Hi everyone, I've spent a lot of time troubleshooting this and I'm hoping someone recognizes the pattern.
Goal: Run Retro Rewind on a genuine Japanese Mario Kart Wii disc, using a Korean (KOR) region Wii console with Homebrew Channel installed.
Symptom: Riivolution loads fine, lets me select the patch, disc drive spins up (blue light flashing), Wiimote safety warning screen appears — then it hangs on a completely black screen. Have to hold the power button to reset. No error message, just a hard freeze.
Same symptom pattern in other apps:
What I've already ruled out:
Common factor between both consoles:
SysCheck reports (both consoles) attached/summarized:
Since the freeze reproduces on a console with literally nothing installed beyond stock IOS + HBC, I'm starting to suspect this might be something specific to IOS58 rev 6176 on KOR System Menu 4.3K when doing simultaneous disc+SD access (loading a disc while Riivolution patches from SD), since disc-only apps (Gecko OS) and SD-only apps (WiiXplorer/SysCheck) work fine on both consoles.
Has anyone seen this specific combination before, or know of a fix/workaround? Happy to provide more info, more SysCheck output, or test anything suggested.
I know this is a long post, but I tried to document everything as thoroughly as possible so it's easier to help me pinpoint the issue. Really hoping someone can shed some light on this — thanks so much in advance!
Goal: Run Retro Rewind on a genuine Japanese Mario Kart Wii disc, using a Korean (KOR) region Wii console with Homebrew Channel installed.
Symptom: Riivolution loads fine, lets me select the patch, disc drive spins up (blue light flashing), Wiimote safety warning screen appears — then it hangs on a completely black screen. Have to hold the power button to reset. No error message, just a hard freeze.
Same symptom pattern in other apps:
- CleanRip: hangs at "Insert a SD/USB FAT/NTFS formatted device" even with a freshly formatted, confirmed-working FAT32 SD card inserted
- USB Loader GX: hangs on "Reinitializing devices" during startup, both via Homebrew Channel and via a UNEO forwarder channel (so it's not a HBC memory leftover issue)
- WiiFlow Lite (v5.6.2): hangs on screen showing "sd:/wbfs" text
- Gecko OS, WiiXplorer, SysCheck HDE: all work perfectly on the same SD card
What I've already ruled out:
- SD card hardware/filesystem: confirmed working — WiiXplorer can create/write files with no issue; also reformatted fresh as FAT32
- Disc itself: genuine JPN Mario Kart Wii disc, boots and plays fine via Gecko OS
- cIOS: installed d2x-v11-beta3 on slot 249 (base 56) specifically for USB Loader GX, confirmed installed correctly via SysCheck, made no difference
- USB drive: tried a separate USB drive, same "device not detected" issue with CleanRip, so switched to testing SD only
- Console-specific issue: reproduced the exact same Riivolution freeze on a completely separate Korean Wii (different unit, different history — one was bought used, the other new years earlier). That second console had a clean Homebrew Channel install via LetterBomb, zero cIOS installed (all 24x/25x slots are stubs), yet Riivolution still froze at the exact same point (Wiimote warning → black screen).
Common factor between both consoles:
- Both region KOR
- Both System Menu 4.3K (v518)
- Both running IOS58 (rev 6176)
SysCheck reports (both consoles) attached/summarized:
- Console A ("mine"): Hollywood v0x11, HBC 1.1.0, has multiple d2x-v8final cIOS slots (245-251) plus a Hermes cIOS
- Console B ("family's"): Hollywood v0x21, HBC 1.1.2, zero cIOS installed, all high-numbered IOS slots are stubs
Since the freeze reproduces on a console with literally nothing installed beyond stock IOS + HBC, I'm starting to suspect this might be something specific to IOS58 rev 6176 on KOR System Menu 4.3K when doing simultaneous disc+SD access (loading a disc while Riivolution patches from SD), since disc-only apps (Gecko OS) and SD-only apps (WiiXplorer/SysCheck) work fine on both consoles.
Has anyone seen this specific combination before, or know of a fix/workaround? Happy to provide more info, more SysCheck output, or test anything suggested.
I know this is a long post, but I tried to document everything as thoroughly as possible so it's easier to help me pinpoint the issue. Really hoping someone can shed some light on this — thanks so much in advance!
