Hacking Unbricking

[DeadlyFoez]

Most noobs/users are too damn impatient. Many people even skip that nand backup in ModMii's generated guides just because they are too impatient. So either they are patient for it or they are not. And the ones who aren't patient end up learning their lesson later.

In the end, it's all about "Did I tell it to do this? Why the f**k is this doing this like some microsoft software when I did not tell it to do it.

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[highsteve]

Thanks Deadly for all the info about boot2 and nand, appreciate it.

 

[XFlak]

BootMii ought to just automatically start a dump the first time it's run, and have it run once immediately after it's installed. Save everyone a bunch of headache

No, thats a bad idea. It gives the user less control. TT would never make something like that automatic, and I agree with not doing that.

I think it would be a good feature if it just automatically dumped keys.bin. That should only take a couple seconds at most and is all that is really required to unbrick a Wii. Since v0.7 of the hackmii installer bootmii has been installed as IOS before even loading the installer menu, so what's an extra second or 2 to dump the keys? Well worth it if you ask me. Anyways, I'm not complaining, but if TT were taking requests I'd suggest it to them.

 

[highsteve]

BootMii ought to just automatically start a dump the first time it's run, and have it run once immediately after it's installed. Save everyone a bunch of headache

No, thats a bad idea. It gives the user less control. TT would never make something like that automatic, and I agree with not doing that.

I think it would be a good feature if it just automatically dumped keys.bin. That should only take a couple seconds at most and is all that is really required to unbrick a Wii. Since v0.7 of the hackmii installer bootmii has been installed as IOS before even loading the installer menu, so what's an extra second or 2 to dump the keys? Well worth it if you ask me. Anyways, I'm not complaining, but if TT were taking requests I'd suggest it to them.

That's smart.

EDIT: keys is stored in a 1kb file so that is pretty small too.

 

[highsteve]

I tried out ohneschwazenegger see how it works. I tried creating a NEW NAND just with the keys but it doesn't work. It expects me to put something for Boot1/2 also and I don't really know what to put in there. I am trying to create a virgin nand with ohneschwazenegger. So I am wondering how you would do it if you really just had the keys and nothing else with that tool?

Thanks for the help.

 

[mauifrog]

I tried out ohneschwazenegger see how it works. I tried creating a NEW NAND just with the keys but it doesn't work. It expects me to put something for Boot1/2 also and I don't really know what to put in there. I am trying to create a virgin nand with ohneschwazenegger. So I am wondering how you would do it if you really just had the keys and nothing else with that tool?

Thanks for the help.

If you only had the keys, you would need to dump the nand with a nand programmer, then use the keys you have to make a proper nand.bin, then use that with ohneswanzenegger. You need a map of the bad blocks for ohneschwazenegger to make a good nand.bin. At least that is my understanding, which is not much in this regard. I guess ohneswanzenegger also wants to know what version of boot1 and boot 2 you have, so it can make a proper nand.bin for you. If you had the nand keys, I believe you could dump the encrypted nand, use your nand keys to decrypt it and determine the boot1 and boot2 versions, map the bad nand blocks, and then make a new nand with ohneswanzenegger.

 

[highsteve]

Thanks, that's all I wanted to know.

 

[obcd]

So, basically we would need the keys, the wii serial, and the bad blocks of the nand. Another helpfull thing would be a good tutorial describing how to create a nand with those.
Ohneswanzenegger a great program, but all it's options can become overwhelming for a first time user. And it's not something you use on a daily base. (hopefully)

The reason I added the wii serial is because it can become unreadable on the wii sticker. Without the correct serial, the shopping channel isn't working anymore.

It's indeed something that can be done fast. A small file with those things is also less annoying to leave on your pc than a 512MB nand backup file.

 

[XFlak]

I still stick to the fact that at a minimum you only need the keys.bin... and DeadlyFoez, lol.

First of all, if you can't access bootmii or priiloader to fix the brick or restore a nand dump, then you're going to need to use a nand reprogrammer one way or another to recover. So not having a dump of boot1\boot2 is immaterial because u can get it after the fact (and the same can be said for the setting.txt; i.e. wii serial #).

Secondly, not knowing which blocks are bad blocks isn't an issue if DeadlyFoez is repairing your Wii, he can just swap nand chips with his wii and run bootmii to dump the nand and determine where the bad blocks on the bricked nand are, not to mention he's got nand chips lying around with 0 bad blocks that he can use if wanted to. That's probably even unnecessary as Foez could just fix the underlying issue while the bricked nand is running off his tech wii (after using betwiin) using homebrew apps or whatever then make a working nand dump, then use betwiin again with the "bricked" wii's keys.bin to convert the working nand dump to work back on the wii it came from originally. I might not know all the details, but I'm pretty sure DeadlyFoez could explain exactly what to do to get around the problem of not knowing which blocks are bad even if u don't have his tech-wii or spare nand chips with 0 bad blocks.

My point is the keys.bin is the minimum that is required to unbrick a Wii. I may not personally be capable of repairing a fully bricked Wii with just the keys.bin (hell, I probably couldn't do it if I had a full nand dump! lol), but I am definitely capable of shipping my Wii to someone who is capable, like DeadlyFoez.

 

[DeadlyFoez]

Yeah. I certainly can do it with just the keys. I'd either use my infectus or my tech wii to dump the nand, or I'd just look up the serial number and find out what boot1 version is most likely installed, then find a nand.bin in my library that has that boot1 version and use that and use the latest boot2 version. I wouldn't worry too much about bad blocks at first. As long as I can get the wii to run and then use bootmii to make a nand daump or whatever. Hell theres many ways that I could go about repairing a wii with just the keys.

And quite frankly, I tend to do that a lot anyways. Someone sends me their wii with their nand backup, and I ignore the nand backup and just use the keys so I can repair their file system without losing any of their data.

Pune's ohneswanzenegger app can detect which blocks are bad it you open up the nand that you dumped with the infectus. It's even easy enough to always just paste the keys to the nand dump that I made with the infectus.

Either way, on a brick like this, you nand needs to be removed anyways, so no harm in taking the 45 minutes to do the full dump just to be safe.

I would love to start playing with the progskeet. I could probably do a lot of great things with it because of it's flexibility.