Hacking Should I delete "Mothballed" IOSes?

Dan_Aykroyd · Jul 9, 2009

Hey!

Out of curiosity (and OCD): can I remove "Mothballed" IOSes (as marked in WiiBrew here)? I'm running latest FW 4.0, with BootMii as boot2 and with NAND backup made (safety net).

I don't know if deleting them with ATD would or wouldn't free any memory blocks, but if the Wii still works 100% after deleting them all, I'd still like to do it.

Anyway... let me know what you think. Thanks!

KiiWii · Jul 9, 2009

It wont free any blocks.

Most of the wii will work, some older games might not.

But what the hey, there are loads of "i'v fucked my Wii up the power port, HELP ME NOWZ!" threads to fix it when you fuck it up.

Blue-K · Jul 9, 2009

Shure you can delete them, and f**k up your Wii during that process. If everything works, then let it be.

The first golden rule in WiiHacking: NEVER DELETE AN IOS!!!
WHY THE HELL WOULD YOU DO SOME SH*T? IT WILL BRING YOU NOTHING, NO SPACE, NOTHING!!! IF IT WOULD DO SOMTHING GOOD, NINTENDO WOULD HAVE DONE THIS ALREADY DURING THE UPDATE TO 4.0!!!

Damm, how can someone come to such an idea...Realy, let it be. And if you can't, I'll promise I won't help you if you're fu**ed up.

(P.s: If you realy can't live with the Mothballs, look at DOP-IOS. It's a bit dangerous, but since you don't care about your Wii...)

Dan_Aykroyd · Jul 9, 2009

Hey! Don't go crazy on me guys! What's wrong with having some kind of curiosity, investigation and trial and error?

Don't forget I've told that I have BootMii as boot2, so I should be quite safe if I went to try it. But please, refrain from now answering "well, go ahead and try it"! I'll, but before I wanted to know if someone did in order to not waste time deleting them, restoring the back up, etc.

Thanks

KiiWii · Jul 9, 2009

Blue-K said:
The first golden rule in WiiHacking: NEVER DELETE AN IOS!!!

Why not just search, read up and realize it can only do more harm than good.

If not, then go for it. U can always reinstall ur NAND with bootmii.

olliepop2000 · Jul 9, 2009

give the guy a break, he said he got bootmii as boot2 with a nand backup so come on leave him alone, he can always recover. he sounds like he is being extra careful so whats wrong with being a bit inquisitive.

KiiWii · Jul 9, 2009

if it was that straight forward why did he post in here? if hes got a safety net, why ask? he should have just done it and got pissed at him self for wasting his own time.

As it is he asked, we answered.

sounds like hes going to do it regardless of our strong, and experienced opinions.

So this point is moot.

sl33p · Jul 9, 2009

lol. I think the pent of rage of the boards is starting to manifest itself. There have been ALOT of "Help I've bricked my wii I'm a complete noob" threads lately. This is literally to the point of me thinking that 4chan (or Nintendo) is trolling us (or wasting our resources). It's just really strange how it's just a constant stream of "omg I drop my wii in the bathtub to hax it and now i haz brickcan it be fixed?" Was this site feature on a social media site somewhere or something?

Here's a small sampling from just the past couple of days of idiot threads or questionsthat could have been answered if the OP bothered to do 30 mins of research:

http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=166640
http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=166659
http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=166655
http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=166356
http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=166341
http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=165637
http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=165958
http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=166493
http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=166383
http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=166652
http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=166199

KiiWii · Jul 9, 2009

I think its just pure laziness.

btw i lolled at first when u said 4chan, but reading up on twitter attacks im thinking twice

WiiCrazy · Jul 9, 2009

! Below remarks only intended for the thread starter ! Never delete a system menu IOS!

Practically deletion of them won't cause a brick, but don't do that... if you look closely in below two pages, you can see that these ioses either used by old system menus (10, 11, 20, 30, 50) or are there to prevent installation of older ones (16)

http://www.wiibrew.org/wiki/System_Menu
http://wiibrew.org/wiki/IOS_History

if you delete them then everytime you do a official update they will possibly get installed again...

So there is not much point in deleting them... but you should be aware of something. You should never install an older system menu wad if you have these stub ioses. And if you ever downgrade to 3.2, you should watch if you have stub IOS 50 since on that setup even doing a official disc update from an original disc with 3.4 system update will brick your wii... since you were been to 4.0 at one time...

Best solution is to leave them as is and be at the latest system menu.

Dan_Aykroyd · Jul 9, 2009

OK... thanks to those who KINDLY answered me..

Why would I then ask for help about "I bricked my Wii OMG!" when I'm saying that I've BM as Boot2! Jesus!

I too hate noobs posts about how to recover a Wii or "I deleted my IOS60 and now it won't start", but come on, I'm asking an hypothetical (?) scenario where deprecated IOSes were deleted. I know you aren't supposed to delete any IOS (as someone posted the number 1 hacking rule?), but those are IOS SUPPOSEDLY not used anymore; hence my question.

Anyway, you shouldn't get off so hard and dismiss a question as stupid without first understanding what I was wondering / trying to achieve.

Thanks.

Dialexio · Jul 9, 2009

Feel free to delete them. Generally speaking, "mothballed" IOSes (more commonly called stubs) were used by either the System Menu or the Wii Shop Channel. Ever since the October 23 update, they have been turning unused IOSes into stubs.

In short, you can delete them, but they would have no effect. When downgrading, remember to reinstall a functioning version first. (i.e.- You want to downgrade to 3.2. Be sure to install a working IOS30 first.)

s3phir0th115 · Jul 10, 2009

Dialexio said:
Feel free to delete them. Generally speaking, "mothballed" IOSes (more commonly called stubs) were used by either the System Menu or the Wii Shop Channel. Ever since the October 23 update, they have been turning unused IOSes into stubs.

In short, you can delete them, but they would have no effect. When downgrading, remember to reinstall a functioning version first. (i.e.- You want to downgrade to 3.2. Be sure to install a working IOS30 first.)

Yeah, I would recommend this also. Delete mothballed IOS's unless you have something that uses it. For example, I have System Menu 3.2 so I should not and will not delete IOS30.

In short, make sure nothing is using the IOS first.

But, given how small IOS's are, like ~2 MB, it may not be worth the effort.

Just remember to be very careful. Things won't run if you delete the IOS they depend on.

Mark McDonut · Jul 10, 2009

Dude 4chan won't even load they've been getting DDoS'd for like almost a week now.

And trust me, There are thousands of places more fun to troll than a gaming hacking forum. At least I've never seen a thread targeting this site so.....not very likely.

Never underestimate laziness coupled with curiousity, the true culprit.

Oh and I wouldn't be bothered deleting stub IOS files either, since you're more than likely going to redownload and reinstall the stubs next update anyway, just leave em.

Dan_Aykroyd · Jul 10, 2009

OK, I'll try to delete them now. According to WiiBrew, these are the deprecated IOSes:

IOS3
IOS4
IOS10
IOS11
IOS16
IOS20
IOS30
IOS40
IOS50
IOS51
IOS254

My only concern would be then to know if is there any game (old) that loads these to use? I could reinstall them later, but would be good to know anyway.

Dialexio · Jul 10, 2009

No game uses them. (Well, the Wii Backup Disc uses IOS16 v257... which is included on the ISO.) If a game did use one of those IOSes, Nintendo would not turn it into a stub, since the game dependent on the IOS would then cease to work.

Dan_Aykroyd · Jul 10, 2009

Great answer Dialexio! Thanks for helping out!

I'm deleting them at the moment; everything should be ok!

EDIT: Well, I've deleted them and everything seems to be going OK.

Nice side effects (besides satisfying my OCD and have a "perfect" Wii!

):

- 1 memory block freed!

- Now there're less IOS in the second tab of ATD!

And as an observation, while I was backuping each and every one of them with WADCreator, I noticed them all are 0.16 MB in size. So, they "REALLY" are stubs

Thanks for your comments.

s3phir0th115 · Jul 10, 2009

Dialexio said:
No game uses them. (Well, the Wii Backup Disc uses IOS16 v257... which is included on the ISO.) If a game did use one of those IOSes, Nintendo would not turn it into a stub, since the game dependent on the IOS would then cease to work.

This is true.

And for those of you arguing that you'll just have the stubs back in the next update, you can simply get the wads with NUSD and update with wad manager. If it still bugs you about updating, more like getting the stubs installed, then just shut it up with preloader combined with an appropriate no update hack.

You don't HAVE to tolerate stubs. There are ways around it.

Dan_Aykroyd · Jul 10, 2009

Yeah, or even easier: update and delete these stubs again! Is not like updates come out every week, plus deleting them with ATD is a breeze!

sl33p · Jul 10, 2009

Mark McDonut said:
Dude 4chan won't even load they've been getting DDoS'd for like almost a week now.

I was being more facetious than anything really.

To the OP: I'm glad you're OCD has been sated. And I didn't necessarily mean your post was dumb in itself. Just that the board's patience is getting rather short and tempers are starting to flare a bit. Sorry if I wasn't totally clear.

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