3ds xl powers on but won't boot

3ds xl powers on but won't boot

Its 2 in the morning and I have been trying to repair a 3ds xl for hours. I am at my wits end here, so bear with me. I bought a broken 3ds xl off ebay thinking I could repair it. I do Ds lites all the time, and stupid me thought I could handle the complexities of a 3ds xl. First mistake. Second mistake was that i bought more than one. 3 (already broken) motherboards, 3 top screens, 1 stripped screw and various other swapping of parts later, I still don't have a fully functional 3ds xl. Here's my problem. When put completely together (minus a few screws for the sake of time), The 3ds powers on, the screens turn on (as in the backlight turns on) but the screens remain black. Things I've tried: Reseating all of the ribbon cables. Checking the wifi module to see if it's connected. Swapping the wifi module. Swapping the battery. Holding the power button down for 10 seconds while holding the wifi button simultaneously. I am already looking into buying a (functional) 3ds xl, so before you give me the Very Helpful (insert sarcasm here) suggestion of buying a new one (or a "New" 3ds xl), Please do me a favor and Don't.

Asked by: Guest | Views: 278

Total answers/comments: 3

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bert [Entry]

"So a bit of backstory into my answer. I've bought 5 busted Nintendo 3DS XLs with various problems. Three of the systems booted up fine while two were affected by the BSoD (black screen of death). The typical look of the BSoD is the blue power light, no amber wifi light and both screens staying black. Basically it appears that the system is hanging on boot up.

While attempting to repair a special edition Year of Luigi 3DS XL, I noticed that the touch screen was acting funny and decided to replace it with one of the assemblies from 1 of 2 BSoD XLs. I pulled the full assembly (touch screen & lower LCD) out of the Luigi console and swapped it with the assembly from the red BSoD XL. When I put the Luigi XL back together, I started it up and it began to hang at startup, acting like a typical BSoD. Thinking that was odd, I put together the red BSoD XL back together with the assembly from Luigi XL. The red BSoD XL then booted up normally and I was able to use the system just fine. So by accident, I stumbled onto the answer of the BSoD issue (or at least 1 of several).

To confirm this, I took the other black BSoD XL (the 2nd one) and swapped that lower assembly with a working one. Just as I expected, swapping the lower assembly fixed the black BSoD XL and that booted up perfectly fine.

TL;DR

If you're suffering from the BSoD problems, check the following:

WiFi card is seated correctly (most times this is the main cause)Check all of your ribbons/connections so that they're seated correctlyFinally, if none of the above have worked then you're going to replace your lower LCD to fix this problem. Follow this guide to get your system back up and running: Nintendo 3DS XL Touchscreen Replacement I would suggest not detaching the ribbons from the upper section though, skipping that part will save you a big headache on reassembly. Just be gentle, take your time and be patient. You don't want to cause more damage to your system.

The cause of the lower LCD becoming faulty is not clear but some reasons come to mind:

The LCD has overheated and caused a short in the ribbonA fall & impact has caused:A tear in the ribbon that is not visible without dismantling the assemblyUnnoticeable damage to the LCD somewhere in the displayThe backlight is damaged"

bert [Entry]

I have also ran into this problem I figured out that if you try and play older games and it asks you if you are sure you want to close than it occurs and found out if you let it sit then over time than the system will die after that plug it in and you will hopefully have fixed the brutal black screen of death. If not don’t buy another!

bert [Entry]

Same issue here. Please help