ESP32-S3 continuous reboot after flashing larger firmware

Question

I’m facing a persistent reboot issue on one of my ESP32-S3 boards after flashing a larger firmware binary. Here’s a breakdown of the problem:

🔧 What’s Happening

After flashing my project (which worked earlier), the board continuously reboots with:

Guru Meditation Error: Core 1 panic'ed (LoadProhibited)

Backtrace points to invalid memory access—likely due to bad pointer or heap exhaustion.

✅ What I’ve Tried

Flashed Blink Sketch: Works perfectly—board hardware appears okay for small binaries.

Same Firmware on Another Board: No issues. Confirms code is not at fault.

Erased Flash via esptool.py:

esptool.py --chip esp32 --port /dev/ttyUSB0 erase_flash

Manually Reset NVS Using Code:

#include <nvs_flash.h>
void setup() {
 nvs_flash_erase();
 nvs_flash_init();
}

Used Espressif’s Flash Download Tool: Flashed bootloader.bin (0x0000), partitions.bin (0x8000), and firmware.bin (0x10000)

No luck—the board still reboots. Tested Multiple USB Cables and Ports: Stable power supply confirmed.

❗ The Catch

Once I flash the buggy firmware, even reverting to previous working builds won’t fix the reboot—unless it’s a trivial sketch like Blink. It's like something persists and interferes with booting.

🔍 What I Suspect

• Flash memory corruption or unreadable NVS
• Damaged or write-protected flash sector
• Misaligned partition table after bad flash
• Board-specific hardware failure (but no visible damage)

Any advice on:

1. Checking flash chip health or ID
2. Forcing a full flash overwrite (including factory partition?)
3. Recovering from possible bootloader or NVS corruption
4. Verifying NVS and partition health via command-line tools or logs

I’m happy to share boot logs, backtrace, or decoded .elf addresses if it helps debug this further.

• 6v6gt: Maybe look at the Tools > Partition Scheme menu which controls the allocation of the flash memory. You may not be allocating enough to the application and could possibly drop say allocation to a file system or to OTA (over the air uploads). How much flash memory has your ESP32 board ?