This guide can be used for Firecard, N card, F-card, MK5, & DSLinker cards, as they are all basically the same card. . 1st of all... ..You are probabaly reading this because your having problems with your firecard. so we'll start with some of the basic error messages, what they mean, & what you can do to solve the problem. . DATA IS NOT ALIGN 16K This means that you have formatted the firecard in windows using the USB interface. .....an easy fix. The firecard MUST be formatted while the card is in your DS. Insert the firecard, turn on the DS. While the firecard is botting, hold down the 'Start & Select' buttons. you will be taken to a menu screen (white text on a black background). Choose 'quick format'. After the card has formatted, link the card to the PC and send the xmenu.dat file to the card. ...Bob's yer uncle. . . OPEN XMENU.DAT ERROR This means that the firecard does not have the 'xmenu' in it. .....an easy fix. Put the XMENU.DAT file into the card. Link the firecard to your PC and 'send' the xmenu to the firecard. After doing this, the next time you turn on the DS(with the firecard inserted) it will create the DSYSTEM folder all by itself. If you dont have an xmenu file lying around on your PC, you can get one here: http://www.dslinker.cn/soft/ The reason i link to the DSLinker software download page is because they are usually quickest with new updates for this type of card. Your firecard will be very happy to work with the DSLinker xmenu. ...The job's a good-un. . . FILE WRITE ERROR (sharp intake of breath) Nasty. It means that something is wrong with your firecard. But dont worry.....an easy fix. Some day you may come across this error message when trying to play a game on your firecard. Every game you try to play, you get this message. Dont try to format the card in a panic(yet). You can rescue the situation without losing all your game saves. If you try all the games in your firecard, you'll probabaly find that only one of the games is now working. THIS is the problem game. Take it out, throw it away & never put it in your firecard again. You may notice that there are over a dozen save files for this problem game too....Delete them. THEN (with the firecard linked to your PC) go into the DSYSTEM folder which is inside the firecard & DELETE the file named 'last save'. Next time you play the firecard everything should be returned to normal. ...& roberts yer fathers brother. . . These 3 errors probabaly cover 90% of the problems new users have with these types of cards. Occasionally some other wild problems will rear their heads, as i've found out. But we'll cross those bridges when we come to them. My wee fingers are too sore to go on typing tonight. In-fact....if anyone has anything to add to what i've wrote above, please do-so, in the interest of helping new users get to grips with these great cards. . Any other Firecard, N card, F-card, MK5, & DSLinker questions can be posted here, and i or someone else in the community will be along soon to help you get your card up & running again. . Thanks.
Hope someone can help with my problem in fact its for my daughter and grandson who have the same problem. They have a fire card and it both have been working ok. The problem now is when you turn on the ds lite you get a blank screen on top and the screen on the bottom is very hard to see. This does not happen all the time but about 90% of the time. On the bottom screen which is hard to see you do not get the flashing message to touch the screen to continue. Also on some of the occasions that you get the prober screens when you touch the bottom screen to continue you end up with two blank screens. Very seldom the card does work properly I know this is long winded but I hope someone can help please
so your saying there are 2 firecards and 2 DS's showing the same problem. very unusual. I dont think i've heard of this problem before. . 'blank screens'..i assume you mean 'white screens' . lets see... ...nope, i'm stuck already. . Does the DS show these symptoms 'without' the firecard inserted? . Do they work ok with normal DS games inserted? . have you tried formatting one of the cards and putting in the latest xmenu.dat file?
Yeah 2 have same problem. I did a quick format on one of the cards but it didnt help Yeah white screen sorry.
Hello, I've had my firecard for a while now, i have four of them actually because im pretty familiar with the firecard now. I've run into all three of those problems that you have stated numerous times and they are easily fixable.. However one of my firecards is having problems saving and loading. When I play ANY game, it will save the file properly. If i were to turn it off and turn it back on right away the file will still be there. On the other hand if i wait an hour - infinity hours, the file will not load and it will prompt me to start a new game. Rarely will it say that the save file is corrupted. The weird thing is, the save file is still in the directory of my firecard, so if i were to take that save file and put it on a different firecard of mine, it will work without problems. The weird thing is if i back up the exact save file from my ds to the computer and place it back on after the file has corrupted, it wont load it until i have made a quick format and put on new firmware. And keep in mind that the save file that im putting back on DOES work on the other firecards. So i am questioning whether or not there is actually something wrong with the save file, or if the firecard is having problems loading the save file. I've tried numerous things to make it work: -Quickformat and Firware update to stable v2.55 (repeated this like 100000 times after a certain point of frustration) -Full format AFTER the problem had appeared. -Did a battery check program to see if the battery is functioning properly -Downloaded the same rom from various sources Note: The games all work properly 100%, its just saving and loading. I've played around with the save type too, most of the time it just makes the game crash when i try new ones. After hours of extreme frustration, Im at a dead end because i've tried nearly every possible solution that i can think of and my brain is deep fried from thinking about it anymore. Any input or insight into this problem will greatly appreciated, I really want this to work becuase this firecard is for my girlfriend and i want her to have something to play on. Thank you very much for reading this long post lol. =
Hi sillyfish.. ..so you have 4 firecards, but your giving your girlfriend 'the broken one'..lol..she'll love you for that.. . You probabaly know more about these cards than me, but i'm learning all the time(even at my age)...& it's the one thing we never stop doing. having said that. it's sometimes helpfull to have a 2nd opinion from someone a bit further away from the action. . so here's my stab at it. trying to dig-out clues from your post, you said: "If i were to turn it off and turn it back on right away the file will still be there. On the other hand if i wait an hour....." ..a clue perhaps!? how long have you had this particular firecard.?...a long time.?...does it sit not plugged into a DS for long periods of time? ..maybe the battery is going dead. ....'IS' there a little battery inside firecards?..i took a 'G6 REAL' card apart a couple of weeks ago & there was a little battery inside it. . i'm not 100% clued-up on this, but doesnt the firecard card keep the last game saved inside the DSYSTEM-folder('last save' file), then writes it after the next time the DS is turned on? .maybe if you load 1 more different game 'after' you have stopped playing 'the game you want to save' it will write the game properly to the cards memory and not keep the last save-game stored in the battery... hope you understand my writing.... these were my initial thought. they may be a mile off, but i like to take an attempt at solving things. . also...maybe the batter could be charged-up a bit by leaving the problem firecard overnight in the DS while it's being charged. . hope my ramblings help...if not, maybe they will give you further clues to silve your problem.
TO KENKIN . it looks like the firecards seem to be draining too much power from your DS's battery somehow. .i dont even know if what i'm saying is possible, but it sure looks like it...normal games work fine. . maybe you could try ajusting your DS's brightness settings a bit lower....just out of curiosity, to see if it has any effect. how old is the DS? . ..maybe if it works ok while the DS is plugged into the charger, this could give us a clue that it is a problem with your DS's battery . are they 1GB or 2 GB firecards?
I gave my girlfriend A firecard and hers broke... just to clarify =D haha Thank you for the insight however, last night i started thinking about the battery as well and i DID leave the firecard plugged in and in a charged ds overnight, but to no avail. The paticular firecard is NEVER out of the ds, ever since i've got it i've never taken it out. As for the save files, i do load up the same game (right now after formatting my card so many times i only bother to put one game at this point... after testing like 300 games lol) and it doesnt save. so i really have no idea, but i'll think about what you said over in my head througout the day to see if it leads me anywhere. =) Thank you so much Regg
I forgot to add, these firecards i had bought all at the same time, all of them stay in their respective ds's (i bought a firecard for each ds i have). So they're about a month old, i do think that the better should last longer than a month, unless i am mistaken.
HI HUYS IM HAVING PROBS WITH MY FIRECARD ITS NOT SAVING GAME PLAY IT SAYS SAVING BUT WHN I TURN IT OFF AFTER IT HAS SAVED ALL GAME PLAY RESUMES TO THE START AGAIN DOES NOT LET YOU CONTINUE WHERE YU LEFT OFF AT ALL ROMS ARE SET AT 4Mbit
@reekboy needs a bit more info on why its not saving, such as, did it save ok before?, is it a new rom release? is there any capacity left on the card for new save files? is firmware the latest? if you sorted out all the above questions and its still dont save, only thing i can suggest is do a reformat and reload firmware. if thats still dont work then..err i dont know,,,sorry.., maybe the card is dead?
I have the same problem as sillyfish. I have a 16G Firecard purchased 2 weeks ago. I'm having problems loading a saved file. I can play any game and it will save the file properly. If I turn the DS off and turn it back on straight away the saved file will load OK. If i wait 5 Minutes or more, the saved file will not load and I will be prompted start a new game. The saved file is still in the directory. I have another new 16G card and two 8G cards (4 months old) and these work OK. I have tried new firmware, full formats and updated xmenu, but can't sort the problem. Will try and get the card replaced.
Does it happen with every game? or just a few games? . I had this problem only a couple of weeks ago(saved game vanishing). It only happened with 1 game i played "Etrian Odyssey II". 1st time i've had this problem myself. I sorted it by changing the save type from FLASH 4Mbit to FLASH 2Mbit. Try changing the save type before starting the game [hold 'select' press left or right on the D-pad] and see if it helps.
Hi, all games affected by the problem. The saved games don't vanish, they are still on the firecard. They aren't being loaded into the DS. Had my card replaced as supplier was aware of a problem. New card works OK. They wouldn't say what the problem was.
Hi! wonder if you've come accross my problem? have reformatted card, need to load xmenu but my computer won't recognise ds is connected. Could it be my systems vista? Have downloaded xmenu file. but till i can get computer to recognise ds,am stuck. Help appreciated.
Hi guy's, I just got the firecard and was wondering if there is a way to disable the autosave or how can I delete the saves ? My kids was using it on a few games and it seems to be automatically saving the games and taking up the last of the space on the firecard. Can auto save be disabled or what is the best way to delete the save and free up some space on the card. Cheers guys
Im copying this topic that I made from Gba temp.I have a very stuupid problem with my N-card an need ANYONE with any idea of wth is wrong; I figure this is a defect/bad dump of a game.But recently I downloaded two different ones.Mario in time or w/e,an Yoshi Island DS.After putting on Yoshi Island DS .It will just randomly shut off during gameplay during Only that said game.However just to make sure it wasn't a cart going bad,I checked a diff rom an left it on for quite some time..nothing happened.SO I figured it was just that game.But like I said,I went an got two.The other being Mario in time or w/e.Well I put that in an a hour in it turns off DS.. So in conclusion,is this a normal problem with the N-card/clones.Or is this some sort o defect from the game.I read about the save glitch,where you get several save files.An it messes it up,but thats not the problem.Any help appreciated.
