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Seeking help troubleshooting Homebrew Wii

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somedaynever

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I've been struggling for 2 weeks now, I am about to give up.
I booted up my Wii after about 8 years, I've moved since then, changed TV's, internet. I can't get my Wii to work at all.
I'd be so grateful for any time or thoughts you can give me to help!
I've been struggling for 2 weeks now, I am about to give up.

So here's where I am:

  • The Wii turns on, the disc drive flashes and spins, and bootmii (as boot2) loads.
  • As soon as Wii System Menu loads, the screen either goes black or goes to my TV's "no source connected" screen.
    • This happens on 3 separate TV's. I tried both with an HDMI adapter and composite cables, and switching bootmii.ini between NTSC and PROGRESSIVE for each one.
  • Homebrew channel can be accessed from bootmii but the screen is just BUBBLES.
    • I reformatted a new 2GB SD card to FAT32 and put my files back on fresh, made sure file structure is correct, apps are still not displaying.
  • I replaced the batteries on my Wiimotes and they won't sync, although the power button on the Wiimote turns the Wii on. I cannot connect any WiiMote.
  • I replaced the Bluetooth module last week with no change to syncing/display.
  • I reseated the WiFi module.
So, I now have a Wii that boots to BootMii and then does nothing. I'm going crazy! What have I missed? It's otherwise been untouched for years so I don't understand why it wouldn't just boot up like before.
Thank you for your time.
 
It sounds like some kind of brick. Best would be to use Bootmii to recover to a backup (which it sounds like you don't have).

You could try reinstalling the HBC - rehacking your Wii. This isn't without risk though, the install may fail or make whatever damage you have worse. I'm not saying it's likely, but a (potentially) uniquely damaged Wii isn't something the HackMii designers could have built in fail safes for.

You can launch the HackMii installer directly from BootMii. https://wiibrew.org/wiki/HackMii_Installer

Using BootMii​

If you already have BootMii installed, then you can use the SD loader to load the HackMii Installer.

  1. Download the HackMii Installer.
  2. Extract the HackMii Installer and copy boot.elf and bootmini.elf to your SD card.
  3. Load BootMii.
  4. Navigate to the SD card button and press it.
  5. Move through the filesystem to reach bootmini.elf.
  6. Open bootmini.elf. A proper IOS should now be launched, and the Wiimote can now connect.
 
If u have bootmii installed as boot2 u don't have anything to worry about software wise. Whatever u try, short of uninstalling bootmii boot2 (don't do that, lol), u can recover from.

You could try restoring a nand backup, or generating a new nand.bin using ohneschwanzenegger and restoring that, but if it were me I'd first try just reinstalling your system menu and system menu ios.

Alternatively you could run syscheck and share the log here for us to see if there are any clues there, but that's more like additional fact finding than an actual solution

Edit: you might not be able to reinstall the system menu and it's ios if u can't sync a wiimote though, unless u have a gamecube controller or something. You could try reinstalling the hbc as advised above, but it may make no difference, in which case you should probably go with the nand restore route. If u don't have a working nand backup, build/restore one from a broken backup using ohneschwanzenegger following this tutorial https://wii.hacks.guide/wii-factory-reset.html
 
Try remoing the sd card and do u have priiloader? If yes does it boot? If it doesn't u got the IOS Brick. As @XFlak said, u should share a syscheck, load it with bootmii
 
WiiWare_lover said:
Try remoing the sd card and do u have priiloader? If yes does it boot? If it doesn't u got the IOS Brick. As @XFlak said, u should share a syscheck, load it with bootmii
Click to expand...

While priiloader is always recommended, it's not critical for recovery in this situation given OP has bootmii boot2.

And if you got a syscheck you can load it with modmii (not bootmii) for an analysis and recommendations
 
XFlak said:
While priiloader is always recommended, it's not critical for recovery in this situation given OP has bootmii boot2.

And if you got a syscheck you can load it with modmii (not bootmii) for an analysis and recommendations
Click to expand...
I mean load the syscheck homebrew application with it and I asked, if he has priiloader to check if it is an IOS brick
 
I understand now, when you said it was an IOS Brick I misunderstood thinking u meant it was a FULL brick, my bad. Trying to load priiloader or whatever is fine oc as you said, lots of recovery options/methods that would potentially work equally well in this case :)
 
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Okay thank you all for the replies. So here's an update:
I had a backup available but accidentally overwrote it due to a misclick of the reset button in bootmii. So I ended up overwriting my nand file.

I started with Exidous's recommendation and figured out how to load the bootmini.elf, but it wouldn't proceed past a screen that warned about Scams, "You should not have paid for this software" or something. The black screen with white letters.

I can't run syscheck because my homebrew channel does not work, what I mean by that is no matter what I put in my apps folder, nothing displays when I open homebrew, it's just bubbles. When I navigate the SD card in bootmii to where the Syscheck is, the folder is empty.

I created a blank nand with ohneschwanzenegger and restored that successfully, the only thing that changed is now my homebrew channel won't open at all, my TV's default no-video-source pops up.

Unfortunately I don't have priiloader and the Wii itself does not boot without the sd card.

I'm going to continue to try and run Syscheck to get more info, then try these steps ( https://wii.hacks.guide/bricks#ios-brick ) if I do have an IOS brick. Thank you all for the input, if I get anything I'll report back.
 
somedaynever said:
I created a blank nand with ohneschwanzenegger and restored that successfully, the only thing that changed is now my homebrew channel won't open at all, my TV's default no-video-source pops up.
Click to expand...
Right, you put an unhacked Wii System Menu on your Wii. It can't run homebrew (like HBC) until it is rehacked.

Try the bootmii-hackmii install again. Hopefully, the replacement nand fixed whatever was fouling both HBC and the installer.
 
Thanks for your patience, I don't have time to work on this except for the weekends.
So here's what I don't understand. I can't continue with the HackMii installer, it hangs on the scam screen, Press 1 to continue never shows up. I looked into using ModMii to repair, but I can't launch any exploits because I cannot get into the Wii System Menu. I found a guide on Reddit but again it seems I'm stuck since I can't run an exploit. I think it's busted.
 
Thanks for that suggestion! I was excited to try, I haven't done that yet. With v1.0 of hackmii, I am hung up on the fuzzy looking screen that's half green and half pixelated.
Also I learned some new info that might be useful: I had USBLoaderGX installed and I understand that I needed to have a cIOS for that, I'm still trying to figure out how this impacts me
 
If u make a new nand dump using bootmii, then open it in showmiiwads and check for any forwarder channels, if u find one, we can use it as a backdoor to launch into a wad manager and install the updated IOSs hackmii installer wants
 
Thanks again XFlak :) I followed your instructions and I'm no pro, but it looks like I don't have a forwarder channel available, at least it doesn't explicitly say the words "Forwarder"... So I had 2 nand's available, one before ohneschwanzenegger and one after, and I attached the exports from ShowMiiNand.
 

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Wait hackmii installer doesn't load even after restoring the ohneschwanzenegger nand?

Since u have bootmii boot2, u could try something out, and worst case scenario you can revert to a previous nand dump. But iirc ohneschwanzenegger has the option to install wads to nand dumps, just install the open hbc wad and try restoring that new nand.bin and cross your fingers
Post automatically merged:

Also in your older version of the hbc u could try a dif SD or a usb hdd in the wii's usb port0 to load apps. Could also just open the app in modmii and wiiload it to your hbc via Wi-Fi/Lan, but that's hardly ideal, you'd want to be able to access sd or hdd for other things eventually

Also, I'm assuming the issue persisted post ohneschwanzenegger?
 
Last edited by XFlak,
XFlak said:
Wait hackmii installer doesn't load even after restoring the ohneschwanzenegger nand?

Since u have bootmii boot2, u could try something out, and worst case scenario you can revert to a previous nand dump. But iirc ohneschwanzenegger has the option to install wads to nand dumps, just install the open hbc wad and try restoring that new nand.bin and cross your fingers
Post automatically merged:

Also in your older version of the hbc u could try a dif SD or a usb hdd in the wii's usb port0 to load apps. Could also just open the app in modmii and wiiload it to your hbc via Wi-Fi/Lan, but that's hardly ideal, you'd want to be able to access sd or hdd for other things eventually

Also, I'm assuming the issue persisted post ohneschwanzenegger?
Click to expand...
Nope Hackmii v1.0 and v1.2 both got stuck , "Press 1" never showed up, that happened before and after ohneschwanzenegger. I waited ~10 min each time.
So the good news is the HBC wad worked, I was able to get it in the nand like you said.
HBC opens, and I'm at the bubble screen again with no apps displayed (like before).
I've got a gamecube controller hooked up, and when I press X, I can see the menu to change the storage device SD Card, USB, but the options are grayed out. I have an SD card in and a USB hdd in port0, the directories are correct (apps folder in the root). And my Wii is not connected to internet since I haven't been able to access the Wii System Menu
 

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I'll admit a degree of senility when it comes to hacking Wii - I've been doing it the same way for years and if it ain't broke I don't fix it. My point is: you're experiencing some weird behavior, and we could be missing something - that we normally take for granted. So I'm going to list some basic information.

The Hackmii installer v1.0 installs HBC 1.1.0
The Hackmii installer v1.2 installs HBC 1.1.2

The HBC Github's latest release is 1.1.4-1

The latest official Wii System Menu released by Nintendo is 4.3.

_____

Simplest potential problem and solution would be if you have been using (and installing via ohne) an old system menu version. Hackmii and HBC should work with any system menu version, but they're understandably far less tested on outmoded System Menu versions. Maybe that was the source of the oddity.

I've never personally used the Github HBC versions post 1.1.2. My understanding is that they were mostly updates for WiiU (vWii) stuff and I never encountered a Wii that didn't work with 1.1.2. I'm guessing that the Github wad is the one you added to your most recent ohne.

_____

If you're really risk seeking and give up on restoring full functionality, I do have a thought. I basically don't go into Wii System Menu on my Wii. I use Wiiflow (USB loader), which launches on every Wii boot via Priiloader. Wiiflow can launch homebrew (like HBC does) as well as games (like System Menu does).

So a very wrong way to do this could be to give up on System Menu and HBC, install Priiloader (via bootmii), and set Priiloader to boot a USB loader (or similar all inclusive software) off the SD card/USB on every Wii boot.

This might not work at all - whatever your problem is could potentially also foul up any of the software I mentioned. I recommend keep trying to get HBC and System Menu working. I just figured you might want the reassurance there are crazy stupid alternatives.
 

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