Hi all, first-time poster here. I’ve looked around the forum for a little while and it seemed that this could be a good spot to post some technical details from my digging around on a borked Wii U.
The Problem
My sister gave me her Wii U about two or so years ago along with a variety of games so my son and I can check it out. My memory is a bit hazy on the specifics at this point, but basically I went about clearing some games off of the console to make some room. After poking around, I decided it was best to just wipe it and set it up as a new console. Soon after, it got stuck on the “Deleting All Content and Settings” screen and has been basically that way ever since.
Right after the boot screen the previous screen flashes for about half a second, then the delete screen comes up and plays the usual ambient music. About 10 seconds or so later it freezes, the music stops, and nothing responds. Cold boots and unplugging for a while change nothing.
I considered the whole soldering approach, but I’m definitely not on the level to take that on. A recent experience on fixing a car head unit proved that out and I wasn’t about to do that to an old Nintendo console. Seeing that there was a recovery_menu and UDPIH approach was something I could get around more comfortably.
Console details:
Wii U: USA, WUP-101(02), made around September 2013, retail keyset, Wii U Menu 5.5.3 U.
The console has ever been modded or softmodded from what I could tell.
What I’ve done so far (Nothing written to the console):
What I’d love help with:
I haven’t changed or deleted anything on the console and I’m happy to run any read-only checks and share more info. I’m leaving out my serial number and OTP/SEEPROM files for obvious reasons.
Thanks for reading, and thanks to everyone who builds and maintains these tools. Getting this far without soldering has been great.
The Problem
My sister gave me her Wii U about two or so years ago along with a variety of games so my son and I can check it out. My memory is a bit hazy on the specifics at this point, but basically I went about clearing some games off of the console to make some room. After poking around, I decided it was best to just wipe it and set it up as a new console. Soon after, it got stuck on the “Deleting All Content and Settings” screen and has been basically that way ever since.
Right after the boot screen the previous screen flashes for about half a second, then the delete screen comes up and plays the usual ambient music. About 10 seconds or so later it freezes, the music stops, and nothing responds. Cold boots and unplugging for a while change nothing.
I considered the whole soldering approach, but I’m definitely not on the level to take that on. A recent experience on fixing a car head unit proved that out and I wasn’t about to do that to an old Nintendo console. Seeing that there was a recovery_menu and UDPIH approach was something I could get around more comfortably.
Console details:
Wii U: USA, WUP-101(02), made around September 2013, retail keyset, Wii U Menu 5.5.3 U.
The console has ever been modded or softmodded from what I could tell.
What I’ve done so far (Nothing written to the console):
- Got into the recovery menu with UDPIH using a Raspberry Pi 4 (recovery_menu v0.6). Took a few tries to get USB connectivity and the timing right.
- Dumped OTP + SEEPROM and backed them up.
- First Dump Syslogs gave me a ~14 KB log from the recovery session. It shows slc01 and mlc01 mounting fine, the master title 0005001010040100 found on mlc01, and no MMC errors. The MLC is a Toshiba 032G4C (29760 MiB).
- I then let the console sit on the hung delete screen for several minutes and dumped logs again. The menu reported success, but the logs folder came out empty.
- Set Coldboot Title to Wii U Menu (USA). No change.
- Connected to wupserver over Wi-Fi and checked things read-only with wupclient. The Wii U Menu title folder (00050010/10040100) has code, content and meta. meta/ has the boot images, boot movie, icon and meta.xml. meta.xml is 9621 bytes, valid XML (checked with xmllint), and ends with </menu>.
- productArea and gameRegion are both USA, so I haven’t touched Debug System Region.
What I’d love help with:
- Has anyone found more details about a cause? Or perhaps some new ideas where fix could be implemented? I found similar reports on page 31 of the UDPIH thread from 2023 but no resolution.
- Where does the console store whatever sends it to this screen at boot, and is it something I can look at read-only through wupclient?
- Why would Dump Syslogs create an empty folder after reporting success?
- Would Install WUP with the 5.5.6 USA update be safe way to proceed here? What folder layout does it expect, and is going from 5.5.3 up to 5.5.6 okay?
I haven’t changed or deleted anything on the console and I’m happy to run any read-only checks and share more info. I’m leaving out my serial number and OTP/SEEPROM files for obvious reasons.
Thanks for reading, and thanks to everyone who builds and maintains these tools. Getting this far without soldering has been great.
