Arm9loaderhax coupled with AuReiNand gives us lucky 3DS users the amazing option of running Custom Firmware on sysnand. The advantages of this are as follows:

• Much faster and more reliable CFW cold booting compared to menuhax + emunand
• Slightly faster CFW cold booting compared to arm9loaderhax + emunand
• Using 2GB of SD card space for emunand is no longer needed (but still recommended to keep a 9.2 emunand around)
• GBA ROMs only need to be installed once, since they run from sysnand now!

Most CFW users will already have a 9.2 sysnand which is usually kept as vanilla as possible, and then an emunand running a higher FW version (i.e. 10.5) booted through CFW. With arm9loaderhax and AuReiNand, we can now swap the firmware versions over so 10.5 runs directly on SysNand, and EmuNand is used only when 9.2 is really needed (e.g. for running decrypt9). This tutorial will walk you through the process of swapping your sysnand and emunand, and changing your arm9loaderhax to use AuReiNand in order to cold boot directly to a patched 10.5 sysnand.

This tutorial assumes the following:

• You have a 9.2 or below sysnand and CFW running an emunand of a higher firmware version
• You know how to verify a SysNAND backup using md5
• You know how to back up your sysnand, emunand and SD card
• You know how to access hax to get to the Homebrew Launcher
• You know how to install homebrew apps on your 3DS
• You know how to install CIAs
• You have already captured your OTP and built an arm9loaderhax installer
• You have FBI installed on your sysnand

I won’t explain how to do all of these as this guide is intended to be an overview of the process I used to swap my sysnand and emunand.


If you follow this guide and do not have a valid sysnand backup, you risk bricking your console and this may not be recoverable without a hardmod.

This guide involves updating your sysnand to 10.5. If you don’t have a reliable way of downgrading to 9.2 if you need to, don’t follow this guide. This means you need to be able to use arm9loaderhax to boot CFW, or have a hardmod and a NAND backup, if you want to undo this.

Do not attempt this procedure without a working arm9loaderhax installer. A hardmod is not required but is recommended.


You will need:

• Homebrew hax already set up and running on your sysnand
• CFW already installed with a working emunand
• Decrypt9
• EmuNAND9
• MiniPasta
  
• AuReiNand mod (do not install this yet)

If you already have arm9loaderhax set up to boot your emunand, you will need to remove it. This is because one of the needed tools, decrypt9, can only run from sysnand. Arm9loaderhax will prevent you from entering sysnand at all, so will need to be removed. I did this by restoring a vanilla 9.2 sysnand backup which I took from the console prior to installing arm9loaderhax.


Stage 0: Make a backup of your SysNand, EmuNand and 3DS SD card

Seriously, you’ll be glad you did if something goes wrong. This process involves a lot of messing around with both sysnand and emunand.


Stage 1: Dump EmuNAND partitions

1. Boot your 3DS to sysnand
2. Launch hax and run MiniPasta
3. When back at sysnand, launch hax and run Decrypt9
4. Go to “EmuNAND Options” and then “Partition Dump”
5. Dump each of the partitions with the exception of FIRM0 and FIRM1, pressing B after each one to return to the menu and dump the next partition
6. Press START to quit Decrypt9, and reboot back to sysnand

Stage 2: Downgrade EmuNand to 9.2

1. From sysnand, launch hax and run MiniPasta
2. When back at sysnand, launch hax and run EmuNAND9
3. Choose “EmuNAND Manager Options” and then choose “Clone SysNAND to EmuNAND”
4. Once this is complete, press START to reboot
5. From sysnand, launch hax and run TinyFormat to format SysNand and unlink NANDs
6. Once the system reboots, complete the initial setup without linking NNID
7. Once you are at the home menu, set your sysnand theme to red
8. Launch hax and run CFW to get into emunand
9. Once in emunand, set the theme to blue
10. Power off the 3DS

At this point, your sysnand and emunand should both be on 9.2, and you should have dumps of your original emunand. The purpose of setting the NAND colours to red and blue is to ensure you can tell which NAND you are in, since they are both at this stage running the same FW version and will look identical.


Stage 3: Update SysNand to AuReiNand CFW 10.5

1. Take out your 3DS SD card and put it in your computer
2. Replace the rei folder, arm9loaderhax.bin and ReiNand.dat in the root of your SD card with the ones from AuReiNand.
3. In the new rei folder on your SD card, place the firmware.bin and firmware90.bin from the FIRMs archive linked from the AuReiNand GitHib page
4. Create an empty file on the SD card in the /rei folder called updatedsysnand
5. Put your SD card back in your 3DS and boot it up to sysnand
6. Launch hax and run arm9loaderhax.3dsx to install the loader
7. If you get stuck on a message saying “Exploiting arm9…”, you can safely reboot your 3DS
8. The 3DS will reboot once this process is complete
9. You should now be in sysnand but running ReiNand. Verify that arm9loaderhax has been installed by powering off your 3DS, removing the SD card and powering on again. Your system should hang on a black screen because the arm9payload is not available. If your 3DS boots to sysnand without the SD card inserted, this means that arm9loaderhax has not been installed properly and you MUST NOT proceed
10. Once you have verified that arm9loaderhax is working, replace the SD card and power on your 3DS to boot to sysnand
11. Open System Settings set up your Internet connection
12. Update to 10.5 (seriously, don’t do it unless you’re certain the CFW is running by doing the SD card removal test in step 9. If you update to 10.5 without CFW up and running, you risk not being able to run any unsigned code, meaning you could end up stuck on 10.5 with no CFW)
13. Once the update is complete and the system has rebooted, enter System Settings to verify that you are now on 10.5

Step 4: Reinject emunand partitions to sysnand

This stage will make your new 10.5 sysnand how your emunand used to be

1. Power off the 3DS
2. While holding L, power the 3DS back on. This will boot into the 9.2 emunand
3. Launch hax, and run Decrypt9
4. Choose “SysNAND Options” and then “Partition Inject”
5. Inject each of the partitions in turn, with the exception of FIRM0 and FIRM1, pressing B after each one to return to the menu and inject the next partition
6. Press START to quit Decrypt9 and reboot back to SysNand.

If everything went according to plan, you should be looking at your sysnand but with all your CIAs showing. In my case, they were all back in presents and out of their folders which was a mild inconvenience. I also lost my custom theme, so that had to be reinstalled.


Final checks

1. Launch a CIA from sysnand to verify that it works. Successful launching of a CIA will indicate that the sysnand CFW is working
2. Enter System Settings from sysnand to confirm that you are on 10.5
3. Power off your 3DS, and power it back on while holding L. You should then be booted to your emunand, which will resemble your sysnand before the swap over
4. Enter System Settings from emunand to confirm that it is on 9.2
5. Now, do another sysnand, emunand and SD backup!

 

[FenrirWolf]

You swapped your sysnand and your emunand, did you not? So if you have the file set up properly, that means you're booting into your sysnand like you ought to be.

And if holding L gives you a black screen when trying to boot into emunand, that means you need to put firmware90.bin in the rei folder too. Also, test what happens when you hold R on boot.

 

[Thirday95]

yeah i swapped them. I even checked all the files and everything is correct. I had it all working until i tried restoring my backup of my emumand (to get all of my cias back). Now when i try and boot to system i just get a black screen but the cfw works fine. Is there a way i can restore a backup with cfw? Because i cannot access decrypt9

 

[FenrirWolf]

I do not think the black screen means what you think it means. What does your rei folder look like?

 

[Thirday95]

I do not think the black screen means what you think it means. What does your rei folder look like?

Rei folder looks like this
"Firmware.bin
Firmware90.bin
Patched_firmware.bin
Emumand
Reboot
Updatesysnand"

 

[FenrirWolf]

"updatedsysnand" should be in all lowercase.

Also, check what happens when you try booting while holding R instead of holding L.

 

[Thirday95]

sorry, it is lowercase its just my stupid autocorrect. I just tried that and it boots to my 10.6 cfw as well.. I mean i can still install cias and stuff so i know im running custom. Its almost like im bricked but i have a working cfw so i dont know

 

[FenrirWolf]

It means that both your sysnand and your emunand are clones of each other on 10.6. Guessing that you forgot to flash your 9.2 image to your emunand on accident.

That's an easy fix though. There's a version of Decrypt9 that boots directly from a9lh floating around. You should be able to use that to flash your 9.2 backup to your emunand.

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

There's a link to it on this page, along with a boot manager you can use to choose between booting it and AuReiNand if you like, too.

https://www.reddit.com/r/3dshacks/comments/47t6fy/info_thread_a9lh_installed_now_what/

 

[Thirday95]

Ok ill look around for it and see what i can do. Thank you! And i feel like an idiot for not doing that.

Edit: sweet man you saved me time thanks!!!

 

[FenrirWolf]

No problem. The other way to solve the issue would be to unlink the emunand via tinyformat then downgrade it via sysupdater, but just flashing your 9.2 image to it would be quicker and easier.

 

[DjoeN]

No problem. The other way to solve the issue would be to unlink the emunand via tinyformat then downgrade it via sysupdater, but just flashing your 9.2 image to it would be quicker and easier.

Since i didn't have a 9.2 emunand backup i indeed solved it by unlinking Emunand with Tinyformat and use safe sysupdater to downgrade emunand to 9.2 a week ago. Like already in the OP to be able to use emunand with firmware90.bin, you need to be on emunand 9.2, else holding L will result in 2 black screens

 

[DarkKaine]

There's a version of Decrypt9 that boots directly from a9lh floating around. You should be able to use that to flash your 9.2 backup to your emunand.

Yeah, works great. Partitions sadly cannot be injected yet tho.

 

[lettuce]

did u add the updatedsysnand file? If so, remove it

No I didn't even get to the step of making the updatedsysnand file. a9lh must still be installed though as I get a different colour theme when I boot hold down L, but none of my games from the restored emunand are showing up, so I don't think I can access my emunand anymore. I'm not going to have to go through that whole process of installing AuReiNand again am I?

 

[Razorbacktrack]

Hi, I've a question.

My 3DS has 9.2 Sys and 10.3 Emu and I'd like to make arm9loaderhax and sysnand swap to "delete" emunand. The question is: if I swap the sysnand and I obtain a patched 10.3 , what should I do in the future to update the sysnand without loosing ARM9LH or CFW in general? Thanks in advance

 

[FenrirWolf]

Assuming you use AuReiNand, it automatically detects that you have a9lh installed and prevents updates from overwriting FIRM0 and FIRM1. You can also create a blank file in the rei folder named "installeda9lh" to force that behavior even if the autodetection failed somehow.

 

[tcd139]

.

 

[FenrirWolf]

I made a post on page 15 of what I think is the easiest way to go about it:
http://gbatemp.net/threads/tutorial...rm9loaderhax-only.415724/page-15#post-6117380

 

[LennartL]

i dont get mini pasta to start only a redscreen from menuhax and yes i start it from sysnand doesnt help
can somebody help ?

it did work before i installed auireinand and get otp.bin

 

[FenrirWolf]

If you're using A9LH and AuReiNand, you don't need to use minipasta for anything. Booting into a 9.x FIRM environment by holding L gives you the same results.

 

[LennartL]

ok i thought it was necessary to start mini pasta first at least the guide on front page says that, anyway when i hold left menuhax starts and when im holding right sysnand starts

 

[FenrirWolf]

So long as Menuhax takes you into your homebrew channel then that's fine. Or you can uninstall menuhax since you no longer depend on it to boot stuff.