Wii Brick Help

[Wenus5486]

Hello All -

Need help here. After having not played my Wii for about a year - I went to boot it up and (I believe) it bricked. It is stuck on the "health and safety screen" and no A button appears to take it to the next screen. Theres several YouTube videos showing this. I never modded my Wii with anything, nor downloaded homebrew, nor saved anything via SD Card. It's been awhile, so I'm not sure what updates had been installed. I've been reading alot on hacks preloaders and stuff, my main concern is getting all my saved data, ideally my mii's that were all created, and my saved single player games - these were all saved to the NAND. Can someone walk my through step by step in what needs to do be done to achieve this. In the even I need to purchase a new Wii thats fine - I just want all my saved data - and have that transferable to a new Wii (in which I will back up via SD card!). Thanks so much for all the help!

 

[KleinesSinchen]

No softmod, no software troubleshooting. Nintendo devices aren't very verbose with errors. They either do nothing or throw some generic unhelpful "An error has occurred" message.
Wii consoles are aging which makes hardware failures more likely (completely different example).

Wiis are known to fail booting with defective Bluetooth or WiFi board but that is a black screen error (no H&S) if I remember correctly. I've no idea if and what component(s) could be the reason for that behavior. Worst case would be corrupted or defective NAND which cannot be repaired because you don't have the keys(OTP) without having used homebrew in the past.

A Wii sitting on H&S screen can – normally – be exploited with Bluebomb which allows installing Homebrew Channel and using tools to investigate or repair software damage. Since your console seemingly crashes on H&S I doubt this will work (try anyway: Setup Bluebomb and apply it on a known good Wii to make sure the computer side is working. Then try your problematic unit).
The other thing would be the SaveMii method (hopefully booting into a disc by holding all four directions on a GameCube controller plugged into the fourth GC controller port – requires a cheap (bad) GC controller or disassembly of a good GC controller).

All in all this doesn't look very promising.

Good luck anyway!

 

[Wenus5486]

When using Bluebomb - does it matter if installed on USB or SD Card?

 

[Wenus5486]

Scratch Bluebomb - dont have a Linux computer.... Can anyone confirm/recommend the SaveMii method?

 

[wiindsurf]

Does the message to press A show up on the screen? I felt your sentence about this could be interpreted in two diff ways (appears as in "seems to" or appears as in "shows up"), so just wanted to clarify that.

Anyway, before assuming a brick I'd take a few steps back...

Are the Wii remotes syncing (do the blue lights stay solid) while on that screen? Also, try power cycling the Wii remotes by removing the batteries for a few seconds. I've seen them go buggy a few times, and power cycling fixes it.

As a general first step I'd try removing anything plugged into the Wii, including the sensor bar, any USB devices or SD card, then power cycling the system by removing the power plug from the back of the Wii while the system is on so that capacitors / and other motherboard components are fully starved / drained (simply using the power button doesn't fully drain them), wait for a minute or so, then power it on via the remote's power button (not the power button on the console), while only having the video and power cables connected to the back of the Wii.

 

[XFlak]

I'm pretty sure you can load Linux from a live cd/usb without installing it, just FYI

 

[Wenus5486]

Does the message to press A show up on the screen? I felt your sentence about this could be interpreted in two diff ways (appears as in "seems to" or appears as in "shows up"), so just wanted to clarify that.

Anyway, before assuming a brick I'd take a few steps back...

Are the Wii remotes syncing (do the blue lights stay solid) while on that screen? Also, try power cycling the Wii remotes by removing the batteries for a few seconds. I've seen them go buggy a few times, and power cycling fixes it.

As a general first step I'd try removing anything plugged into the Wii, including the sensor bar, any USB devices or SD card, then power cycling the system by removing the power plug from the back of the Wii while the system is on so that capacitors / and other motherboard components are fully starved / drained (simply using the power button doesn't fully drain them), wait for a minute or so, then power it on via the remote's power button (not the power button on the console), while only having the video and power cables connected to the back of the Wii.

Does the message to press A show up on the screen? I felt your sentence about this could be interpreted in two diff ways (appears as in "seems to" or appears as in "shows up"), so just wanted to clarify that.

Anyway, before assuming a brick I'd take a few steps back...

Are the Wii remotes syncing (do the blue lights stay solid) while on that screen? Also, try power cycling the Wii remotes by removing the batteries for a few seconds. I've seen them go buggy a few times, and power cycling fixes it.

As a general first step I'd try removing anything plugged into the Wii, including the sensor bar, any USB devices or SD card, then power cycling the system by removing the power plug from the back of the Wii while the system is on so that capacitors / and other motherboard components are fully starved / drained (simply using the power button doesn't fully drain them), wait for a minute or so, then power it on via the remote's power button (not the power button on the console), while only having the video and power cables connected to the back of the Wii.

Thanks for the reply. The "press A to continue " does not show up. I am able to power up the Wii from the remote with lights on the remote illuminating and staying stable. I can try undoing batteries etc on remote....something I haven't tried, but HAVE tried the power cycles on the actual system. Any other ideas?

 

[XFlak]

Have u tried holding reset whole booting up the console to see if priiloader is installed? What about starting the console with an SD card inserted that has bootmii on it to see if bootmii is installed to boot2?

Because your remotes are connecting, you should be able to use bluebomb, but as previously stated it requires Linux. If you can access priiloader or bootmii we can avoid the bluebomb route.

 

[Wenus5486]

Have u tried holding reset whole booting up the console to see if priiloader is installed? What about starting the console with an SD card inserted that has bootmii on it to see if bootmii is installed to boot2?

Because your remotes are connecting, you should be able to use bluebomb, but as previously stated it requires Linux. If you can access priiloader or bootmii we can avoid the bluebomb route.

Thanks for the reply. I never had modded my wii prior to this brick. When I power on while holding reset I get no action.

 

[XFlak]

Save this bootmii folder to a properly fat32 formatted and compatible SD card
http://static.hackmii.com/bootmii_sd_files.zip

Insert the sd card in the wii, make sure the wii is powered off, then turn on the wii. If bootmii is installed to boot2, the bootmii menu will load.

 

[ertaboy356b]

One thing to check is if the bluetooth module is working.

 

[XFlak]

One thing to check is if the bluetooth module is working.

He said he can power on the unit using his wiimote, so should be okay I would think.

 

[Wenus5486]

I'll get working on this, gotta order some older SD cards. I think 2gb ones right?

 

[XFlak]

Yes but I would still try the cards you have on hand before ordering anything as sdhc will sometimes still work with bootmii

 

[Wenus5486]

Yes but I would still try the cards you have on hand before ordering anything as sdhc will sometimes still work with bootmii

I dont have an SD cards on hand, gotta order them. Only have USB sticks

 

[RobertBast]

Do you happen to have a GC memory card in one of the slots, if you got the first type wii? That seems to cause a similar error, according to this website:
https://www.ifixit.com/Wiki/Nintendo_Wii_Troubleshooting#Section_Won_t_show_Press_A_to_Continue

 

[Heat92]

Scratch Bluebomb - dont have a Linux computer.... Can anyone confirm/recommend the SaveMii method?

I say give it a try. Install Oracle VM Virtual Box manager and ubunto. I would suggest doing it on a weekend, as someone who didn't know how to use linux or Virtual Box I needed some time to look things up.

I tried Bluebomb on my Korean bricked wii (Error:003) and it was worth trying. It didn't work as the comments suggested on Github but maybe it will be possible in the future.

 

[Wenus5486]

Do you happen to have a GC memory card in one of the slots, if you got the first type wii? That seems to cause a similar error, according to this website:
https://www.ifixit.com/Wiki/Nintendo_Wii_Troubleshooting#Section_Won_t_show_Press_A_to_Continue

I do not have a memory card inserted

 

[wiindsurf]

Do you hear noise from the optical drive moving around when you turn the Wii on? Or is it silent? Is there any disc in the drive?

 

[ertaboy356b]

Hmm probably check the clock battery inside the wii. It might have gone out though I'm not sure what would be the effect of that.