White light and bad decisions = Bricked New 2DS XL

[anotherthing]

Hello, fine people!

I was recently attempting to update Luma3DS, and managed to brick my New 2DS XL. The problem was that it was reading the Luma from the CTRNAND rather than the SD card. So, after reading too little on the subject apparently, and thinking that the result of what I read was that if it couldn't read the boot.firm from the CTRNAND, it would look for it on the SD card. So, I used GodMode9 to rename the boot.firm on the CTRNAND to boot.firm.old. Upon rebooting, I got the White LED of Doom. I tried booting in to Safe Mode, which does the same White LED of Doom. Since there's no boot.firm being read, I can't do the Start-Power thing to get back to GodMode9.

So, I decided that since I have an Ace3DS X card, I would do the ntrboot thing and just go about re-installing Luma that way. Following the guide here:

https://3ds.hacks.guide/installing-boot9strap-(ntrboot)

I know where the sweet spot is on the New 2DS XL, it's just above the A Button. When I do the X-Select-Start-Power with the magnet in the right spot, the blue power light comes on, but the White LED of Doom stays off. If the magnet isn't there, that LED lights up as you'd expect. However, it doesn't boot in to boot9strap. I followed the guide verbatim there. I've also tried using sthetix's 6 month old collection of files for it before I decided to follow the guide. Both result in the same thing. The blue LED lights up, the white one stays dark, but the boot9strap menu doesn't appear on the screen. When I remove my fingers from the device, the blue light eventually goes out.

I got the Ace3DS X card from nds-card.com's Amazon affiliated store several months ago. This card supposedly already has the ntxboot already flashed in it's "3DS Mode". So, I'm kind of at a loss here. The Ace3DS X card has the ntrboot_flasher_nds.nds in the root, and the directory of ntrboot with boot9strap_ntr.form in it. Is there something I'm missing? Could it be that Ace3DS X card lacks the flashed ntrboothax thing? I'm stumped here.

EDIT: SOLVED! It wasn't reading the boot.firm from the SD card because the SD card was funky to the 2DS.

 

[master801]

Why are you not just putting boot.firm on the SD card, since it no longer exists on the NAND? Make sure to use about the same version of Luma as before or it may not boot.

Are sure you're switching the Ace3DS X into 3DS mode..?

 

[Kwyjor]

The Ace3DS X card has the ntrboot_flasher_nds.nds in the root, and the directory of ntrboot with boot9strap_ntr.form in it.

The contents of the SD card in the flashcart are irrelevant in ntrboot.

 

[anotherthing]

Why are you not just putting boot.firm on the SD card, since it no longer exists on the NAND? Make sure to use about the same version of Luma as before or it may not boot.

The SD card does have boot.firm on it as well as the boot.3dsx file in the root. Originally the goal of renaming it was to force it to fall back to the SD card boot.firm. I did try it again after putting 12.0.1 back on there, and it still does the White LED of Doom.

Are sure you're switching the Ace3DS X into 3DS mode..?

Oh yeah. If you have it in NDS mode, you get the White LED of Doom. With the switch in 3DS mode, it does the power light, no White LED of Doom, but the screen doesn't come on and the boot9strap doesn't pop up.

Post automatically merged: Mar 6, 2024

The contents of the SD card in the flashcart are irrelevant in ntrboot.

Okay, so does ntrboot make the 3DS look for a boot.firm at the root of the SD card? If that's the case, I don't think it's doing that at all. It's doing something because the White LED isn't lighting up when I do the X-Select-Start-Power thing with the Ace3DS X card in there.

 

[Kwyjor]

Okay, so does ntrboot make the 3DS look for a boot.firm at the root of the SD card?

It does not look in the SD card in the flashcart; it only looks at the SD card in the 3DS.

 

[master801]

The SD card does have boot.firm on it as well as the boot.3dsx file in the root. Originally the goal of renaming it was to force it to fall back to the SD card boot.firm. I did try it again after putting 12.0.1 back on there, and it still does the White LED of Doom.


Oh yeah. If you have it in NDS mode, you get the White LED of Doom. With the switch in 3DS mode, it does the power light, no White LED of Doom, but the screen doesn't come on and the boot9strap doesn't pop up.

Post automatically merged: Mar 6, 2024

Okay, so does ntrboot make the 3DS look for a boot.firm at the root of the SD card? If that's the case, I don't think it's doing that at all. It's doing something because the White LED isn't lighting up when I do the X-Select-Start-Power thing with the Ace3DS X card in there.

Try a different SD card formatted to FAT32 32KB in the 3DS.

Everything (boot.firm, boot.3dsx, boot9strap/boot9strap.firm, boot9strap/boot9strap.firm.sha) should be going onto the 3DS' SD card.

 

[anotherthing]

It does not look in the SD card in the flashcart; it only looks at the SD card in the 3DS.

Right. But does ntrboot cause the 3DS to look for a boot.firm in the root of the 3DS's SD card? Because it doesn't seem like it's doing that, because it doesn't just go to the Home Menu when you pull the magnet off. Instead, it powers down.

Try a different SD card formatted to FAT32 32KB in the 3DS.

I'm doing that now. It's either the Ace3DS X not doing it's thing, or there's something up with the original SD card that's in the 3DS that's causing it to "not see" the boot.firm that's on there. If it's supposed to fall back to the SD card if the CTRNAND doesn't have a boot.firm, it's most certainly not doing that. That SD card in the 3DS has had a boot.firm the entire time. In fact, the only reason I noticed that it was using the boot.firm on the CTRNAND is because I tried updating the Luma3DS and it kept using 12.0.1 when I updated it on the SD card to 13.0.2 both manually and with Universal Updater.

Post automatically merged: Mar 6, 2024

Try a different SD card formatted to FAT32 32KB in the 3DS.

And we have success! It was the SD card. I thought there was something fishy this morning when I was playing around with the New 2DS XL and the power light would come on, but the orange "disk" light wouldn't come on, nor would the screens. That was the SD card as well. I popped it in to the computer, diskchecked it and got the 2DS to boot. The battery died in the New 2DS XL the last time I used it, so I'm guessing it really screwed up the SD card.