Hacking Homebrew "Failed to apply 1 FIRM patch(es). Press any button to shutdown."

[someguy12345]

I've done some extensive searches on this online and on this website but have not found a definitive solution.

Context: my new 3DS was using a 256GB card. I'm moving cards around and decided to switch back to an older 128GB card, which to my knowledge is working fine. After formatting the 128GB to exFAT and 32KB clusters, I migrated my data to the 128GB card and popped it back in my 3DS only to be immediately met with this message...

"An error has occurred:
Failed to apply 1 FIRM patch(es).
Press any button to shutdown."

Well, crap. The unanimous answer online is to update Luma, but I've updated to the latest version from June and I'm still being met with the same message. Thankfully I backed up all my data from before the transfer, but I'm not sure how to get my system booting again.

Any ideas? Is it because of the exFAT format? FAT32 is usually recommended but was unfortunately not an option when formatting. I've read that exFAT is a modernized version of FAT32, but perhaps this isn't true?

 

[lone_wolf323]

I've done some extensive searches on this online and on this website but have not found a definitive solution.

Context: my new 3DS was using a 256GB card. I'm moving cards around and decided to switch back to an older 128GB card, which to my knowledge is working fine. After formatting the 128GB to exFAT and 32KB clusters, I migrated my data to the 128GB card and popped it back in my 3DS only to be immediately met with this message...

"An error has occurred:
Failed to apply 1 FIRM patch(es).
Press any button to shutdown."

Well, crap. The unanimous answer online is to update Luma, but I've updated to the latest version from June and I'm still being met with the same message. Thankfully I backed up all my data from before the transfer, but I'm not sure how to get my system booting again.

Any ideas? Is it because of the exFAT format? FAT32 is usually recommended but was unfortunately not an option when formatting. I've read that exFAT is a modernized version of FAT32, but perhaps this isn't true?

FAT32 is the only format the 3ds console will take. For 128gb cards you need a program like guiformat to select the proper fat32 for the card

 

[The Real Jdbye]

I've done some extensive searches on this online and on this website but have not found a definitive solution.

Context: my new 3DS was using a 256GB card. I'm moving cards around and decided to switch back to an older 128GB card, which to my knowledge is working fine. After formatting the 128GB to exFAT and 32KB clusters, I migrated my data to the 128GB card and popped it back in my 3DS only to be immediately met with this message...

"An error has occurred:
Failed to apply 1 FIRM patch(es).
Press any button to shutdown."

Well, crap. The unanimous answer online is to update Luma, but I've updated to the latest version from June and I'm still being met with the same message. Thankfully I backed up all my data from before the transfer, but I'm not sure how to get my system booting again.

Any ideas? Is it because of the exFAT format? FAT32 is usually recommended but was unfortunately not an option when formatting. I've read that exFAT is a modernized version of FAT32, but perhaps this isn't true?

As mentioned exFAT will not work. Microsoft in their infinite wisdom back in the day chose to make 32 GB the maximum allowed size when formatting storage to FAT32 and that artificial limitation for whatever reason still exists today. But any other tool will be able to format it as FAT32, such as guiformat, Minitool Partition Wizard or EASEUS.

Side note for anyone who comes across this thread in the future with the same issue, not intended at you OP: If your card is already formatted to FAT32, the likely issue is that the 3DS is not able to read the SD and it's falling back to the Luma3DS version stored in CTRNAND which is probably outdated. Could be a faulty card or a faulty reader in the console itself.

 

[CoolMe]

Any ideas? Is it because of the exFAT format? FAT32 is usually recommended but was unfortunately not an option when formatting. I've read that exFAT is a modernized version of FAT32, but perhaps this isn't true?

Nope, you should use Fat32. And since you have a 128GB sd card, you should format it with 64kb cluster size instead of 32.

 

[someguy12345]

D'oh. Thanks guys. I reformatted the card as FAT32 with 32KB clusters, and the new issue I have is that the console boots not recognizing the card (so the home view is just blank with no themes or titles, etc). Going to try reformatting again but this time with 64KB clusters.

Edit: for documentation purposes, I tried a couple things before reformatting again for 64KB clusters...
- The 3DS says it cannot read the card, but when booting in GodMode9 it can browse the SD card contents just fine...
- I also tried updating my Luma to the latest June 2022 boot.3dsx and boot.firm - I got the prompts to set up Luma 11.0, but the same issue when booting to the 3DS home screen

Edit #2: I feel like it might also be worth mentioning that I have a separate 60MB unallocated partition on the 128GB card. I believe this is a leftover from use with a previous device when it (may have been) formatted as NTFS. I'll delete this partition and reformat the entire drive. Edit #2.1: nevermind, seems I'm unable to

 

[Kwyjor]

and the new issue I have is that the console boots not recognizing the card (so the home view is just blank with no themes or titles, etc)

That might be a different problem.

Edit: for documentation purposes, I tried a couple things before reformatting again for 64KB clusters...
- The 3DS says it cannot read the card

This is confusing. You said "the home view is blank with no themes or titles", so when does it say it cannot read the card..?

Edit #2.1: nevermind, seems I'm unable to

Details would be useful here. What do you mean by "seems"?

Often when a card is dying, it becomes impossible to write new files or make any other changes to the card.

 

[impeeza]

you need to change the name of the folders, read the post:
https://gbatemp.net/threads/swapped-sd-card-and-hb-launcher-gone.614459/post-9864793

 

[someguy12345]

This is confusing. You said "the home view is blank with no themes or titles", so when does it say it cannot read the card..?

Sorry, to clarify a little more: now the issue is, when I boot up the 3DS, as soon as it reaches the home screen, the error of "MicroSD could not not be detected" pops up, and the homescreen is blank except for some installed DSi and NDS forwarders (which I believe are not stored on the SD card, so that makes sense).

Details would be useful here. What do you mean by "seems"?

This was a misunderstanding on my part. Using Minitool Partition Wizard I was able to delete that 16MB partition, and then I just created a new partition on the whole card (Fat32 / 64KB clusters).

you need to change the name of the folders, read the post:
https://gbatemp.net/threads/swapped-sd-card-and-hb-launcher-gone.614459/post-9864793

Thanks for this writeup, I will try this if this next round doesn't work.


Using h2testw, I was able to confirm the SD card is not faulty. Transferring my data now, will update the thread / this post on status.

 

[CoolMe]

Using h2testw, I was able to confirm the SD card is not faulty.

Did you perform the test with an empty sd card? If not, you should redo it, you'd format it before and after the test as Fat32 64kb with Guiformat. And with the read & write setting in h2testw.