"Not Enough Reserved Sector Space", or The PSP of Destiny: The Redemption 3

Hello. It's been a while since I've had a real project, but I'm kind of in-between a few right now. In the future I have the previously mentioned 2nd Protoman helmet, a few broken NES consoles, and a Halloween costume/party FX project which will be a fun one.

--How I Got's a PSP Fo' Free--

Ok, so similarly to the NDSLite, I knew a guy with a broken handheld who didn't want it but didn't want to just toss it either. This was my classmate from USI Kyle Acker who decided if I could fix his PSP I could just have it. He's a very kind gentleman for that so I must give him props to start off.

We met at a Starbuck's and he gave me the PSP with a nice case, cleaning cloth, AC adapter, original box and papers, and a red Pandora battery, which I'll get to. The PSP was in mostly unmarked condition and was missing the little thumbpad (which is on order already) and a regular battery.

So Kyle's/my PSP was/is a 1001. This means its the model people like to hack the shit out of. Kyle's friend and he and were attempting to put custom firmware on it and something happened, so his PSP would turn on and get to the 'Sony Computer Entertainment' logo and it would freeze there. Couldn't get recovery menu to pop up, nothing. Bricked.

To remedy this problem he went online and found the Pandora battery and magic memory stick fix. Basically it wipes and installs the file organization system on your memory stick and creates a boot file. You can download programs like PSP Grader that do this and throw on your custom or stock firmware right on your mem stick. You stick in the battery and hold 'L' and it installs the new firmware and wipes the old one out. This is what I did, and it worked perfectly fine. For him? Nope. Not sure exactly what may have gone wrong, but he ended up getting a newer PSP and this one sat in a box until now.

The Pandora Battery for a 1001 PSP and a Sony Mem Stick Pro Duo I bought and formatted.

If you found this page because you have the same issues making your magic mem stick, watch this video:
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRve4z5DMmc

Or if you just want to unbrick it with almost no work:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7sWU1bzdlA  (you basically buy the battery and the stick with all the software already on it and follow this guy's tutorial)

Now what was screwing me over; I needed to run MPSFormat, which can ONLY run on a 32bit WinXP machine. It did not work at all on my Win7 64 even with a variety of compatibility mode options. It fixed an issue I kept getting where it said 'failed to input IPL; Not Enough Reserved Sector Space'. Many, many people get this error. Something goes flippity floo when you format your stick and then you get this error forever until you run MPSFormat. I don't know why, no one ever explained it to me. All I know is it works.

I was so amazed I fixed it I texted this to Kyle in celebration.

Secondly, after watching the video on creating a Pandora magic mem stick, select the option 'Create Pandora Magic Memory Stick' or whatever it says in the program he is using (it has the word Pandora in it). He doesn't use this in the video and its crucial for it to work properly with the Pandora battery. After fixing those issues (which took me the better part of five hours of research and fiddling to figure out overall including finding the videos) I have a hardly used PSP.


--Aftermath--

My lovely girlfriend hooked me up with a discounted battery and a copy of Metal Gear Solid: PeaceWalker, and now I'm golden and giggling with happiness because I finally get to play this damn game.

Random pics or it never happened:

Very shiny. Only a single minor scratch on the right side that you can't even see here.

Disk tray works fine.

The 8th MGS game I own (if you count Metal Gear on NES). Also, it has the box and all that, just didn't photo it.

Anyway, this was just a quick little story I thought I'd tell about how I got my PSP. If you skimmed, good for you. If you happened upon this after seeing the dreaded Not Enough Reserved Sector Space error, you're welcome. I had to search many a forum to figure out what I was screwing up. As always, any questions from any random people out there will be answered if you use English that is English.