Hacking Tried the Gateway-3DS 4.1 A9LH firmware -> (semi?) bricked my O3DS XL :/

[BadPandaBear]

Hi all, yesterday I tried to install the 4.1 beta of the Gateway 3DS firmware , in the end I Semi-Bricked my 3DS i Think.

Currently my 3DS boots, it immediatly gives me the "Gateway Dragon" splashscreen , if I don't do anything it jumps to 2 black screens and stays there.
If I press L + select during the splash screen I get into the good Gateway Menu.(with the options to format emunand and backup nand ans such) So it's not completely bricked but I only get there...

This is how I did it :

- Backupped my System NAND (4.6) (transferred to my pc for backup)

- Downgraded my System Nand to version 2.1 via the gateway Time Machine
- My 3DS booted fine in the 2.1 firmware
- I loaded the exploit via http://go.gateway-3DS.com and held L to get into the Gateway Menu
- Did another backup of sysnand (i'm assumming this is then a sysnand backup of a 2.1 ?) and also copied it up to my pc for backup .
- Then did the A9LH Install option in the gateway menu. This finished without errors.

This is now where i'm stuck. The 3DS does boot (Gateway Dragon Splash Screen and when I hold L + Select it boots into the GWS menu)

Anyone have any suggestions what I can do ?

Can I go back to a non-A9LH with my 4.6 nand ? To keep using the Gateway as I was doing ?


Edit : Some people asked why in the hell I installed the Gateway A9LH , well I didn't know any better, I don't follow the 3DS Scene and didn't even hear of A9LH before this, I just saw a new firmware from Gateway and wanted to install this...

 

[Essometer]

<snip>

@Topic, what happens when you boot without your SD card?

 

[DrunkenMonk]

Hi all, yesterday I tried to install the 4.1 beta of the Gateway 3DS firmware , in the end i Semi-Bricked my 3DS i Think.

Currently my 3DS boots, it immediatly gives me the Dragon splashscreen , if I don't do anything it jumps to 2 black screens and stays there.
If I press L + select during the splash screen I get into the good old Gateway Menu. So it's not completely bricked but I only get there...

This is how I did it :

Backupped my System NAND (4.6) (transferred to my pc for backup)

Downgraded my System Nand to version 2.1 via the gateway Time Machine

My 3DS booted fine in the 2.1 firmware , loaded the exploit via http://go.gateway-3DS.com and held L to get into the Gateway Menu
Backupped sysnand again (i'm assumming this is then a sysnand backup of a 2.1 ?) and also backked it up to my pc.
Then did the A9LH Install option in the gateway menu.
This finished without errors.

This is now where i'm stuck. The 3DS does boot (Gateway Splash Screen and when I hold L + Select it boots into the GWS menu)

Anyone have any suggestions what I can do ?

Can I go back to a non-A9LH with my 4.6 nand ? To keep using the Gateway as I was doing ?

Have you tried renaming your nintendo 3ds folder? I believe that's part of the steps. If that doesn't work, I suggest actually doing this https://github.com/Plailect/Guide/wiki/Part-1-(Homebrew)

and when you have regular A9LH you can add a GW boot option (it can even be your default if you wanted) to retain all gateway functions whilst having the bonuses of regular A9LH's customization.

 

[BadPandaBear]

<snip>

@Topic, what happens when you boot without your SD card?

Hi , without an SD it powers up and shuts down immediatly (power down)
So i'm assuming it's looking for an SD with the boot.3dsx and shutting down when it doesn't find it ?

 

[Essometer]

Hi , without an SD it powers up and shuts down immediatly (power down)
So i'm assuming it's looking for an SD with the boot.3dsx and shutting down when it doesn't find it ?

From my understanding the A9HL should be installed correctly, the shut down is normal.

 

[kamesenin888]

try backing up your emunand and sd card and format emunand

 

[Essometer]

The part I'm calling him out on is trying to install GW a9lh

I know that. My problem is that you can tell him that in a normal way that GW A9HL is bullshit.
Also, the milk is already spilled, so why not try to be constructive?

 

[BadPandaBear]

Hi, I formatted my emunand from the GW launcher, didn't help.

I'm sorry if i sparked a A9LH <> Gateway Discussion, didn't mean too, just installed a firmware from the card I had.

Thanks for the suggestions already thou.

 

[bowser]

Hi, I formatted my emunand from the GW launcher, didn't help.

I'm sorry if i sparked a A9LH <> Gateway Discussion, didn't mean too, just installed a firmware from the card I had.

Thanks for the suggestions already thou.

You didn't spark it, some dumbass did.

I hope you fix your problem.

 

[raulpica]

@BadPandaBear
Sorry if your first post here was welcomed in such a rude way. I hope the rest of our users will be able to help you with your issue.

@Essometer
Indeed, I'm going to keep a closer eye on threads in the 3DS section from now on since I've seen this happen quite a bit. Feel free to report similar posts if you see them. Thanks!

 

[thisisallowed]

Restore the 2.1 backup and install normal non gw a9lh

 

[Aroth]

Hi, I formatted my emunand from the GW launcher, didn't help.

I'm sorry if i sparked a A9LH <> Gateway Discussion, didn't mean too, just installed a firmware from the card I had.

Thanks for the suggestions already thou.

This may be a stupid question, but you DO have a GW red card and it IS inserted when you try and boot the console, right?

 

[BadPandaBear]

@Aroth : yeah , I have the Gateway Card inserted (when I don't insert it says to insert it so I tried it just to test)
@Thisisallow : I was contemplating just restoring my 4.6 NAND because i'm "scared" of this stuff now, but if I wanted to install the (clean) nand again, how would I do this ? I don't have an option like this in the Gateway Launcher(and this is the only thing that does launch)

Thanks again guys for the suggestions

 

[thisisallowed]

@Aroth : yeah , I have the Gateway Card inserted (when I don't insert it says to insert it so I tried it just to test)
@Thisisallow : I was contemplating just restoring my 4.6 NAND because i'm "scared" of this stuff now, but if I wanted to install the (clean) nand again, how would I do this ? I don't have an option like this in the Gateway Launcher(and this is the only thing that does launch)

Thanks again guys for the suggestions

Hold up while pressing downgrade was the old method, try it
SafeA9LH installer is safe unlike gateway installer and will always work and not brick

 

[Aroth]

Hold up while pressing downgrade was the old method, try it
SafeA9LH installer is safe unlike gateway installer and will always work and not brick

I see no reason that holding up while selecting downgrade would not work (no news/documentation from GW suggesting that the functionality was changed, so I would assume that it still works. On the off chance that it does not though, can you access the 2.1 sysnand at all still? If so you might be able to load up decrypt9 via the browser and restore your 2.1 backup (or even the original 4.x one if you wanted).

My suggestion though would be to restore the 2.1 and then follow Plailect's guide from the A9LH installation step onward. The person who mentioned that you have to use A9LHv1 earlier in the thread is mistaken, you can use the arm9loaderhax.bin file from gateway with A9LHv2 afaik, though it will not natively work with Luma3DS's payload chaining feature. Gimme a few and I will add some links to the exact step of the guide to start on, and where to get the files needed to make gateway's arm9loaderhax.bin file working with Luma3DS payload chaining.

 

[bowser]

Can someone tag some of the awesome beta testers from the Gateway 4.0 thread here? I forgot their names. They found fixes and workarounds for Gateway's bugs in the last beta and may be able to help.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Hi all, yesterday I tried to install the 4.1 beta of the Gateway 3DS firmware , in the end I Semi-Bricked my 3DS i Think.

Currently my 3DS boots, it immediatly gives me the "Gateway Dragon" splashscreen , if I don't do anything it jumps to 2 black screens and stays there.
If I press L + select during the splash screen I get into the good Gateway Menu.(with the options to format emunand and backup nand ans such) So it's not completely bricked but I only get there...

This is how I did it :

- Backupped my System NAND (4.6) (transferred to my pc for backup)

- Downgraded my System Nand to version 2.1 via the gateway Time Machine
- My 3DS booted fine in the 2.1 firmware
- I loaded the exploit via http://go.gateway-3DS.com and held L to get into the Gateway Menu
- Did another backup of sysnand (i'm assumming this is then a sysnand backup of a 2.1 ?) and also copied it up to my pc for backup .
- Then did the A9LH Install option in the gateway menu. This finished without errors.

This is now where i'm stuck. The 3DS does boot (Gateway Dragon Splash Screen and when I hold L + Select it boots into the GWS menu)

Anyone have any suggestions what I can do ?

Can I go back to a non-A9LH with my 4.6 nand ? To keep using the Gateway as I was doing ?


Edit : Some people asked why in the hell I installed the Gateway A9LH , well I didn't know any better, I don't follow the 3DS Scene and didn't even hear of A9LH before this, I just saw a new firmware from Gateway and wanted to install this...

AFAIK 4.6 doesn't exist.

You should have used the homebrew A9LH method instead (see: https://github.com/Plailect/Guide/wiki )
It's safer and doesn't lock you to using Gateway only so you can still use homebrew tools like Decrypt9, emuNAND9, and CFW for running GBA VC/DSiWare games which Gateway doesn't currently support. You're still able to use Gateway through the arm9loaderhax.bin they released.
What I would recommend doing at this point is restoring your first NAND backup to get back to a working state, and following the guide linked above. You will need to set up CFW as part of the guide but once it's done you can replace the arm9loaderhax.bin with GW's one if you want (or have a dual boot setup with Gateway as the default by using a boot manager such as BootCtr9, CtrBootManager9, arm9loaderhay)

You can also restore your 2.1 NAND backup and follow the guide from Part 5, which will be much faster, but you will have to skip some parts of the guide as you won't have done the steps before that relate to them so you'll be missing certain files. It would be safer to follow the guide from the beginning, though following the guide from the beginning will take you hours whereas following Part 5 only can be done in under an hour. If you don't want to spend that much time you'll probably be fine just following part 5, which starts immediately after the 2.1.0 downgrade.

 

[BadPandaBear]

I didn't know about holding the up key while pressing downgrade to restore the nand ! I just did and got a clean booting 2.1 nds again ! Thanks for that tip thisisallowed !

Now i'm contemplating on what to do, flash my original 4.x again and just use the GW3D as before or go for the proper A9LH method.

Aroth, if you could find the links that would be awesome.

 

[Aroth]

@BadPandaBear

If you manage to restore the original 2.1 backup and want to install the normal A9LH (instead of Gateway's) you should start at the top of this page and continue the guide from there: https://github.com/Plailect/Guide/wiki/Part-5-(arm9loaderhax) When the guide asks for "emunand_original.bin", use decrypt9 to backup the emunand from your sd card and use that dump.

Once that is done, you have two options for setting up the system to load gateway.

1.) https://gbatemp.net/threads/tutorial-using-luma3ds-with-gateway-on-v2-a9lh.431691/#additional-note

This method will require you to hold a button during boot to load Gateway, and is the current (afaik) recommended method.

Or 2.) https://gbatemp.net/threads/using-gateway-on-a9lh-v2.431222/

This method requires you to use a bootmanager to load any payloads you want to have access to. As far as I know, you cannot use Luma3DS's payload chaining if you choose this methoid.

For reference, the arm9loaderhax.bin file that gateway provides, WILL NOT boot normally if you install A9LHv2 via the methods/links in Plailect's guide. (Just tested and I get a black screen if I put it at the root of my sd card.) You HAVE to use an A9LHv2 payload for a boot manager to boot it. The first method uses a stripped down boot manager that can be chained into by Luma3DS and simply loads a payload from "gateway.bin", located in the same folder. The second method uses a full boot manager to load any/all payloads.

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

Oh, you will also need the 4.0b launcher.dat file, as the provided a9lh payload from gateway will not properly load the 4.1b file. Just gets a blackscreen whenever I try it.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

I didn't know about holding the up key while pressing downgrade to restore the nand ! I just did and got a clean booting 2.1 nds again ! Thanks for that tip thisisallowed !

Now i'm contemplating on what to do, flash my original 4.x again and just use the GW3D as before or go for the proper A9LH method.

Aroth, if you could find the links that would be awesome.

You can find a link in my post above.
Since you are on 2.1.0 now, it would be easiest to follow the guide from Part 5. It's less safe doing it this way because you won't have done all the backups in Part 4, but it's probably fine and it saves you hours.
Personally I would probably just do it this way. If you decide to do it this way you'll have to skip steps 1-2 of part 5.
Either way, you should skip section IV and V of part 5, Gateway doesn't currently protect A9LH from being overwritten so using sysNAND CFW with it is a bad idea as updating sysNAND will either brick your console (on a n3DS) or remove A9LH (on o3DS)
You can still use Luma3DS to update it which has A9LH protection, but that leaves you one accidental update away from a stock console or worse, a brick. So I would recommend keeping emuNAND.

On an unrelated note, I'm impressed that there aren't more "gateway is shit, flush it down the toilet" type posts in this thread. Normally any thread that even mentions using a Gateway gets filled with pages of pointless shitposting.