Hacking bricking issues in official updates to 4.3 from <4.3 system menu

[nunavat2010]

I hear this is possible. I am a newbie. Could somebody explain why and how this is possible? Does it happen only if you have installed HomeBrew channel? (otherwise of course thats nint fault?)

 

[shortz1994]

yes if you go though the wii or from disk, you could brick,(more if you have priiloader active, an don't have block updates turned on) let alone if it doesn't brick, it will remove every thing.(unless your homebrew channel is updated). but even then if homebrew stays, all the cios will be stubbed, an you'll have to start over.

 

[techboy]

Technically, any system update, regardless of current or target version, that changes the SM, SM's IOS, or Boot2 has a risk of bricking. Those three titles are essential for a wii to boot, and deleting, corrupting, or otherwise rendering them non-functional will prevent the wii from booting (black screen).

The bricking during official updates that was widely reported a while back was users upgrading from pre-4.2 to 4.2 or 4.3. It was caused by the boot2v4 update in 4.2 failing, due to Nintendo's boot2 update code being poorly written. A wii bricked in this manner can be unbricked with an infectus. This threat does not exist on wiis that already have boot2v4, and can be eliminated on older systems by using Dop-Mii to update boot2 to v4 (it uses Hackmii's boot2 code to install boot2v4).

Official updates to 4.2/4.3 will also brick Korean wiis that have been region changed with error 003. This is fixable with various methods, generally involving a modchip and modified game DVD.

Another cause of update bricks is a user who unplugs a wii during an update. This results in partially installed titles that don't work. Bricks from this come in all forms, with actual failure mode depending upon what was being installed when it was aborted. Fixes vary.

Installation of homebrew or cIOSes won't cause bricking if you perform an official update. The 4.2 and 4.3 updates do stub the cIOSes though, and will delete older versions of HBC. You'll need to reinstall them after the update.

There are other rare ways an official update can brick a wii as well. An official update gave me a banner brick once...

 

[tueidj]

This threat does not exist on wiis that already have boot2v4, and can be eliminated on older systems by using Dop-Mii to update boot2 to v4 (it uses Hackmii's boot2 code to install boot2v4).

This is wrong. Dop-Mii doesn't use "Hackmii's boot2 code", it uses IOS the same way an official update would (therefore doesn't reduce the risk at all).

 

[JoostinOnline]

This threat does not exist on wiis that already have boot2v4, and can be eliminated on older systems by using Dop-Mii to update boot2 to v4 (it uses Hackmii's boot2 code to install boot2v4).

This is wrong. Dop-Mii doesn't use "Hackmii's boot2 code", it uses IOS the same way an official update would (therefore doesn't reduce the risk at all).

I remember reading that Team Twiizers wrote their own code for updating boot2. It was somewhere on hackmii. Do you know if they ever released it?

 

[tueidj]

No, because the theory that their code is somehow safer than Nintendo's is a misconception that uninformed people like to repeat ("lol hackers write better code for the wii than nintendo!!!1!").

http://hackmii.com/2...s-and-bricking/

If we were to write a boot2 installer, there’s no guarantee that it would be any safer than Nintendo’s.

 

[XFlak]

plz correct me if I'm wrong, but IIRC nintendo's boot2v4 update was initially very buggy and caused bricks. Then in a matter of weeks nintendo changed their boot2 update method and made it much much safer (even though the resulting update to boot2v4 was the same, just less chance of failure)

 

[tueidj]

No, that never happened. The boot2 update code is part of IOS so they couldn't fix it even if they wanted to (updating boot2 is the first part of the update procedure, it happens before new IOSes are installed).

 

[XFlak]

I'm sure I remember reading somewhere... possibly even on the hackmii blog (could be mistaken about that)... something indicating ninty's boot2 update is now safer than it used to be. When I get a chance I'll try to see where I read that, but my memory is so fuzzy that for the moment I'm more than willing to concede the point 2 u

 

[JoostinOnline]

No, because the theory that their code is somehow safer than Nintendo's is a misconception that uninformed people like to repeat ("lol hackers write better code for the wii than nintendo!!!1!").

http://hackmii.com/2...s-and-bricking/

If we were to write a boot2 installer, there’s no guarantee that it would be any safer than Nintendo’s.

I was thinking of this:

We should expect to see some number of bricked Wiis from this; the code is so buggy that we decided to write our own for the HackMii installer. If you had BootMii/boot2 installed, it will be overwritten with the normal, stock boot2, but there should be no other harmful effects.

http://hackmii.com/2009/09/wii-menu-4-2-a-lack-of-imagination/

To be honest, I've often wondered how much truth there is to their reasons for not updating. I say don't update because there is no benefit, but they say an update is terrible until they release a new version of the HBC. Once that is released, suddenly updating is recommended.

 

[techboy]

This threat does not exist on wiis that already have boot2v4, and can be eliminated on older systems by using Dop-Mii to update boot2 to v4 (it uses Hackmii's boot2 code to install boot2v4).

This is wrong. Dop-Mii doesn't use "Hackmii's boot2 code", it uses IOS the same way an official update would (therefore doesn't reduce the risk at all).

Just looked at the DOP-Mii code, and it does use ES_ImportBoot()...must've read something that was inaccurate.

 

[tueidj]

They had to write their own code for the bootmii installer anyway, since it only overwrites one of the two copies of boot2. Nintendo's code overwrites both.

To be honest, I've often wondered how much truth there is to their reasons for not updating. I say don't update because there is no benefit, but they say an update is terrible until they release a new version of the HBC. Once that is released, suddenly updating is recommended.

Team Twiizers have never said not to update because it's unsafe, they have only advised against it when it would remove the ability to run homebrew. Updating has never been recommended.

 

[JoostinOnline]

They had to write their own code for the bootmii installer anyway, since it only overwrites one of the two copies of boot2. Nintendo's code overwrites both.

To be honest, I've often wondered how much truth there is to their reasons for not updating. I say don't update because there is no benefit, but they say an update is terrible until they release a new version of the HBC. Once that is released, suddenly updating is recommended.

Team Twiizers have never said not to update because it's unsafe, they have only advised against it when it would remove the ability to run homebrew. Updating has never been recommended.

Well they talk about how unsafe it is, then say it's not recommended.

I was thinking about wiibrew on the don't/do update thing, my bad.

 

[mauifrog]

wiibrew used to have a big warning at the top of almost every page advising people to never update from Nintendo. I would say never update unless you have a good reason to.

Wiibrew strongly recommends that you do not update your Wii through Nintendo, as Wii System Updates will stop some homebrew from working.

WiiBrew recommends that you do not update your Wii through Nintendo.
However, if you have updated or wish to update, you can use the latest version of the HackMii Installer to regain full functionality.

Downgrading or installing patched updates is dangerous and may brick your Wii.

WiiBrew recommends that you run the latest version of the HackMii Installer and then optionally update your Wii to 4.3 using Nintendo's official updater.
Only update using the official update procedure. Downgrading or installing patched updates is unsupported, dangerous, and may permanently brick your Wii.

Seems like a stupid recommendation to me, regardless of your preferred system menu I like almost everyone would recommend updating via dop-mii or similar or a Nintendo update if possible. Personally I am sticking with the "Never Ever Update from Nintendo" which has work just fine.

As for bricking from updates, there is also the downgrade upgrade brick. A person downgrades his system by at least two system ios versons, say from 4.x to 3.2. When they do this they install the ios30-1040 and sm 3.2, that works great but then they fail to remove the stubbed ios50 that was installed by N with the 4.x update. Then they stick a 3.4 disc update into the wii, it updates the sm to 3.4 but ios50 is not updated because the stub has a higher version than the functional version.

Some older sm updates reset the system settings when the sm was installed, giving the initial setup screen at boot after the update. If you where to update from an out of region disc it was possible to get an opera error brick at system boot.

3.2 and prior has the trucha bug, updating higher removed this making many homebrew at the time to stop working. This is probably where the do not update came from, also why people where downgrading and then bricking from the update to stubbed ios, so they say don't update some more.

There is another brick which I have never seen happen. Someone could follow my softmod guide and install a version patched system menu, or install it with wii mod or other method, along with a version patched system ios. If such a wii was to replace the version patched system ios with a non version patched system ios they would brick if updating from Nintendo, it would update the system ios and stub it but fail to update the system menu. Hopefully no one does that.

Also any 4.2+ update will install a stub ios249, which will break your homebrew that load 249. The update will try to stub all cios but most are version patched and survive. New updates always try to remove HBC and disc exploits, not a problem now but a new update could remove your mod and make it harder to get back.

 

[nunavat2010]

Lots of good info in here.

 

[nunavat2010]

I revisited this thread. My take away
1) Don't buy Korean Wiis
2) If you have an older Wii(=can play DVD-R and can install bootmii as boot2) dusting in your basement clean it up and (hack?) sell it on e-bay.
3) If you are parent like me who bought a brand new Wii for Kids in 2010 or later (after 4.2 but before 4.3), upgrading is recommended! If the kid want to make the Wii fly a kite, let him figure that out; all you have to show is how to play pirated games* using a backup loader.

* of course, just lie to him and say you bought the game on-line. May be one day he will be a bigger thief, like a Politician or working for Wall Street! Since Daddy was not smart enough to be a bigger thief like that, in his past time he download games, that he does not want to play.

 

[JoostinOnline]

I revisited this thread. My take away
1) Don't buy Korean Wiis
2) If you have an older Wii(=can play DVD-R and can install bootmii as boot2) dusting in your basement clean it up and (hack?) sell it on e-bay.
3) If you are parent like me who bought a brand new Wii for Kids in 2010 or later (after 4.2 but before 4.3), upgrading is recommended! If the kid want to make the Wii fly a kite, let him figure that out; all you have to show is how to play pirated games* using a backup loader.

* of course, just lie to him and say you bought the game on-line. May be one day he will be a bigger thief, like a Politician or working for Wall Street! Since Daddy was not smart enough to be a bigger thief like that, in his past time he download games, that he does not want to play.

1) Usually people don't know they are purchasing a region changed Korean Wii.
2) That's stupid. You would get a lot more money on a website like gbatemp or hacksden.
3) That makes absolutely no sense. That's just less reason to update.

*) So you are promoting illegal activity and lying to your children?

Btw, mauifrog was pointing out how biased wiibrew is, and that they have bad info. I don't know why you thought it was good.

 

[nunavat2010]

*) So you are promoting illegal activity and lying to your children?

It is not illegal in Canada at least not yet. May be unethical (yeah ethical?)
When you have children (or should I say if you have children) go ahead and teach them stupid American crap. The American Politician/corporation are robbing the rest of the world! Didn't you get chased out from threads promoting your honesty!

 

[tueidj]

Btw, mauifrog was pointing out how biased wiibrew is, and that they have bad info. I don't know why you thought it was good.

Uh, no. All he did was show how the warnings have changed during time, which correspond with events like so:
- First message: Nintendo's attempted removal of the twilight hack and HBC
- Second message: New hackmii installer using a different exploit and title id so it works with the latest system update, however updating would still block the twilight hack
- Third message: Currently, there is no reason to shun updates since HBC still works as do several disk-based and diskless exploits.

It's pretty obvious who is biased here, Joostin. There was no reason to bring up discussion of wiibrew's policy in this thread, you just did it so you could throw your own opinion around some more.

 

[cthulhu]

Also any 4.2+ update will install a stub ios249, which will break your homebrew that load 249. The update will try to stub all cios but most are version patched and survive. New updates always try to remove HBC and disc exploits, not a problem now but a new update could remove your mod and make it harder to get back.

At some point between 5 October and 11 November I used the 4.3 system menu (which I had manually installed) to update in order to get all installed IOSes up to the latest version. IOS 222 and 223 were stubbed when this was done, even though nothing was present in those slots, but IOS 249 (d2x-v6 rev 65535) was NOT stubbed. Nor were IOS 250 and 251. Nothing was broken or removed by the update. I was running the system menu with a cIOS (don't remember which one) via Priiloader before I updated though, as this fixes problems with the disc channel when a backup disc is in the drive.

Here are my sysCheck logs:

Spoiler

sysCheck v2.1.0b14 by Double_A and R2-D2199
...runs on IOS58 (rev 6176).
Region: PAL
System Menu 4.3E (v514)
Priilaoder installed
The drive supports DVDs
Homebrew Channel 1.0.8 running on IOS58
Hollywood v0x11
Console ID: 105968385
Boot2 v4
Found 96 titles.
Found 47 IOS on this console. 14 of them are stub.
IOS4 (rev 65280): Stub
IOS9 (rev 1034): No Patches
IOS10 (rev 768): Stub
IOS11 (rev 256): Stub
IOS12 (rev 526): No Patches
IOS13 (rev 1032): No Patches
IOS14 (rev 1032): No Patches
IOS15 (rev 1032): No Patches
IOS16 (rev 512): Stub
IOS17 (rev 1032): No Patches
IOS20 (rev 256): Stub
IOS21 (rev 1039): No Patches
IOS22 (rev 1294): No Patches
IOS28 (rev 1807): No Patches
IOS30 (rev 2816): Stub
IOS31 (rev 3608): No Patches
IOS33 (rev 3608): No Patches
IOS34 (rev 3608): No Patches
IOS35 (rev 3608): No Patches
IOS36 (rev 3608): No Patches
IOS37 (rev 5663): No Patches
IOS38 (rev 4124): No Patches
IOS40 (rev 3072): Stub
IOS41 (rev 3607): No Patches
IOS43 (rev 3607): No Patches
IOS45 (rev 3607): No Patches
IOS46 (rev 3607): No Patches
IOS48 (rev 4124): No Patches
IOS50 (rev 5120): Stub
IOS51 (rev 4864): Stub
IOS52 (rev 5888): Stub
IOS53 (rev 5663): No Patches
IOS55 (rev 5663): No Patches
IOS56 (rev 5662): No Patches
IOS57 (rev 5919): No Patches
IOS58 (rev 6176): USB 2.0
IOS60 (rev 6400): Stub
IOS61 (rev 5662): No Patches
IOS70 (rev 6912): Stub
IOS80 (rev 6944): Trucha Bug, NAND Access
IOS222 (rev 65280): Stub
IOS223 (rev 65280): Stub
IOS236 (rev 3608): Trucha Bug, ES Identify, NAND Access
IOS249[56] (rev 65535, Info: d2x-v6): Trucha Bug, NAND Access, USB 2.0
IOS250[57] (rev 65535, Info: d2x-v6): Trucha Bug, NAND Access, USB 2.0
IOS251[58] (rev 65535, Info: d2x-v6): Trucha Bug, NAND Access, USB 2.0
IOS254 (rev 65281): BootMii
BC v6
MIOS v10
Report generated on 2011/11/11.

Spoiler

sysCheck v2.1.0b13 by Double_A and R2-D2199
...runs on IOS58 (rev 6176).
Region: PAL
System Menu 4.3E (v514)
Priilaoder installed
Homebrew Channel 1.0.8 running on IOS58
Hollywood v0x11
Console ID: 105968385
Boot2 v3
Found 83 titles.
Found 39 IOS on this console. 6 of them are stub.
IOS4 (rev 3): Stub
IOS9 (rev 1034): No Patches
IOS11 (rev 256): Stub
IOS12 (rev 526): No Patches
IOS13 (rev 1032): No Patches
IOS14 (rev 1032): No Patches
IOS15 (rev 1032): No Patches
IOS17 (rev 1032): No Patches
IOS20 (rev 256): Stub
IOS21 (rev 1039): No Patches
IOS22 (rev 1294): No Patches
IOS28 (rev 1807): No Patches
IOS30 (rev 2816): Stub
IOS31 (rev 3608): No Patches
IOS33 (rev 3608): No Patches
IOS34 (rev 3608): No Patches
IOS35 (rev 3608): No Patches
IOS36 (rev 3608): No Patches
IOS37 (rev 5663): No Patches
IOS38 (rev 4124): No Patches
IOS41 (rev 3607): No Patches
IOS43 (rev 3607): No Patches
IOS45 (rev 3607): No Patches
IOS46 (rev 3607): No Patches
IOS48 (rev 4124): No Patches
IOS50 (rev 5120): Stub
IOS53 (rev 5663): No Patches
IOS55 (rev 5663): No Patches
IOS56 (rev 5662): No Patches
IOS57 (rev 5919): No Patches
IOS58 (rev 6176): USB 2.0
IOS60 (rev 6400): Stub
IOS61 (rev 5662): No Patches
IOS80 (rev 6944): Trucha Bug, NAND Access
IOS236 (rev 3608): Trucha Bug, ES Identify, NAND Access
IOS249[56] (rev 65535, Info: d2x-v6): Trucha Bug, NAND Access, USB 2.0
IOS250[57] (rev 65535, Info: d2x-v6): Trucha Bug, NAND Access, USB 2.0
IOS251[58] (rev 65535, Info: d2x-v6): Trucha Bug, NAND Access, USB 2.0
IOS254 (rev 65281): BootMii
BC v6
MIOS v10
Report generated on 2011/10/05.