Tutorial: Installing Qwikrazor’s Firmware 3.52 Custom Bubbles without an exploitable PSP game!
While the last article was specific to the firmware 3.5x exploit games, this following one will be independent of your base game being exploitable or not.
To successfully use Qwikrazor’s easier Custom Bubbles we need a random PSP game as a base game & around 10-15 minutes of reading/watching comprehension.
Qwikrazor’s Custom Bubbles for Firmwares 3.5x
Qwikrazor has decided to release his own Custom Bubbles for the PS Vita firmwares 3.5x, which may be easier to install than the ones of Major_Tom & Mr.gas.
While Qwikrazor’s Bubbles have less possibilites in terms of customisation, they do have the advantage of simplicity. Qwikrazor’s Bubbles are very easy to install.
Before I start with the tutorial, let me tell you that your PS Vita must not run Firmware 3.55 (or above) to follow this. If it already runs 3.55+ then you can’t follow this!
Requirements & Restrictions
At first you have to know what you need to successfully follow this tutorial, right? right!
We need a Playstation Vita (Fat/Slim/TV) that is running a firmware between 3.00 and 3.52. If you are on a lower firmware (such as 3.18, 3.36 or even 3.50) then there is no need to update to 3.52.
I would even say that updating from a lower Firmware to 3.52 is a bad idea. Keep in mind that you need to run at least system software 3.00, though.
We also need to have an Email account, the QCMA PC programm, a random PSP game as a base game, WinRAR/WinZIP/7-Zip and preferable the Thunderbird PC programm.
Before you can follow this tutorial, be sure that you have properly set up your Email application to enable you to write to the system partition.
If you didn’t do that yet, check out parts of this Article on how to do it. You only need to successfully set up the writer.eml for your Email account. No “dumping” required.
I assume that your Email application is properly set up, that you’ve have properly installed QCMA, Thunderbird, a ZIP opening programm and everything else you might had to install, so let me continue.
Always have a backup handy!
Before we start with the real deal, I would like you guys to connect your PS Vita to your PC and create a backup of your random base game. Just copy your base PSP game from your PS Vita to your PC and that’s pretty much it.
On the PC you should check the directory of your PS Vita related files (for me it would be Documents/PS Vita/PGAME/Letters&Digits/), in which you will find your game backup. In my example I am going to use UNO™ PSP (EU), which has a TitleID of NPEG00020.
It is important that you know your base game’s TitleID, since we are going to need it at a later time in this tutorial.
One Email and we’re done
As the header already tells you, we only have to send ourselves one Email and we are pretty much done with the whole PC part. But what should this email contain?
At first we should download one of Qwikrazor’s ARK-2 Files (For firmware 3.50 – for firmwares 3.51/3.52). It does not matter which one we choose (it still has to fit the firmware, though). We could, for example, just use the Puzzle Scape files.
In this ZIP file we have a readme.txt and 2 folders. The first folder, ARK_01234, has to be copied to our other PS Vita savedata files (mine are located in Documents/PS Vita/PSAVEDATA/Letters&Digits/). The second folder contains a PBOOT.PBP file, which is the file we want to extract.
Now we should have this lone PBOOT.PBP file on our Computer and the ARK_01234 folder next to our other savedata files. Click on the QCMA icon in your tray (bottom right of your windows statusbar) and refresh the QCMA database.
Next we have to open Thunderbird. We open a new compose sheet and send ourselves an email. This email should contain no message at all, it should have the subject ux0:pspemu/PSP/GAME/*YourTitleID*/PBOOT.PBP (in my example it would be: ux0:pspemu/PSP/GAME/NPEG00020/PBOOT.PBP) & the email needs an attachment.
We choose our PBOOT.PBP as an attachment for the email and then, after the PBOOT.PBP file has been attached, we right-click the email’s attachment & rename the attachment from PBOOT.PBP to #0.
Everything done right? Subject is ux0:pspemu/PSP/GAME/*YourTitleID*/PBOOT.PBP and the attachment, our PBOOT.PBP file, is now called #0? Great!
Now send the email. – Some email providers will flag the just sent email as “suspected spam”, because it contains GAME in its subject.
This “suspected spam” detection might change the subject from ux0:pspemu/PSP/GAME/*YourTitleID*/PBOOT.PBP to *spam* ux0:pspemu/PSP/GAME/*YourTitleID*/PBOOT.PBP, which prevents us from installing the Custom Bubble!
Temporarily disable your email providers’ spam detected to get an email that has the proper subject: ux0:pspemu/PSP/GAME/*YourTitleID*/PBOOT.PBP.
Final steps – The Custom Bubble
If we have done everything right, we should now only have to use our PS Vita to get our own ARK-2 Custom Bubble.
Open the PS Vita’s Email application and search for your just sent email. Remember, as I said at the beginning, this only works if you have used the writer.eml trick before!
This said email should have an attachment called #0. This #0 attachment should have a photo icon, not a ?-icon! If it is not a photo icon then you’ve done something wrong.
If we click on this photo icon we should get an “Cannot display this image” error message. Any other error message is not what we want to happen.
It is important to say that if you get an error message you must not click on the OK button. Just use the PS-Button & close the email application after you got the desired error message.
Now disable your PS Vita’s Wifi & enable its Airplane mode. The next thing to do is to reboot the PS Vita.
After the PS Vita has turned off and on; we continue with the last step: Copying some files via the Content Manager.
Simply open the Content Manager and select “PS Vita -> Computer”, since we want to copy something from our Vita to our PC.
Now select PSP/other (Applications, at the top – Not savedata at the bottom!) and copy your base game from your PS Vita to your Computer. In my example I would copy my UNO game from my PS Vita to my PC.
If this was done successfully proceed with simply closing the Content Manager Application.
Now we re-open the Content Manager App and copy some files from our PC to our PS Vita. At first we go to our PSP savedata files and copy the ARK_01234 folder (called ARK or ARK-2) from our PC to our PS Vita.
Now we go back and select PSP/other (Applications, at the top) once again. We search for our base game (In my case the UNO game) and copy our base game from our PC to our PS Vita. We want to do this twice!
After we have copied the ARK savedata & dealt with the base game stuff we should now see an ARK-2 eCFW Custom Bubble on our PS Vita homescreen. On the position your base game was should now be the ARK-2 Bubble, assuming you’ve successfully followed this tutorial.
The man behind these Custom Bubbles
While the article from a few days ago was talking about Major_Tom’s & Mr.gas’ Custom Bubbles, todays 2 articles are talking about Qwikrazor’s Custom Bubbles.
Depending on your game – it being an exploit game or not – You may or may not have to use the EML writer trick of Major_Tom & Mr.gas to get a successful Qwikrazor Custom Bubble. I would like to thank Major_Tom & Mr.gas for their EML trick once again.
Nonetheless this articles Custom Bubble is Qwikrazor’s own creation and he decided to release it for you guys, as promised some weeks ago. This ARK-2 Custom Bubble will even work on firmware 3.55, but only if you have created a successful ARK-2 Custom Bubble prior to updating to firmware 3.55. It is still not recommended to install any of the 3.5x firmwares, though.
In the end I would like to thank Qwikrazor for his awesome Custom Bubble trick. Not only because it is so simple, but also because his ones are the easiest Custom Bubbles so far.
If you, like I do, want to show your appreciation to Qwikrazor, why not treat him to some cold drink, or even a hot meal? Just donate him a few bucks via Paypal, he really deserves it.














September, 4th. Daylight, still trying to make a custom bubble for TN-V or anything else out of Patapon 2 on FW 3.18. Help? Thx.
Does Ark-2 runs POPS as good as TN-X?
metal slug 2 and final fantasy tactics don’t work either.
***!!! I know what “c1-2858-3 “means ,it means the ARK-2 itself crash!!!You should wait for them to fix or let’s turn to ARK
ARK-2 crash on the Fireware 3.52,It because the menu loader(default menu).
So I finally use the manual ARK install and use the *138 menu*(important!!! ) .Just copy and paste all files in the /menu/138Menu to 351_352/ARK_01234 folder and all ok!!!
Look at these tutorial .it’s not hard because you just need to drag 3 times and use “BubbleEditor” instead of SQLite editor!!! So easy to use and you can even custom name & icon path so that you can try as you like to find the best icon for ARK.
http://wololo.net/2015/09/30/ps-vita-hack-qwikrazor-releases-ark-for-firmware-3-52/
http://hackinformer.com/PlayStationGuide/PSV/tutorials/how_to_install_custom_rebirth_homebrew_bubbles.html
BubbleEditor:
http://hackinformer.com/2015/09/30/psvita-new-easy-to-use-offline-bubble-editor-for-rebirth-bubbles/
My PSV is JP version and firmware is 3.52, my PSN account is in HongKong,and my game is:
龍虎之拳-製品版(NPHH00221) — just HK$23.00(US$3.59),all the Asia user can try.
PSN link : https://store.playstation.com/#!/zh-hant-hk/遊戲/龍虎之拳-製品版/cid=HP0576-NPHH00221_00-NEOGEOSTATION004
The savedata are wrong,, not for 3.52. use other savedata. Ark installed and working. Now how it works? :S
Can someone confirm if this works on Vita TV? Also, this is an actual CFW right?
ATTENTION! TO ALL THE PEOPLE GETTING THE MESSAGE:
Loading
Exploit failed
The exploit actually works and I’m running it right now with Ape Quest. The problem is, in the tutorial the save files used are only for the 3.50 firmware I believe, THEY DONT WORK WITH 3.52!!! All you need for the exploit to work is follow the guide and when it asks you to download one of the save files, intead of following the link in the guide, get these ones here:
https://googledrive.com/host/0BwYVUA7ansC5ZXNfeW5tMFFudUU/FW352_PHP_US_ARK_installer.zip
https://googledrive.com/host/0BwYVUA7ansC5ZXNfeW5tMFFudUU/FW352_PuzzleScape_EU_ARK_installer.zip
https://googledrive.com/host/0BwYVUA7ansC5ZXNfeW5tMFFudUU/FW352_Rockman_JP_ARK_installer.zip
https://googledrive.com/host/0BwYVUA7ansC5ZXNfeW5tMFFudUU/FW352_WOP_EU_ARK_installer.zip
I used the link for the PHP(Pool Hall Pro) save file and followed the guide normally and got it to work. I also believe you need to get the save file for your region, in my case I used PHP because my vita is in US region, so you might want to get an EU save file if youre in that region.
Thanks The Zett, Qwikrazor, Major Tom and Mr.Gas, and everyone involved in this. Thank you very much.
Can someone confirm this works on Vita TV?
I didn’t mean to double post.. My original comment wasn’t showing when I came back. -_-
exploit failed like everyone else. what are we doing wrong?
I Originally got the error ‘Exploit Failed’ when using the link in this tutorial on firmware 3.51. But I then used QwikRazor’s files for 3.51 & 3.52 instead http://pastebin.com/JRk8jA1M which worked with no problem second time around.
Download (for FW 3.51/3.52): http://pastebin.com/JRk8jA1M
this will fix the prob…
Try with skate park city and it works!!!!!!!!!!
The exploit failed was fixed when I used the files for firmware 3.52 instead of the files for firmware 3.50 : http://pastebin.com/JRk8jA1M
If you got firmware 3.52 and get the Exploit failed error use these files from qwikrazor87:
http://pastebin.com/JRk8jA1M
I GOT IT WORKING!!!!!!!!!!!!! 2 days, 15 hours, 2 guides.
This guide has bad ARK_1234
I tool ARK_1234 from here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnF5N1CPLd0&feature=youtu.be
put there eboot.bpb in ARK signed following that yutube guide, after following all TheZ guide i got exploit failed, went into manaager, deleted ARK2 save from vita and copined ARK2 from that youtube guide with signed with my game EBOOT.PBP
thank you it worked
yes i did follow the instruction in the video and also after a lot of hours trying to make this work, it workerd like a charm
To all those getting the Exploit Failed error, this is due to a corruption in the ARK_01234 folder that this tutorial links to. You can fix it simply by downloading the proper one from
http://www.mediafire.com/download/bpwvjc2bchlandm/release_ark_352.zip
And then transferring this save to your vita. No need to switch games etc, the ARK bubble will now load it completely fine. You’ll also have to install 138Menu if you wish, but that’s just simply copying the 138Menu files into this new save folder.
After I run it once, part of the data disappears and next time it’s getting stuck on starting and requires to be redownloadead. How can I go about this?
I see and am able to launch the ark-2 bubble but when I load it it says exploit falied. Please help Im on a 3.52 Playstation TV.
And as usual, my comments don’t get approved -_- making me waste time rewritting my questions… Darn it. Does Ark-2 works as good as TN-X? (yeah, I’m meaning only the PSONE vector here).
Hey everyone, I figured out what’s the problem. These links are for the 3.50 and lower firmwares, we from 3.52 need to download the files of the 3.52 ARK or we’ll keep getting that error. The link it’s in this post also made by The Z: http://wololo.net/2015/10/04/release-qwikrazor-releases-custom-bubble-installer-for-firmware-3-5x-exploit-games/ . I’d like to thank The Z for the awesome guide with lots of images and a video 🙂 *Please don’t ask me anything if you still get the error as I know as much as you do probably xD
Worked for me with Persona 1 as a base game, if that helps anyone
I had no sound on motorstorm artic edge helpme 🙁
But here you lose your base game, the previous was better
just download it again and use it with ark xDD *I used Monster Hunter Freedom Unite from PLUS lol
hmmmm…..just wondering
” Simply open the Content Manager and select “PS Vita -> Computer”, since we want to copy something from our Vita to our PC. ”
“since we want to copy SOMETHING from our vita to our pc”
just curious, what is this something? 😀
ur base game 😀
this will fix grey screen flash followed by exploit failed
http://www.mediafire.com/download/bpwvjc2bchlandm/release_ark_352.zip
just copy those back to ur vita again and WOOHOO!
So, I got this since the other Custom Bubble didn’t seem to work. With only Monster Hunter at my disposal, I managed to get the exploit down. Now, if you do get an error, you messed up, hard. Back track to the beginning, and start from there, and follow the instructions really well. Once you are done, you should be fine for later things such as Menu 138. Since getting Menu 138 up and running, I decided to run my failed bubble thru it using the EBOOT file. To my surprise, it freaking worked, managed to get past the point where it crashed. So with that being said, I don’t mind having so much to go thru to get to my game (Metal Gear Solid Freedom Peace Walker). If The Z wouldn’t mind showing many of us how haven’t done much of the other stuff like loading emulators and running ISO’s for PSP. it would be great and beneficial. And when you do get it right, Remember to make a back up of the ARK folder you put into you PsVita, saves alot of trouble is something goes down.
Here’s a game try valhalla knights back when exseed had it for free I had download it just in case & it works for me just did it
Sweeet, got it to work with Uno EU. Awsome guide, 10 times easier than the previous ones. Thanks!
This will fix D problemo 😀 …list of ARK for 3.5x was problem
Download (for FW 3.50): http://pastebin.com/7RYdKdc6
Download (for FW 3.51/3.52): http://pastebin.com/JRk8jA1M
i use minis as base game ( The Epic Game or Imposible Game) …
got 138 menu … put some PSP iso … and had no problem … gl
i got hte result same like u have in ur 3.36 in that video , can help ? im on 3.52 and use Fw3.52 puzle scape with base game pool hall pro US . HELP me please , really want to jailbreak my vita 😀
i got hte result same like u have in ur 3.36 in that video , can help ? im on 3.52 and use Fw3.52 puzle scape with base game pool hall pro US . HELP me please , really want to jailbreak my vita 😀 help help 😀
i done it with WORLD OF POOL. Thanks..
is it possible to do this with ape escape quest starter pack on 3.36 with this files for 3.5x thanks in advance Z
i forgat to say to i menage to do this with gas & tom method.tnx
So i managed to get everything done but when I launch ARK-2 from the bubble it just says “Loading
Exploit failed”
and if I press the home button and go back into it I get the error C1-2858-3
Thanks to TheZett and others who made this possible. I’m now successfully able to launch ARK again being my basegame NUMBLAST which i had downloaded back in 3.36 and ruined it by hitting restore. Activating other game contents required me to force update to 3.52(at that time)
Never mind I did it the long other way and it works fine 😀
less possibilites in terms of customisation Was said above. How do the differ and what functions do they carry?
I have a PS VITA running 3.52 but I don’t have a PSP base game and also a PS3 System. is there anything I can do to make this tutorial works on my PS VITA? thank you people.
we are on the same boat lad we are on the same boat T.T my fm is 3.51
i just bought my secondhand vita, im on 3.51FW and i can get to psn store because i don’t want to update my Firmware, and i don’t know the password of my vita account(yes, it’s secondhand vita)…
help??
Anyone know if its possible to upgrade a Vita memory card without updating the firmware?
Any possibilities for a TN-V eCFW? Also hopefully with the access of writer.eml, looking forward to VITA based homebrews 🙂