Nintendo regularly updates the Switch’s firmware. When they do, new cryptographic keys are introduced. If your prod.keys file is from firmware 10.0.0, but you are trying to open a game that requires firmware 16.0.0 keys, hactool may either fail silently or throw the "does not exist" error (because it looks for a specific key inside the file and cannot find it).
Fix: Re-run Lockpick_RCM on your Switch after updating your console’s firmware to the latest version. Then replace your old prod.keys with the freshly dumped one.
Once you've stopped the error, you should verify the file is valid. Run this command: hactool prodkeys does not exist top
hactool --keyset=./prod.keys --keys
If your keys are valid, hactool will print a long list of keys (header_key, area_key, titlekek, etc.) to the terminal. If you see "Failed to locate key," your file is corrupt or from an old firmware.
After weeks of diligent work, a breakthrough was finally achieved. A developer discovered a previously undocumented feature in a newer version of Hactool that allowed for the extraction of prodkeys under specific conditions. This feature had been overlooked in the initial documentation and community guides. Nintendo regularly updates the Switch’s firmware
The discovery led to the creation of a step-by-step guide on how to correctly generate prodkeys using Hactool. The guide outlined the need for:
This is where most users get stuck. Hactool is a command-line program. By default, it looks for the keys file in the same directory you are currently running the command from, not necessarily where the hactool executable is located. Once you've stopped the error, you should verify
Here is how to fix the pathing issues:
C:\hactool\
├── hactool.exe
└── prod.keys
As the investigation continued, the community rallied around the issue, sharing their experiences and potential solutions. Some users reported success in generating prodkeys using alternative tools or by modifying Hactool's source code to better support their specific console versions.
However, these solutions were not universally applicable, and the search for a comprehensive fix continued. The developers leading the investigation began to collaborate with other experts in cryptography and Nintendo Switch homebrew development.