Is my Emerald on its last legs?

[Perfect Cell]

After about 3 weeks of not playing, I decided to boot up my Emerald cartridge, only to see this message.

I flinched and then instantly turned off my DS and tried to blow out the dust from the cartridge, if any. After turning it on again, it appeared my save file was back, fully intact. I had saved twice to be sure. However, now I'm starting to wonder if this was a "warning sign", in a sense. Sort of how the clock in GSC becomes reset before it cannot save anymore.

Is my Emerald eventually going to be corrupted? Was it possibly just bad dust? Is there anything I can do right now?

Thanks.

(thanks digby for resizing the image)

 

[Stellar]

I can offer no advice but I resized the image for you. Hopefully everything is still in working order!

 

[Scorpio]

It's probably just bad dust, at least in my opinion. Dust can screw with a GBA game pretty badly until you blow it out. I had the same problem with a few GBA games I bought online recently, and now whenever I buy a GBA game online first thing I do before popping it in is blow it out, just in case.

 

[Its_A_Random]

Blowing it to get rid of the dust is not necessarily the best thing though. It can work, but if you are not careful, you might end up getting vapour into the cartridge, which can damage it.

Personally, if something like that happens, I would recommend getting a new battery for the cartridge as a precaution—given ADV cartridges run batteries like the GB Cartridges—since batteries do go flat after a long period of disuse. Otherwise, there is not much else I can recommend.

 

[DHR-107]

I would move your mons onto a DS Cart as soon as you can :) Unless you are super desperate to keep them on Emerald :|

I know my Sapphire has no battery but it still loads the save game. Clock based events no longer occur, like the shoal cave tides and berry growing.

 

[Houndoomsday]

I would try cleaning it with a q-tip and rubbing alcohol if you are worried about the cartridge being dirty. My Emerald doesn't have any clock based events, but other than that runs fine!

 

[Perfect Cell]

I would try cleaning it with a q-tip and rubbing alcohol if you are worried about the cartridge being dirty. My Emerald doesn't have any clock based events, but other than that runs fine!

Wouldn't rubbing alcohol damage it? I can see using a q-tip alone working alone, but the alcohol seems like it would only cause more problems.

 

[Houndoomsday]

I've been using it to clean off both GBA cartridges and older ones (N64, NES for the most part) for around a year or so and had no problem, however I don't have a source so you could be completely right!