M3 DS freezing and not being recognised

Basically, I bought a new M3DSreal the other day, bought a new 2GB microSD to go with it, and it's been working fine.

But lately, in the middle of homebrew games it's been freezing randomly, which I'm connecting to the fact that it takes forever to be recognised in the first place. I'll place the cart in my Slot-1 (old-style DS), and when turned on, it just plain isn't recognised, and so isn't loading. I think that the reason why it's freezing is that the cart is losing it's connection, but does anyone have any ideas how to fix it?

It works on my brother's DS, which is really annoying because it's the same DS type! Any help seriously appreciated

are they both ds lites or phat boy's?

phats, why?

I'm guessing you've tried cleaning the contacts on both the cart and the DS with metho (methylated spirits) and a cotton bud (the things that people say you shouldn't clean your ears with, but everyone does; i don't know what they're called elsewhere) in the hope that it might let them make contact even if they only just touch.

Thats about all I can think of.

I'd not wanna try that incase I break it, any helps for doing something similar without using solvents? Thanks for the quick replies =3

It's done nothing but improve the connection on my old NES/Master System/SNES/MegaDrive/N64 carts.

compressed air? if you're unlucky the contacts might have dust/sand/be a little corroded. maybe you could just stick a cotton bud down the slot and wiggle it about a bit, but then you'd risk getting some cotton stuck down there.

is itonly homebrew that stuffs or with original games also?