Hardware Black screen brick - Bootmii installed as boot2

[Dreawyn]

I recently got back into trying recover a wii I bircked some years ago, and basically did not get too far. Here is what I have tried:
Loading the console with no SD card installed will fash the blue activity light, however it will not show anything on the screen at all. Just a black screen.
Scouring through the internet and finding the files for bootmii, I managed to insert that into the WII and load bootmii that way, so far so good.
Trying to load into homebrew channel will simply cause a black screen again. I am almost certain I do not have a NAND backup of this WII anywhere (still searching).
Is there any way to recover the WII into working condition without a NAND backup or is this a level of brick where it is better to just sell this out as parts and give up hope?
BootMii V1.2
Stub v1.4
Mini v0.3
Sysmenu 4.3E Boot1B Boot2v4

 

[tech3475]

Do you know what caused the brick in the first place? What happens if you try to dump the nand now?

 

[Dreawyn]

Do you know what caused the brick in the first place? What happens if you try to dump the nand now?

Honestly its been nearly ten years by now, so I cannot recall what happened in the first place.

Dumping the nand will go through with a couple of bad sectors and two ECC errors corrected.

 

[XFlak]

First thing, make a nand backup.

Then try running the hackmii installer's bootmini.elf from bootmii's sd menu. With some luck it will allow u to install the hbc, and launch it

From there u can run syscheck (https://gbatemp.net/threads/posting-a-system-check.300279/) , then drag and drop your syscheck.csv onto modmii.exe and it will tell you what to do. This will solve all issues unless it's a bannerbrick or theme brick. If a theme brick, reinstall the stock system menu theme using mymenuifymod (or just do this regardless if the problem is not resolved) - if a new system menu is installed as part of the syscheck guide then ignore this, as you would already reverted to the default theme. If a banner/channel brick, you can CAREFULLY remove it using any title deleter (worst case scenario if u uninstall the wrong thing you're back where u started since u got bootmii boot2, just don't mess with your boot2, I don't recall if ATD offers to delete boot2, it would be pretty dumb if it did).

If all else fails, u can create a new working/virgin nand based on your nand backup using ohneschwanzenegger and restore it using bootmii. This method would wipe the slate clean and you'd lose mii's and saves.

Edit: please share your progress and syscheck as you proceed, and good luck. But have no fear, this can 100% be recovered so long as you don't rush and are patient

 

[Dreawyn]

First thing, make a nand backup.

Then try running the hackmii installer's bootmini.elf from bootmii's sd menu. With some luck it will allow u to install the hbc, and launch it

From there u can run syscheck (https://gbatemp.net/threads/posting-a-system-check.300279/) , then drag and drop your syscheck.csv onto modmii.exe and it will tell you what to do. This will solve all issues unless it's a bannerbrick or theme brick. If a theme brick, reinstall the stock system menu theme using mymenuifymod (or just do this regardless if the problem is not resolved) - if a new system menu is installed as part of the syscheck guide then ignore this, as you would already reverted to the default theme. If a banner/channel brick, you can CAREFULLY remove it using any title deleter (worst case scenario if u uninstall the wrong thing you're back where u started since u got bootmii boot2, just don't mess with your boot2, I don't recall if ATD offers to delete boot2, it would be pretty dumb if it did).

If all else fails, u can create a new working/virgin nand based on your nand backup using ohneschwanzenegger and restore it using bootmii. This method would wipe the slate clean and you'd lose mii's and saves.

Edit: please share your progress and syscheck as you proceed, and good luck. But have no fear, this can 100% be recovered so long as you don't rush and are patient

Awesome. Managed to get bootmini.elf running from the bootmii's own menu, will proceed as suggested. Thank you!

 

[Dreawyn]

First thing, make a nand backup.

Then try running the hackmii installer's bootmini.elf from bootmii's sd menu. With some luck it will allow u to install the hbc, and launch it

From there u can run syscheck (https://gbatemp.net/threads/posting-a-system-check.300279/) , then drag and drop your syscheck.csv onto modmii.exe and it will tell you what to do. This will solve all issues unless it's a bannerbrick or theme brick. If a theme brick, reinstall the stock system menu theme using mymenuifymod (or just do this regardless if the problem is not resolved) - if a new system menu is installed as part of the syscheck guide then ignore this, as you would already reverted to the default theme. If a banner/channel brick, you can CAREFULLY remove it using any title deleter (worst case scenario if u uninstall the wrong thing you're back where u started since u got bootmii boot2, just don't mess with your boot2, I don't recall if ATD offers to delete boot2, it would be pretty dumb if it did).

If all else fails, u can create a new working/virgin nand based on your nand backup using ohneschwanzenegger and restore it using bootmii. This method would wipe the slate clean and you'd lose mii's and saves.

Edit: please share your progress and syscheck as you proceed, and good luck. But have no fear, this can 100% be recovered so long as you don't rush and are patient

Late reply as I have been quite busy and then I had to wait to get myself a working wii controller, anyway:

Turns out I have a slight problem with getting this far into it, I presume a gamecube controller is needed as I currently do not own a synced controller and borrowing one from a friend has resulted in failed attempts to do so. I presume this is due to the fact that the bluetooth module is not yet initiated by this point?

 

[XFlak]

either that or you go with the nuclear ohneschwanzenegger option, no gamecube controller required (unless you don't have bootmii boot2, then u will need a GC controller for this too)

 

[Dreawyn]

either that or you go with the nuclear ohneschwanzenegger option, no gamecube controller required (unless you don't have bootmii boot2, then u will need a GC controller for this too)

I do have bootmii as boot2, so I suppose going with the ohneschwanzenegger would be an option. How do you recommend proceeding with this? I looked into it and I have already created a suitable NAND backup in several locations.

 

[XFlak]

Download it from here and read the read me.

Note I've fixed the instructions in this readme, if you download from somewhere else the directions will very likely be outdated and\or unclear

https://github.com/modmii/modmii.github.io/blob/master/temp/ohneschwanzenegger.zip?raw=true

 

[Dreawyn]

Download it from here and read the read me.

Note I've fixed the instructions in this readme, if you download from somewhere else the directions will very likely be outdated and\or unclear

https://github.com/modmii/modmii.github.io/blob/master/temp/ohneschwanzenegger.zip?raw=true

Will do so now and report back with how things going, will take my time and won't rush it.
Thanks for all your help.

Post automatically merged: Mar 9, 2023

Download it from here and read the read me.

Note I've fixed the instructions in this readme, if you download from somewhere else the directions will very likely be outdated and\or unclear

https://github.com/modmii/modmii.github.io/blob/master/temp/ohneschwanzenegger.zip?raw=true

Alright, so I ran the program and created a new nand with the 4.3E version whilst using my old nand as a base, went to bootmii - verified it and thereafter installed the newly made nand which was successful. I thereafter rebooted and the same issue of still getting a complete black screen with no image or any error code to mention came up.


Could this be a hardware level issue at this point, or is there another possible solution in terms of creating a nand/recovering from the brick? - I did read that it is possible to just use the keys.bin and enter the rest of the information regarding bad blocks manually as well, but not sure if that helps the current case.

 

[XFlak]

You could try cloning a different Wii's nand to this one, just open either the donor or recipient Wii's nand.bin using ModMii 7.0.0. But if ohneschwanzenegger isn't working chances are good this won't work either, I'm not sure.

The other option is to set up neek and an Emunand, then you can just boot the system menu from a USB or SD at startup instead of bootmii or real nand. ModMii's sneek features can assist with this. This is not ideal, but would probably still allow you to still get some use out of this unit