Bricked 3DS assistance

Sunblock · Mar 13, 2024

As the title says I have an old 3dsxl that I bricked years ago, just decided recently to try and get this bad boy running again, I have purchased a R4 SDHC Gold Pro and a new SD Card (Sandisk Ultra PLUS 32GB SDHC UHS-I), the problem with the 3ds itself is that when the power button is pushed the blue light comes on and immediately turns off, I do not know what happened to the original sd card or what software was originally on it, any help is more than appreciated!

Post automatically merged: Mar 13, 2024

(edit1)Also apologies if this is the incorrect place to start this thread new to this forum :/

Post automatically merged: Mar 13, 2024

(edit2)I have a new error now! I successfully got to get into booting but got a CTRNAND error, after which installing some files to the SD Card I loaded I did a CTR Transfer in Godmode9 and started receiving an arm9 error (data abort) when the SD card is in, with the SD card out I get error failed to create luma directory

anotherthing · Mar 14, 2024

Sunblock said:
the problem with the 3ds itself is that when the power button is pushed the blue light comes on and immediately turns off

Have you tried to see if it boots to Safe mode without an SD card? Charge the 3DS all the way up, then hold down the left and right button, A, and D-Pad up while powering it on. This may take several tries. Eventually, you should see a screen that says to update the system. Just hit cancel, it should power off, and then see if it boots after that.

Sunblock · Mar 14, 2024

anotherthing said:
Have you tried to see if it boots to Safe mode without an SD card? Charge the 3DS all the way up, then hold down the left and right button, A, and D-Pad up while powering it on. This may take several tries. Eventually, you should see a screen that says to update the system. Just hit cancel, it should power off, and then see if it boots after that.

unfortunately still says unable to create luma directory and thats about it

lone_wolf323 · Mar 14, 2024

Sunblock said:
unfortunately still says unable to create luma directory and thats about it

check to see if ya got more than one boot.firm file on your sd card, and make sure the card aint locked.

Sunblock · Mar 14, 2024

only 1 boot.firm in the root, sd card is unlocked

Post automatically merged: Mar 14, 2024

I also ran some software to verify its not the sd card and everything came back good on the sd card

Sunblock · Mar 14, 2024

lone_wolf323 said:
check to see if ya got more than one boot.firm file on your sd card, and make sure the card aint locked.

Forgot to hit reply

anotherthing · Mar 14, 2024

Sunblock said:
after which installing some files to the SD Card I loaded I did a CTR Transfer in Godmode9 and started receiving an arm9 error (data abort) when the SD card is in, with the SD card out I get error failed to create luma directory

I wonder if the GodMode9 error is because the 3DS had yet to write anything to the SD Card yet to identify the card as it's card. When you take the card out, it fails to create the luma directory because there's no card to create it on.

Sunblock said:
unfortunately still says unable to create luma directory and thats about it

Okay, that's really odd. It sounds like it's still trying to go through the process of installing the custom firmware? I don't know why it would try that when you're trying to boot to Safe Mode. It should just go directly to the Nintendo software update screen. Or am I misreading and you got the Safe Mode screen and after that, it wanted to create the luma3DS directory?

What were you doing when it initially bricked?

Sunblock · Mar 14, 2024

anotherthing said:
I wonder if the GodMode9 error is because the 3DS had yet to write anything to the SD Card yet to identify the card as it's card. When you take the card out, it fails to create the luma directory because there's no card to create it on.

Okay, that's really odd. It sounds like it's still trying to go through the process of installing the custom firmware? I don't know why it would try that when you're trying to boot to Safe Mode. It should just go directly to the Nintendo software update screen. Or am I misreading and you got the Safe Mode screen and after that, it wanted to create the luma3DS directory?

What were you doing when it

anotherthing said:
I wonder if the GodMode9 error is because the 3DS had yet to write anything to the SD Card yet to identify the card as it's card. When you take the card out, it fails to create the luma directory because there's no card to create it on.

Okay, that's really odd. It sounds like it's still trying to go through the process of installing the custom firmware? I don't know why it would try that when you're trying to boot to Safe Mode. It should just go directly to the Nintendo software update screen. Or am I misreading and you got the Safe Mode screen and after that, it wanted to create the luma3DS directory?

What were you doing when it initially bricked?

So initially without the sd card it seemed the 3ds had nothing to read so it just wouldn't boot to anything at all, I tried ntrboot because a lot of what I was reading was pointing towards doing that but after putting files into the sd card with the boot.firm and gm9 as well as a few others I was able to get into the luma screen and gm9 but when I attempted to get to the home screen or Safe Mode I got a ctrnand notmounted so I followed a YouTube video for ctrtransfer but after doing that it would boot to the arm9 error everytime with the sd card, without the sdcard I get a luma directory not found error

(Edit) the thing was bricked years ago and I don't remember what younger me did to brick the device originally

Kwyjor · Mar 14, 2024

Sunblock said:
after which installing some files to the SD Card I loaded I did a CTR Transfer in Godmode9 and started receiving an arm9 error (data abort) when the SD card is in, with the SD card out I get error failed to create luma directory

It would probably be useful if you could take some pictures of these errors, unless you can be more precise about what exactly they say.

Sunblock said:
I also ran some software to verify its not the sd card and everything came back good on the sd card

Also you should be more precise in cases like this rather than saying you "ran some software". >_< If you used h2testw, then that is not useful unless you were running it on an empty card, i.e. after copying everything off the SD card and formatting it.

anotherthing · Mar 14, 2024

Sunblock said:
So initially without the sd card it seemed the 3ds had nothing to read so it just wouldn't boot to anything at all, I tried ntrboot because a lot of what I was reading was pointing towards doing that

You should probably try shorter sentences with more punctuation. It's kind of hard to follow what you're saying, but I'll give it a shot.

First off, you should go by this guide for ntrboot hacking:

https://3ds.hacks.guide/ntrboot.html

Videos are nice as a supplement to the 3ds.hacks.guide, but that guide is very precise and is updated constantly with what you need to know, download, and so on. At this point, given the lack of the original SD card, your best bet is probably the ntrboot method.

Sunblock said:
when I attempted to get to the home screen or Safe Mode I got a ctrnand notmounted

Here's a guide for the ctrtransfer:

https://3ds.hacks.guide/ctrtransfer

It also provides links to 11.15 ctrnands. Be sure to use the correct region for the console you have and if it's an old 3DS or new 3DS. If you followed the sthetix video, you might be using a NAND for a New 3DS. That's the console he's showing in the video.

Sunblock · Mar 14, 2024

anotherthing said:
You should probably try shorter sentences with more punctuation. It's kind of hard to follow what you're saying, but I'll give it a shot.

First off, you should go by this guide for ntrboot hacking:

https://3ds.hacks.guide/ntrboot.html

Videos are nice as a supplement to the 3ds.hacks.guide, but that guide is very precise and is updated constantly with what you need to know, download, and so on. At this point, given the lack of the original SD card, your best bet is probably the ntrboot method.

Here's a guide for the ctrtransfer:

https://3ds.hacks.guide/ctrtransfer

It also provides links to 11.15 ctrnands. Be sure to use the correct region for the console you have and if it's an old 3DS or new 3DS. If you followed the sthetix video, you might be using a NAND for a New 3DS. That's the console he's showing in the video.

I tried both the NTR boot method and the CTR Transfer and unfortunately it didn't fix the issue :/
I attached the arm 9 dump file as a zip and also attached an image of the current error
this happens both with and without the SD card installed

Bricked 3DS assistance

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