Hacking Wii U NOOB PARADISE - Ask & Answer questions here.

[Deleted User]

Anyone know to convert music files (mp3, wav,) to btsnd?

 

[Sub Zippo]

I've been unable to connect to youtube on my hacked Wii U lately despite it working reliably for ages, with the app now sticking on the loading screen logo. Thinking maybe the hack friendly DNS I was going through may have been the problem and could be the easiest thing to fix, I looked up an alternate on digiex.net and changed it to 35.164.240.189/000.000.000.000 and now it doesn't want to connect to the internet at all.

Has anyone else had a problem with the youtube app and can someone suggest a good DNS?

 

[xs4all]

I don't use DNS, but YouTube apps works fine connected directly to the internet, I stopped using DNS years ago, have Haxchi installed, have every single WiiU game (+ updates) installed on external HDD.
Installed various eShop games, also including heaps of custom injects and also watching Netflix, play Splatoons online and WiiU is always connected to the net.

However I do have the "update" folder deleted on my system nand which has (to date) stopped 99.9% of previous firmware updates, when the last update was released, I waited until the FW had the all clear and it didn't affect Haxchi installed, re created the update folder and re applied the permissions, updated the firmware and then deleted the update folder again.

If your afraid of updates, then I suggest you go down the deleting the update folder path and don't bother with any DNS's, just my personal preference.

 

[Sub Zippo]

I don't use DNS, but YouTube apps works fine connected directly to the internet, I stopped using DNS years ago, have Haxchi installed, have every single WiiU game (+ updates) installed on external HDD.
Installed various eShop games, also including heaps of custom injects and also watching Netflix, play Splatoons online and WiiU is always connected to the net.

However I do have the "update" folder deleted on my system nand which has (to date) stopped 99.9% of previous firmware updates, when the last update was released, I waited until the FW had the all clear and it didn't affect Haxchi installed, re created the update folder and re applied the permissions, updated the firmware and then deleted the update folder again.

If your afraid of updates, then I suggest you go down the deleting the update folder path and don't bother with any DNS's, just my personal preference.

Thanks. I'll try that if I need to. Before I do, I'm on system menu 5.5.1 U, Haxchi 2.5u2, and Homebrew Launcher v2.1. I haven't messed with any new updates in close to two years and I have every game I'll probably care to own. Forgive me if I'm out of practice here, (I guess that's supposed to be the point of the thread) should I update any of those things? Without the update folder my Wii U will not attempt to perform an automated update? Is there a guide to deleting the folder or is it as simple as finding it on my SD card?

 

[xs4all]

Thanks. I'll try that if I need to. Before I do, I'm on system menu 5.5.1 U, Haxchi 2.5u2, and Homebrew Launcher v2.1. I haven't messed with any new updates in close to two years and I have every game I'll probably care to own. Forgive me if I'm out of practice here, (I guess that's supposed to be the point of the thread) should I update any of those things? Without the update folder my Wii U will not attempt to perform an automated update? Is there a guide to deleting the folder or is it as simple as finding it on my SD card?

As long as your not using Coldboot Haxchi, then you can just go ahead and perform a system update no need to update anything else, your Haxchi install will not be affected and can continue as per normal.

More info HERE on how to delete the update folder, of course you can always re create the update folder.

Now if you delete the update folder, if you launch a game that requires a game update, this will block game updates as well. So you have to manually download game updates and install.
If you have not updated your already installed games then you may get prompts to update.

I have recreated my update folder so when games requires updates I just let the WiiU download and install them as I cant be bothered grabbing them manually and never had any issues doing it this way. Its up to you if you want to follow through and delete the update folder.

 

[Infinity147]

Hi guys and girls just thought I’d pop in here and say high, I’ve edited my original question as I figured it out. So I have another question.

If I want to forgo the injection method used for Wii and GC games to be launched from the home screen and just in essence a archive type drive with a large collection of games for both systems is the route

A 2tb drive formatted to fat 32
Full gc iso’s and Wbfs Wii files on a hard drive in Wii and GC folder
Launched with usb launcher gx2 with Nintendon’t installed and integrated to get all those nice covers
VWii has to be hacked as well?

Is that pretty much right?

Sorry just got a Wii U and a bit behind the times

Awesome forum btw, very well organised and very informative

 

[xs4all]

...If I want to forgo the injection method used for Wii and GC games to be launched from the home screen and just in essence a archive type drive with a large collection of games for both systems is the route

A 2tb drive formatted to fat 32
Full gc iso’s and Wbfs Wii files on a hard drive in Wii and GC folder
Launched with usb launcher gx2 with Nintendon’t installed and integrated to get all those nice covers
VWii has to be hacked as well?

Is that pretty much right?...

Correct, your vWii must be soft modded to be able to run homebrew apps in vWii, if you want to soft mod your vWii, I followed this guide HERE to do a few of my WiiU's.
Make sure you read it 3 times, don't rush and take your time, then you'll be fine.

Injecting your own Wii/GC games can be time consuming and it may not always work for what ever reason, and it's easier to just have all your ISO's and use a backup loader in vWii. When possible use Wii Backup Manager to transfer your Wii ISO/WBFS to your ext HDD. The app will create the correct folder/file names so that backup loaders like USB Loader GX can see them. As for GC ISO's, if you haven't already seen it, click HERE to see a very detailed post regarding Nintendont here on GBATemp, pay close attention to the Game on SD Card/Game on USB section, this will show you how to setup the folders. Only issue in playing Wii games in vWii mode is that you won't be able Wii games that supports Classic Controller on the WiiU GamePad, you can only use the GamePad as screen only, that is the only benefit of injecting Wii games, the ability to play Wii games directly on the GamePad.

Some things to consider, if using a small portable USB HDD, make sure your using a Y USB Cable, and make sure you connect to the correct USB port on the rear of the WiiU.
In vWii mode, sometimes it has issues reading ext USB HDD, even when it works fine on a real Wii, WiiU and PC, there is nothing you can do about it since the vWii is sometimes picky as to what USB HDD is connected. This is due to the USB controller used on the HDD, this happens on rare occasions, so if your WiiU in vWii mode cant see your ext USB HDD, this COULD be one of the reasons why.

 

[Infinity147]

Thank you so much for answering my questions. Hopefully in the next few day I’ll get down to doing all this stuff.

Cheers

 

[PuNKeMoN]

Hey all I've got a good question:

I bought my Wii U (Zelda Edition) used.
The original owner installed Wind Waker.
The original owner also linked his Nintendo Network ID. I have no way of finding his password. I want to delete the original owner's profile while keeping the Wind Waker game installed.
How can I go about doing that?

 

[Markus250]

Hey everyone, I just started to hack my Wii U last night and have a few questions. I’ll start by saying that my goal with the hacked Wii U is to play unmodified games from all Nintendo consoles (except switch and 3ds which won’t work). I completed the steps from the Wii U Hacks Guide and now have a 64GB SD Card with all of the files needed for that guide and my Wii U is now modded for CBHC. I then used the App Store to download loadline and Retroarch.

#1 How do I play Wii U games? I downloaded some torrents but can’t figure out how to use them. One was a file small enough to put into the SD card and it said “Loadline ready” but loadline doesn’t work. Apparently it will work if I delete a “controllers” folder but I’m not sure if that will mess something else up.

I also read about using Wii U USB Helper to get games but typing in titlekeys.ovh doesn’t work for some reason.

#2 I bought the 64g SD card thinking that the games were supposed to be loaded on there but have now found out I might need to get two external hard drives. Can I get away with getting only one (or none) external hard drive and what would the drawbacks be? I would like to use DLC and online but they aren’t imperative.

#3 is there any way to map functions to unused buttons in retroarch that would allow me to save/load state or increase the games run speed? I loved having these options when using an emulator on the PC but I don’t see any way to do that here.

 

[FIR3MAN]

Hi guys,
First of all i want to thank You all for hard work you did. What you did is amazing and i think you don't get enough appreciation from Wii U community for that!

I like to fix/mess with all sorts of stuff that's why I ended up here
I bought 15$ Wii U (without tablet, and power brick) described as "untested" from amazon returns and surprise, surprise it doesn't work
Here what we have:

1) After connecting the power, Wii U power LED is glowing red
2) We can turn on Wii U, but we have black screen.
3) Console takes, and gives back discs
4) After turning on Wii U draws somewhat from 1A to 1.5A. Then current draw comes down to 0.9A and hangs there forever.​

I've read this threads to hopefully catch up with guys that know how to dump data from bricked Wii U (unfortunately i cant post links):

1. Successfully dumped WiiU EMMC nand with hardmod.
2. [Guide] Kafluke's HardMod CBHC Unbrick guide
3. [RELEASE] Wii U NAND Tools

I understand that for now there no way to restore bricked Wii U if You do not have your slc and otp backup's, but with that attitude we would not have hacked consoles

So lets assume that this Wii U was bricked due to totally legit and normal activity (not soft modding) and nobody messed with WiiU NAND. After some digging I've found some cases of Wii U just die for no reason during playing games.


Considering the above i have some questions:

1. Does someone had/saw console with similar behavior. If yes what You did to brick it like that
2. Is there a point to dump WiiU EMMC (30gb) from this console? Its only user data & games right? Or something can be corrupted there and may cause console not to boot?
3. Is there any way to flash latest firmware version to a bricked console?
4. Can someone explain me a what is contained in SMC and OTP. I know that OTP is created on demand and contains keys to decrypting everything, but why i cant just flash smc from another console, and if i had one what would happened?

 

[xs4all]

Hi guys,
First of all i want to thank You all for hard work you did. What you did is amazing and i think you don't get enough appreciation from Wii U community for that!

I like to fix/mess with all sorts of stuff that's why I ended up here
I bought 15$ Wii U (without tablet, and power brick) described as "untested" from amazon returns and surprise, surprise it doesn't work
Here what we have:

1) After connecting the power, Wii U power LED is glowing red
2) We can turn on Wii U, but we have black screen.
3) Console takes, and gives back discs
4) After turning on Wii U draws somewhat from 1A to 1.5A. Then current draw comes down to 0.9A and hangs there forever.​

I've read this threads to hopefully catch up with guys that know how to dump data from bricked Wii U (unfortunately i cant post links):

1. Successfully dumped WiiU EMMC nand with hardmod.
2. [Guide] Kafluke's HardMod CBHC Unbrick guide
3. [RELEASE] Wii U NAND Tools

I understand that for now there no way to restore bricked Wii U if You do not have your slc and otp backup's, but with that attitude we would not have hacked consoles

So lets assume that this Wii U was bricked due to totally legit and normal activity (not soft modding) and nobody messed with WiiU NAND. After some digging I've found some cases of Wii U just die for no reason during playing games.


Considering the above i have some questions:

1. Does someone had/saw console with similar behavior. If yes what You did to brick it like that
2. Is there a point to dump WiiU EMMC (30gb) from this console? Its only user data & games right? Or something can be corrupted there and may cause console not to boot?
3. Is there any way to flash latest firmware version to a bricked console?
4. Can someone explain me a what is contained in SMC and OTP. I know that OTP is created on demand and contains keys to decrypting everything, but why i cant just flash smc from another console, and if i had one what would happened?

Here is some advise, save yourself the headache and get yourself a working WiiU with the GamePad, there is so much you can do without a GamePad and a lot less without a working WiiU unit.

Consider the $15 you spend a loss and move on.

 

[rchmx]

Hi all, I've searched around a bit, but this noob isn't quite sure how to proceed. My goal is to figure out how to play Super Mario Maker with all it's online functionality.

Just today I hacked my WiiU using the wiiu.hacks.guide guide. I am using Mocha CFW. I downloaded a copy of SMM which stated it was "loadiine ready," and so I figured out how to add loadiine to my homebrew setup. The game loads fine, but when I try to go to Course World, I get an error message. Doing some searching, I read a post on this forum which states that loadiine is offline only.

At this point, though, I'm not sure how to proceed. Is there another game loader method I should use in place of loadiine, which will grant me all the online funcitonality needed to play SMM? What's the best way to achieve my goal of being able to access the full functionality of SMM?

Thanks in advance so much for your time and help!

EDIT: Ok, figured it out actually. As a new member I can't post links, but using wup_installer and FreeShopWIIU it's working perfectly!

 

[GigaManEXE]

Hi there. So, I posted this in the Wii Noob Paradise, but wasn't sure if that was the right place for it since it's dealing with the Wii U's Wii Mode, so I'm forwarding it here. If that's against the rules, my apologies.

Hi. Thank you for these NOOB PARADISE threads. It makes me feel welcome in this forum of overwhelming knowledge that I couldn't begin to comprehend.

I would like to do a full reversal of the Wii to Wii U transfer. I have a softmodded Wii with homebrew channel and some usb loaders, but I softmodded after the transfer, so I have nothing backed up. I've done a little reading on WADs, and how you can dump WADs of downloadable games and install them onto the Wii. Is that right? I am NOT in this for piracy. I strictly want to back up my own games and put them back on my Wii. I've seen programs like WAD Manager, ShowMiiWads, Wii Mod (Lite), but I don't want to dive in on impulse without understanding exactly what I'm getting into. A little guidance would be very helpful.

I would also like to back up the complete save data of all my games, physical and digital, including the save data that the Wii says can't be moved to SD (ex. MKWii, Brawl, etc.), and have it read on the Wii. How would I go about doing this?

 

[vree]

So I recently modded my wii to play backup gamecube and wii games. I would like to do the same on my wiiu to take advantage of the HDMI port.

But I got a few questions:

1) So I want to both hack the wiiu mode and the vwii. What would be the best firmware for this?
2) If the answer to that is 5.5.3, then how do I update to 5.5.3 because I got a E WiiU so the latest firmware here is 5.5.4?
3) What would be the best order to hack? Frist vWii or first WiiU?
4) Do I really need a 64GB SD card or is 32GB enough?
5) At the end of all the modding, can I just hook the External HDD from my wii to my wiiu to play Wii and Gamecube games? Or is this not compatible?

 

[godreborn]

1. cbhc, but it can be dangerous if you don't read the risks.
2. 5.5.1+ to current firmware is exploitable. I'm still on 5.5.1. the only downside is that I'd need to use nnu patcher to sign into the eshop or possibly online gaming.
3. probably the wii u. you can hack the vwii from the wii u side I believe, but I used the smash stack exploit with brawl. it's not hard, but to customize everything can be overwhelming.
4. you need double the size of the nand, so that's good if you have a 8GB, but you need a 64GB card for 32GBs. you also install games on the wii u with the sd card, so the larger the better.
5. you can hook up an external hdd, but you need ustealth to hide the vwii hdd or else the system will nag about formatting it.

 

[MikaDubbz]

So I recently modded my wii to play backup gamecube and wii games. I would like to do the same on my wiiu to take advantage of the HDMI port.

But I got a few questions:

1) So I want to both hack the wiiu mode and the vwii. What would be the best firmware for this?
2) If the answer to that is 5.5.3, then how do I update to 5.5.3 because I got a E WiiU so the latest firmware here is 5.5.4?
3) What would be the best order to hack? Frist vWii or first WiiU?
4) Do I really need a 64GB SD card or is 32GB enough?
5) At the end of all the modding, can I just hook the External HDD from my wii to my wiiu to play Wii and Gamecube games? Or is this not compatible?

1. Any firmware will work, but you'll probably have best results being on the latest
2. Don't worry, 5.5.4 is safe to hack
3. Wii U
4. Don't quote me on this, I don't remember offhand, but 32GB should probably be enough, there is a part where you backup your Wii U's NAND and I believe that potentially can be the biggest part of it, so if you have a lot of games saved to your Wii U's NAND, that might be where the need for a 64GB card could arise. But as I recall, 32 shouldbe plenty if your NAND is pretty empty.
5. Yes, just don't have your Wii U format that hard drive (it will ask if you want to format the drive if connected to the Wii U on the Wii U menu). You can mask your vWii hard drive with ustealth if you like to avoid this nag, or you can just opt to connect your hard drive when entering your vWii.

Anyway, if you're looking for where to start, just go here: https://wiiu.hacks.guide/

 

[godreborn]

actually, the big part of the nand, the mlc, will be 32GBs regardless of whether there's content on it. in reality, it's probably not needed though, because the otp won't decrypt it with current tools.

 

[MikaDubbz]

actually, the big part of the nand, the mlc, will be 32GBs regardless of whether there's content on it. in reality, it's probably not needed though, because the otp won't decrypt it with current tools.

Ah, well truth be told, when I hacked my Wii U, I was careless and skipped the backing up of my NAND part of it. It worked out just fine and have had a nice hacked Wii U for 4 or 5 years now. Of course I can't and shouldn't advise this to anyone. One small mistake could lead to a brick, and without a backup, I'd have been screwed. All the same, I recall noting how I didn't need a 64GB card when I did it (even though I have a 512GB card) since I didn't back up my NAND at the time.

 

[godreborn]

it's probably not a big deal. the gamepad is like over half the cost of the system. if you were to brick and couldn't do the hard mod method, it'd probably be more prudent just to buy a new system. I'm sure the price of both would be nearly the same.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

btw, the slc is what needs to be fixed in case of cbhc brick or something that's corrupted the system nand. that's only around 528MBs. I'm not sure how to access the mlc partition. the otp can decrypt the other two partitions though.