I've been playing stuff on it quite a bit and then things took a turn for the strange. Games would hang up and later, the M3 would stop booting altogether. It's under warranty, thankfully, but I just want to make sure I did everything correctly,, so please bear with me: 1. I formatted my microSD to FAT32 like it says in the guide. 2. Made an NDS and GBA folders in the card. 3. Went to this place and got the latest system files. 4. Extracted the said files to the microSD. 5. Drag'n'dropped some random NDS backups into the NDS folder, similarly with GBA backups, only in the GBA folder. 6. Put the microSD in to the M3 Real and both of those into my NDS Lite. 7. Boot up. Is this how it should be done or am I missing something?
It sounds like you're doing everything correctly. What brand of micro SD card are you using? I'm currently using SanDisk, but I've also used Kingston without any problems. I haven't tried other brands, but I've read about other people having similar problems when they use certain brands of micro SD cards.
Funny you should ask. I have two: Sandisk and Kingston, both 2 GB. This pretty much warrants a return, I gather?
My only other suggestion is to try and find someone that has a working M3 that you can test your micro SD card in. If your card worked in his/her M3, then you would verify that your card is good and that you have the correct files copied onto it. I'm sure others would recommend formatting the card and starting over from scratch (it wouldn't hurt), but it doesn't sound like that's the problem in this case.
Thanks for your help, silk42. I tried formatting twice (once in FAT and once in FAT32) on each of the cards, but no dice. I'm sending it back and hoping for the best.