Hacking Restoring Wii U after hacking

exorbitant · Dec 11, 2017

Hi folks,

The last few days I have been reading a lot about the possibilities to hack a Wii U. I am quite fascinated about what is possible, and thank belongs to the smart people who came up with this!:-)
A lot of information has already been published and the tutorial presented in this forum is really helpful.

I still have some remaining questions and I would be very grateful when someone can help me:-)

Has anyone of you managed to reset their Wii U to the original state (factory state) after hacking?
1. Are there any traces of information left in the internal storage? The reason that I am asking is that it is recommended to perform a full NAND backup for which the Homebrew environment is needed. That means that I have to modify my Wii U first in order to be able to make this backup. Hence, the modification is then also included in the backup files, isn't it?
2. Will the homebrew disappear when I delete everything from my SD card?
3. Where is the CFW (common firmware) installed?
4. How can I safely remove all files that are related to hacking and homebrewing? Just deleting the homebrew app and everything on my SD card?
5. Apart from deleting everything from my SD card and the homebrew app, the other alternative is to format the NAND and install the backup using a homebrew app. But in the case of installing a backup, I won't get rid of the homebrew app as I need it for installing the backup of the NAND.
Regarding hacking, which files are actually stored internally?
Can I force that the homebrew apps (in theory every available app) are to be installed only on a single SD card?
Can I also install all the homebrewing apps on a single HDD instead?
Can I have the homebrew apps, the NAND backups files, and games ISO and rom files (SNES, PS1, N64, Gamecube, Wii, Wii U games) on a single SD / single HDD?
Does the SD card or the HDD has to be plugged into the Wii U all the time in order to use homebrewing apps? Of course, when I want to play games then it has to be plugged in.
Can I use remaining space of the SD card or HDD for other purposes to store data on?
What happens if I do not deactivate auto-updates? I guess that it may happen that the homebrew environment may not work (properly) after a new update from Nintendo comes out and is automatically installed. In this case, what can I do to remove the corrupted homebrew environment including all related files safely to install - if available - a new homebrew environment that works with the new update? I guess that new updates will become rare anyway as the switch is already out there. Support will decrease eventually.
Can Nintendo find out that I hacked my Wii U and play games downloaded from the net?
Can I still use my Wii U normally as without hacking after hacking? For example, can I still play online, play offline and buy stuff from the eshop?
Has anyone successfully downloaded a Wii U and Wii game from the internet such as Mario Kart 8 and played it online? Does this really work?
Has anyone successfully downloaded (semilegal) roms of retro-games remastered for Wii U (usually available in the eshop) and played it with the use of the homebrew environment?
Can anyone report on how successfully one can play N64 and SNES games on the Wii U? Can I a buy an N64 controller with a USB cable and play the rom games in the Wii U homebrew environment?
Has anyone bricked his Wii U by hacking and has restored it successfully?

I would be very delighted to receive an answer. Hopefully, my questions will also be helpful to others who have similar questions.

Kind regards

exo

Maxunit · Dec 16, 2017

I am far from being experienced and can only speak from a visual standpoint, but:

I purchased a used WiiU 2 days ago and it got the Factory Reset treatment before I arrived to check it out before buying it and it had nothing on it...no games, nothing. The only way I could tell, that the previous owner hacked it, is, that he forgot to wipe the 2gb sdcard, which contained the files for HBL and Loadiine...heh.

Paccc · Dec 16, 2017

The CFW (custom firmware) on Wii U is more like patches loaded in memory to among other things allow Homebrew Loader Apps and Games load without having the correct signatures.
You can use it to load the wup installer gx2 and install disc-signed copies of your games on the external HD (or internal memory).

At that point you can remove the HBL and apps from the sd-card and use the disc-copies on HD (aka brazilian method)

The first patch you make to the wii u is to buy a legit DS game and patch it (haxchi) to get a reliable way to load HBL and unsigned apps,
this is recommended to be on internal memory since the next step would be to patch the system to load it on startup (coldboot haxchi) - but you don't need to do that.

So before installing coldboot haxchi you can safely remove the external HD, remove your NNID user and uninstall your apps from internal memory.
With coldboot you may brick if uninstalling or removing the user owning the DS app.

I guess the other things affecting internal memory is hacking vWii and installing wad files for eshop games.
But now you have the option to inject both wii games and wii emulators into the legit wii U VC games,
This makes it possible to avoid hacking vwii directly and storing wii games on the wiiu encrypted harddrive,
though you may still need a large SD-card for games loaded into homebrew emulators, you can not put your own file on the wii u harddrive.

For me, I don't see the need for further hackings anytime soon.

Hacking Restoring Wii U after hacking

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