceed to claim right afterwards that it most likely was based on what you read in the thread?
If you would like, point out what definitely shows that this was due to user error.
They had everything working fine, then they tried to install a .cia of a game through BBM, and it wasn't showing up as a gift. So they powered off and then back on, then it wasn't working anymore.

They can still access Decrypt9 and all that stuff, but actually getting to the home menu doesn't work, despite the fact they have several nand backups from before and none of them are working. They don't work when written to SD card as an emunand either.

Are you going to suggest that installing games through BBM is user stupidity and people shouldn't do it? Can you tell me with a straight face that this was user error and it's all their fault and they deserve it or whatever?

They had all the precautions taken by having many nand backups that should have been functional. Everyone's going around saying that updated sysnand mode with a9lh is perfectly safe because you can always go back and fix it if you break something as long as you have working nand backups. Except that isn't the case here. They had plenty of backups.

 

[JCR1]

Maybe installing a corrupted .cia explodes the bomb, he installed a game, nothing was installed apparently, he rebooted and black screen, Super Hard brick that even hardmod cannot restore.

 

[kingaz]

Another thing to add to my list of reasons why not to go pure sysnand with a9lh.
I keep saying to keep using emunand, but nobody listens to me.

That's because you don't know what you're talking about. Sorry.

 

[Deleted-236924]

That's because you don't know what you're talking about. Sorry.

Sure thing, bud. If anyone did then this thread wouldn't be up to 14 pages with no one having a clue what's up.

 

[Kioku]

Sure thing, bud. If anyone did then this thread wouldn't be up to 14 pages with no one having a clue what's up.

You actually don't. You're blaming A9LH for the issues here. Which is wrong. I'd put money on the issue being user error. This isn't a "I installed A9LH and now it's dead" thread. OP did something to break his system.

 

[kingaz]

Sure thing, bud. If anyone did then this thread wouldn't be up to 14 pages with no one having a clue what's up.

Much of that has been common sense stuff, like using the latest builds of things, as well as 3dsnoob being... well, a noob. A friendly noob, but a noob nonetheless.

You're engaging in a bit of paranoia here, and it's not helpful (you're far from the only one, but you're being persistent about it). Is it possible that A9LH on sysnand has some as of yet unknown danger of bricking the system via routine use? Sure.

However, there are far more likely explanations. One is that this is a hardware failure unrelated to A9LH. Another is that 3dsnoob simply screwed something up and doesn't know it. I mean, they didn't have a clean sysnand backup to fall back on, so that seems to be a decent possibility. They're not an idiot or a bad person or anything like that - it's very easy to botch the setup or do something weird and not know it. None of us were watching over 3dsnoob's shoulder when they were using their system, so we have nothing to go by besides 3dsnoob's reports.

You say we can't prove that A9LH had nothing to do with the brick? Well, you can't prove it wasn't aliens.

If we get more and more reports of A9LH associated black screen on bootup systems, then yeah, it might be time to figure out what's going on. However, so far, I've seen a total of 3 reports on this board, and one of them was confirmed as hardware failure. Also, all of them were European consoles; while we don't have a meaningful sample to draw any conclusions from this, it is interesting to note IMO.

 

[Deleted-236924]

You actually don't. You're blaming A9LH for the issues here. Which is wrong. I'd put money on the issue being user error. This isn't a "I installed A9LH and now it's dead" thread. OP did something to break his system.

I am not. I am warning people against it saying that they should take all the precautions necessary. There is nothing wrong with using emunand, it adds an extra layer of security. Yet everyone is acting like everything is 100% safe and you can use updated sysnand mode 100% safely, when they don't know. No one does.

I am all for a9lh. I have it on both my 3DSes, with emunand. I am against everyone going around and recommending everyone use updated sysnand because no one knows if it's truly safe.

Much of that has been common sense stuff, like using the latest builds of things, as well as 3dsnoob being... well, a noob. A friendly noob, but a noob nonetheless.

You're engaging in a bit of paranoia here, and it's not helpful (you're far from the only one, but you're being persistent about it). Is it possible that A9LH on sysnand has some as of yet unknown danger of bricking the system via routine use? Sure.

However, there are far more likely explanations. One is that this is a hardware failure unrelated to A9LH. Another is that 3dsnoob simply screwed something up and doesn't know it. I mean, they didn't have a clean sysnand backup to fall back on, so that seems to be a decent possibility. They're not an idiot or a bad person or anything like that - it's very easy to botch the setup or do something weird and not know it. None of us were watching over 3dsnoob's shoulder when they were using their system, so we have nothing to go by besides 3dsnoob's reports.

You say we can't prove that A9LH had nothing to do with the brick? Well, you can't prove it wasn't aliens.

If we get more and more reports of A9LH associated black screen on bootup systems, then yeah, it might be time to figure out what's going on. However, so far, I've seen a total of 3 reports on this board, and one of them was confirmed as hardware failure. Also, all of them were European consoles; while we don't have a meaningful sample to draw any conclusions from this, it is interesting to note IMO.

Remind me why any of this proves me wrong in recommending that people keep using emunand with a9lh?

You're all acting like I'm recommending against A9LH as a whole. No, I'm recommending against using pure sysnand. Using pure sysnand can be done without A9LH. rxtools sysnand mode? Pasta CFW? Gateway sysnand mode? Anyone?

That could have happened with any of those. I never said A9LH was the cause of the problem, so why is everyone acting like that's what I'm saying?
You don't see me persistently going around and telling people not to use A9LH, to keep using menuhax, do you?

 

[Kioku]

Can we also talk about how it's a Firm0 problem? You don't just install a game and have Firm0 break.

 

[Deleted-236924]

Can we also talk about how it's a Firm0 problem? You don't just install a game and have Firm0 break.

Isn't firm0 meant to be corrupted?

Their a9lh is working, they can access Decrypt9 and all of those programs you can run with a9lh payloads.