Why does my 3ds have a quick red flash appears when only powering on 3ds?

Mr_Persona

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The red light appears on the streetpass/friend list light. And only happens when powering on. And yes it is red and it happens in like 2 seconds. I've been having this problem since June or May but it was rare until recently. Also when it starts up it take a while than usually and very rarely the home menu sounds will start playing before the screen appears. And it happens even when 3ds is fully charged, note the blue light on the bottom still appears blue during this issue.

This was my sibling's old untouch 3ds for 4 years until i started using in April of this year. I did warned him he should've turned it on once in a while so battery doesn't go bad before I took over. So is it possibly be the battery itself that needs replacing?
 

Kwyjor

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Was CFW installed on this unit? Newer versions of boot9strap use a red light in some particular circumstances, but if this 3DS hasn't been touched in 4 years, that definitely wouldn't have been installed.
 

CoolMe

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This suddenly happened to me today. It doesnt turn on though, red street pass light, blue power led
The power led stays solid? Also, give more details, does the 3ds has CFW, are you on the latest firmware etc.
If you have cfw, try and see if you can access Luma3DS and GodMode9, when holding "select" on boot (for the former), and "start" for the latter.
If the above didn't work, do the same with the sd card removed.
 

CGetchCCU

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I have this same problem too. It happened on a 3ds xl I got on Ebay them another! Cannot be a coincidence and maybe it has to do with me updating games or the system firmware.

I tried holding select and start on bootup. I do not believe these consoles are modded.

Also the colors change. Sometimes red Sometimes yellow or green. Also It happens when I don't boot it up for a few minutes. If I boot up again immediately i won't see the light.
 
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lone_wolf323

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I have this same problem too. It happened on a 3ds xl I got on Ebay them another! Cannot be a coincidence and maybe it has to do with me updating games or the system firmware.

I tried holding select and start on bootup. I do not believe these consoles are modded.

Also the colors change. Sometimes red Sometimes yellow or green. Also It happens when I don't boot it up for a few minutes. If I boot up again immediately i won't see the light.
Post automatically merged:

I have this same problem too. It happened on a 3ds xl I got on Ebay them another! Cannot be a coincidence and maybe it has to do with me updating games or the system firmware.

I tried holding select and start on bootup. I do not believe these consoles are modded.

Also the colors change. Sometimes red Sometimes yellow or green. Also It happens when I don't boot it up for a few minutes. If I boot up again immediately i won't see the light.
Whats on the sd card? if there aint nothing cfw related then its likely hardware related
 

That1LoserGuy

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this is directly copied from the boot9strap 1.4 release changelog on github, figured you might as well see it:

If the ntrboot combo (X+Start+Select) is held, or if either FIRM file is corrupt, the notification LED will display the following:
  • SD FIRM successfully loaded: green
  • SD FIRM missing, CTRNAND FIRM successfully loaded: yellow
  • SD FIRM corrupt, CTRNAND FIRM successfully loaded: orange
  • SD FIRM missing, CTRNAND FIRM also missing: white
  • SD FIRM missing, CTRNAND FIRM corrupt: magenta
  • SD FIRM corrupt, CTRNAND FIRM also corrupt: red
  • in addition to the above, the LED will blink if it is actually a ntrboot boot
Post automatically merged:

This is taken from B9S. The boot.firm may be corrupt. Replace all Luma3DS files.
oh sorry didnt see your post lol
 

CGetchCCU

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Whats on the sd card? if there aint nothing cfw related then its likely hardware related
There's no CFW. I didn't notice the 3DS doing it until I updated the system and updated all the games in my library.

The fact that it happened exactly like my other 3DS makes me wonder if it has to do with firmware. Everything seems to be working and I doubt both 3DS systems could have the same exact symptoms if it was hardware issue.
 

Kwyjor

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There's no CFW.
What basis do you have for this statement? You realize CFW installation makes changes to the internal NAND and the presence can't be established just by looking at the SD card, right? That's what https://3ds.guide/checking-for-cfw is for. (Unfortunately eBay resellers sometimes use a "stealth" version of Luma that disables the check for keypresses.)
 
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CGetchCCU

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Like I said it seems to have happened after I updated the console and updated my game library.

It's not a solid color that lasts long. It's a brief millisecond and again only appears after I haven't turned on the console for longer than like 30 minutes.

I did check for CFW. The likelihood of both of them having that stealth Luma feature seems low.

I believe it's something else. Good that others document their cases. Some people have solid red notification lights on their factory consoles. Seems to be something about the console being busy.
 

Kwyjor

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I did check for CFW.
And how, exactly, did you check!?

The likelihood of both of them having that stealth Luma feature seems low.
You say you got these consoles from eBay, and consoles from eBay are known to have this issue, and there's generally no other explanation for weird notification light colors, so how in the world do you think it "seems low"?!

Good that others document their cases. Some people have solid red notification lights on their factory consoles.
Are you referring to the exactly-two ambiguous posts in this thread, or are you referring to "documentation" from somewhere else!?
 

CGetchCCU

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You can tell me how to check it then. But I've held select and start while booting up. These 3DS systems looks hardly used. There's not other evidence that they have stealth Luma.

You are assuming they are 1. Modded. And 2. Modded in such a way which cannot be detected by the button press or checking a SD card.

If you have a way for me to see if the nand was modded I am all ears.
 

Kwyjor

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That information is not well-disseminated, and perhaps someone will step in and correct me if I am mistaken, but I believe the best way to test is to copy the latest Luma (boot.firm) to the SD card and see if select or start do anything afterwards.
 

CGetchCCU

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That information is not well-disseminated, and perhaps someone will step in and correct me if I am mistaken, but I believe the best way to test is to copy the latest Luma (boot.firm) to the SD card and see if select or start do anything afterwards.
Tried that. Nothing happened. Believe me when i say I do not think it is modded.

I have a YouTube video but I don't think I can post links yet. The colors change at random. It lasts for a millisecond and it won't reappear unless I wait 20+ minutes.
 

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