If you’re interested in using the PSP XMB on your PS Vita, even on firmwares 3.50 to 3.52, then you are going to love the following tutorial.

To successfully install the TN-V11 Custom Bubble we need a random PSP game as a base game & around 10-15 minutes of reading comprehension.

Qwikrazor’s Custom Bubbles for Firmwares 3.5x

Qwikrazor has decided to release a TN-V11 Custom Bubble 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 Qwikrazor’s TN-V11 Files (for firmwares 3.5x).

Just click the download button at the top and it should download a ZIP-file which contains a TNV_0000 folder. This folder has to be copied to our other PS Vita savedata files (mine are located in Documents/PS Vita/PSAVEDATA/Letters&Digits/). It also 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 TNV_00000 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 TN-V 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 TNV_00000 folder (blank name & icon) 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 TN-V savedata & dealt with the base game stuff we should now see a TN-V eCFW Custom Bubble on our PS Vita homescreen. On the position your base game was should now be the TN-V Bubble, assuming you’ve successfully followed this tutorial.

Using TN-V for the first time

If this is your first time using the TN-V eCFW on your PS Vita, then you have to keep in mind that you have to an initial setup, before you can enjoy the XMB on your PS Vita. You only have to do this initial setup once.

For this initial setup you have to copy the 660.PBP (choose the 6.60 for the non-PSPgo devices) file into the TNV_00000 savedata folder, and transfer this (now updated) TNV_00000 folder to your PS Vita. The name of the downloaded EBOOT.PBP file has to be changed from EBOOT.PBP into 660.PBP.

Before & while you are starting the TN-V Custom Bubble, you have to keep the R trigger pressed. If done right a Recovery Menu should appear.

In said Recovery Menu you have to select Advanced, which will open a new sub-menu. This new sub-menu should contain an Install 6.60 Files function.

Select the Install 6.60 Files function and the device should install a few files onto your Memory stick. After this has reached 100%, you have to exit the Recovery Menu.

The PSP’s main menu – the PSP XMB – should now run on your PS Vita. The next time you run TN-V you won’t have to re-do this initial setup.