Hacking Help Restoring NAND for "Bricked" Wii; Backups aren't working

blancomex · Feb 21, 2020

My original Wii for some reason bricks itself after long periods of no use. No biggie, it's happened before and I've just restored from one of my NAND backups through BootMii and everything eventually works.

Now, for some reason it won't load into the system menu with all the channels etc. It gets hung up on loading the system menu, so I can see a black screen and the tiles for the channels flash occasionally, but the system menu never loads. Curiously I never see the "Health and Safety screen" and I don't have priiloader hacks installed.

I have bootmii and complete access to Homebrew Channel, yet I can't seem to figure out why I can't unbrick this thing.

Things I have tried:
Using bootmii to restore 4 different backups dating from 2018 to 2010
Using ModManager to reinstall system menus and install corresponding patched IOS
Using ohneschwanzenegger to create fresh NANDs from my existing backups and installing fresh sysmenus on them

I welcome any input and ideas on how I can get my good old Wii working again.

Thanks in advance

KleinesSinchen · Feb 21, 2020

blancomex said:
My original Wii for some reason bricks itself after long periods of no use. No biggie, it's happened before and I've just restored from one of my NAND backups through BootMii and everything eventually works.

NAND corrupting itself/losing data over time. Hmmm. A failing NAND chip?

blancomex said:
Using bootmii to restore 4 different backups dating from 2018 to 2010
Using ModManager to reinstall system menus and install corresponding patched IOS
Using ohneschwanzenegger to create fresh NANDs from my existing backups and installing fresh sysmenus on them

If the backups are fine and worked in the past and the SD card is good… I tend to see this as a hardware problem and would sadly locate the problem on the NAND itself. This could be tested by flashing a backup to a replacement chip with a hardware programmer and replacing the questionable NAND. But this is not something easy to do.

No idea if other failing hardware components could lead to such an persistent brick as well.
=======

Maybe I'm wrong, the above is more or less guesswork that somewhat fits to the error description. Perhaps somebody else has another idea…

This is unsatisfactory, but as long as you can boot into the HB Channel, you can pretty much still use the Wii.

XFlak · Feb 21, 2020

I agree with Kleines, it sounds like you tried everything possible from a software solution perspective (I was going to suggest ohneschwanzenegger, but you tried it already). And if it truly is the nand that's failing it may get worse and eventually you might not be able to even boot into the HBC.

Hmmm, I just had an idea for a workaround "solution". You have bootmii installed as boot2, right? Try setting up neek2o (either sneek2o or uneek2o) and an emulated nand, ModMii can assist with this if you need it. Once properly configured, launching "bootmii" will actually launch neek2o and load the system menu from your external device instead of the internal nand. If the hardware failure is limited to the nand, this should work as long as the bootmii boot2 blocks are functional. This won't fix your real nand system menu, but bypassing it is the next best thing (short of hardware repairs)

blancomex · Feb 21, 2020

KleinesSinchen said:
If the backups are fine and worked in the past and the SD card is good… I tend to see this as a hardware problem and would sadly locate the problem on the NAND itself. This could be tested by flashing a backup to a replacement chip with a hardware programmer and replacing the questionable NAND. But this is not something easy to do.

No idea if other failing hardware components could lead to such an persistent brick as well.

Thanks. In the back of my mind I figured it may be a hardware issue considering I would literally do nothing and it would brick itself eventually. Good thing is I really just want to use it as a Gamecube since I have my modded vWii.

XFlak said:
Hmmm, I just had an idea for a workaround "solution". You have bootmii installed as boot2, right? Try setting up neek2o (either sneek2o or uneek2o) and an emulated nand, ModMii can assist with this if you need it. Once properly configured, launching "bootmii" will actually launch neek2o and load the system menu from your external device instead of the internal nand. If the hardware failure is limited to the nand, this should work as long as the bootmii boot2 blocks are functional. This won't fix your real nand system menu, but bypassing it is the next best thing (short of hardware repairs)

Hmm interesting, I'll try the emuNAND route and let you know what happens.

In the worst case scenario, I could get another Wii, but I can't flash my old NAND onto it correct? I remember there being some issues with trying to do that with two separate Wiis.

XFlak · Feb 21, 2020

Giantpune developed another app called punetwiin (I may have the spelling wrong) that could take a doner wii's nand dump and convert it to work on a recepient wii. Requires both sets of wii's keys. Before that you could use Betwiin to do the same thing but it was more challenging to get to work (so I've heard)

In my opinion it's not worth the effort. You can always use save game manager gx to Transfer most content.

blancomex · Feb 22, 2020

Using sneek worked! Oddly enough my Wii system menu booted normally a few times before I made the emuNAND, though it ended up freezing after a couple of minutes. The sneek nand seems to be working as intended though and I based it off my recent backup so everything is still there. I just hope nothing else craps out on me. Thank you for all your help!!

Hacking Help Restoring NAND for "Bricked" Wii; Backups aren't working

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