Hacking NOOB PARADISE - ask away

undercrust · Nov 21, 2020

Hello,

Before finding this site, I modded my Wii 4.3U using a a YouTube walkthrough. It used LetterBomb, and it worked to install HBC and update the cIOS so that I could use my HDD backups.

However, the walkthrough skipped installing BootMii when installing the HBC, and now when I try to run either the LetterBomb exploit or directly running HackMii through HBC, HackMii freezes at the "Press 1 to Continue"screen.

Am I screwed? Does it matter? Is there any brick protection I can do at this point?

Thank you!

Alexander1970 · Nov 21, 2020

Hello.

Welcome to the Wii Section.

undercrust said:
However, the walkthrough skipped installing BootMii when installing the HBC, and now when I try to run either the LetterBomb exploit or directly running HackMii through HBC, HackMii freezes at the "Press 1 to Continue"screen.

Maybe you are using now a different/bigger SD Card then before,when you do the Modding ?

Can you maybe make an sysCheck please ?
https://gbatemp.net/threads/posting-a-system-check.300279/

Good Luck
Thank you.

XFlak · Nov 21, 2020

Use Modmii's hackmii solutions wizard, then afterwards use modmiis main wizard or syscheck updater wizard

Edit: install a clean IOS58 or some other ios the hackmii installer likes in order for it to work properly. Following the bolded instructions will help you do this, and other steps to help you optimize your wii

hongcan · Nov 22, 2020

XFlak said:
So, listen carefully, run modmii's hackmii solutions wizard, not the main Modmii Wizard. The hackmii solutions wizard will not ask you what firmware you want to update to, so I know for certain you have run the wrong wizard (since you claim to have chosen to update to 4.1). You can proceed again with this wizard later, but for now, stop with that modmii guide, and run modmii's hackmii solutions wizard/guide. Once completed, you can proceed with the standard/main modmii wizard again

Ah ok. i get it now. Thanks. will try this ASAP.
.........

Yes it worked! Finally HBC is installed. Thank you very much for your help. Will continue with the standard modmii wizard later on.

JustMatt · Nov 25, 2020

Hello Everyone.

I recently decided to resurrect my old Wii who's optical drive had given up. I coincidentally followed the instructions from one of the links at the beginning of this thread (Complete Softmod Guide). Seemingly successfully used the letterbomb exploit, installed the Homebrew Channel, and installed clOS per all of the settings listed. Everything looked like it was fine; I loaded up Wii sports and it worked. However, when I went to play it again, the console froze when I tried to load the game. I used both USBLoaderGX and WiiFlow and had the same issue.

After reading some of the comments around here, it looks like my problem may be that I was trying to use a USB thumb drive instead of a proper external HDD. When I moved my game to the 2GB non-SDHC card I have, it seems to work well, even if the loading speeds from the SD card and overall capacity leave something to be desired.

I was wondering if my thought process made sense to some of the more experienced people around here. Also, if I do need an external HDD for better performance and capacity, are there any features or attributes that I should look out for or stay away from? Thanks in advance for any suggestions that anyone here has.

Aeredren · Nov 25, 2020

JustMatt said:
Hello Everyone.

I recently decided to resurrect my old Wii who's optical drive had given up. I coincidentally followed the instructions from one of the links at the beginning of this thread (Complete Softmod Guide). Seemingly successfully used the letterbomb exploit, installed the Homebrew Channel, and installed clOS per all of the settings listed. Everything looked like it was fine; I loaded up Wii sports and it worked. However, when I went to play it again, the console froze when I tried to load the game. I used both USBLoaderGX and WiiFlow and had the same issue.

After reading some of the comments around here, it looks like my problem may be that I was trying to use a USB thumb drive instead of a proper external HDD. When I moved my game to the 2GB non-SDHC card I have, it seems to work well, even if the loading speeds from the SD card and overall capacity leave something to be desired.

I was wondering if my thought process made sense to some of the more experienced people around here. Also, if I do need an external HDD for better performance and capacity, are there any features or attributes that I should look out for or stay away from? Thanks in advance for any suggestions that anyone here has.

Eventually force ios 249 to run the game on USB Loader when using your usb thumb. (who knows, it might help)
If I were you buying an hdd for my wii, I will look out to drives that are directly powered through the usb port made for data, for simplicity sake.
Also install priiloader and force the wii to go to full shutdown. Otherwise the wii mess with unmounting the drive when it go to suspend mode and corrupted filesystem happen more frequently.

Also seek info about filesystems. Drives are frequently preformat in fat32 or NTFS. I'm sure that fat32 work with USBloaderGX but there is the 4GB file size limit and you might need to cut your wbfs manually in 4GB pieces. NTFS might work too but I let you find out on the web 'cause I'm not 100% sure about it

XFlak · Nov 25, 2020

Makes sense, it could be the thumb drive, and while it's the most likely culprit we can't necessarily rule out other explanations. If you post a Syscheck we can start to rule some things out, but I think you are correct to assume it's the flash drive.

In terms of what drive to buy... try to avoid usb3.0, you would be paying for speeds which you wouldn't recognize on the wii (unless u do a lot of transferring on your PC there's not much benefit).

You should be fine with either a powered or portable drive. I prefer portable because it's one less wire. If you are going to be using the same drive with a WiiU for some reason, you may want to pick up a Y cable as well so that it can draw power from 2 USB ports (the wiiu's usb ports provide less power than the original wii)

ca032769 · Nov 25, 2020

JustMatt said:
Hello Everyone.

I recently decided to resurrect my old Wii who's optical drive had given up. I coincidentally followed the instructions from one of the links at the beginning of this thread (Complete Softmod Guide). Seemingly successfully used the letterbomb exploit, installed the Homebrew Channel, and installed clOS per all of the settings listed. Everything looked like it was fine; I loaded up Wii sports and it worked. However, when I went to play it again, the console froze when I tried to load the game. I used both USBLoaderGX and WiiFlow and had the same issue.

After reading some of the comments around here, it looks like my problem may be that I was trying to use a USB thumb drive instead of a proper external HDD. When I moved my game to the 2GB non-SDHC card I have, it seems to work well, even if the loading speeds from the SD card and overall capacity leave something to be desired.

I was wondering if my thought process made sense to some of the more experienced people around here. Also, if I do need an external HDD for better performance and capacity, are there any features or attributes that I should look out for or stay away from? Thanks in advance for any suggestions that anyone here has.

Yes Flash Drives are BAD!!! While they can work, and I have not had any issues personally, they do not hold a lot of games and can cause random problems that are enough to drive one mad. I use SanDisk or PNY 128GB or 256GB flash drives when testing things.

I always recommend external Western Digital MyBook or Passport hard drives. The Passports are great because you can buy a Black, White, Red or Blue (close enough in color) to match your Wii and have it sit right on top. Seeing the Passport drives do not need external power (the drives are powered by the Wii) and start up and shut down when using the Wii it makes for an easy automatic setup. I still almost always use a short USB Y-Cable to make sure there is no issue with powering the drives, but they have not given me any problems yet with just the single USB cable. This is because if the Wii's USB ports become weak there may not be enough power to keep the drive going.

Depending on how many Wii & GameCube games you have or plan to have will determine what size drive you need. The setup for a 1TB or 2TB is exceptionally easy, but don't forget to convert the drive from GPT to MBR. Setting up a 3TB or 4TB just needs a couple extra steps to make the drive on FAT32 as one partition which you can find in my signature link below. If you want all of the Wii & GameCube games I recommend a 5TB Passport or P-10 Game Drive, which is what I currently use and is now my favorite. I probably have 1,800 Wii titles and 800 GameCube titles on it which are all accessible on one single FAT32 64k cluster size MBR partition.

Now I also set up Wii's that do NOT use a hard drive and only use the SD card. This is mainly if people that have kids that might mess with the setup or just have a limited number of games they desire. You would not believe the number of people that only want to plat Mario Kart. I have used 64GB, 128GB, 256GB & now 512GB SDXC cards for such setups. On a 256GB card you'll get close to 110 games and a 512GB card will get you up to 225 games. My Wii games are in the .wbfs format to make them as small as possible and my GameCube games are the full ISO. **Note that I think it's USB Loader GX that does not support the use of Wii games off an SD card, but the others do. WiiFlow Lite which is still being maintained might be your best bet of a loader to use if you choose the SD card only route. I just saw Amazon has 512GB Cards for $67.99 which is less than half of what I paid a year ago.

Before you ask, yes the Wii will work on hard drives larger than 2TB, but there are special thing that need to be done (again see the link in my signature) and I find Western Digital drives are the best choice because you have to change the partition table from GPT to MBR, again see the link in my signature for a more detailed explanation. And yes, large SDXC cards will work on the Wii as long as the system menu is 4.0 and above.

Good luck!!! And let us know which route you decided to take and if you were successful.

EDIT - Links Added:
-PNY 512GB SD Card: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00XJRX01M
-WD 5TB P-10 Game Drive: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07VNTFHD5
-WD Red & White old style Passport in 1TB-4TB: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01LQQH85G
-WD Red, Black & Blue new style Passport in 1TB-5TB: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07VP5X239
-USB Y-Cable: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005M0ICG2

JustMatt · Dec 5, 2020

Thanks a ton for the help and suggestions. I haven't had a lot of time to do much, but I did a search for Wii Syscheck and went with the first one I found (Syscheck HacksDen Edition). Is there a different recommended Syscheck utility that I should seek out? I've attached the output file in case that reveals some misstep I took along the way.

So far I've been able to reliably load Wii Sports and Wii Play (kind of) off of my 2gb fat32 SD card using WiiflowLite. When trying to use some of the larger capacity fat32 formatted SD cards I have, attempting to load a game ends up leaving me with a persistent black screen crash again.

I'm also guessing that I'm out of luck trying to find an optical drive that can read Wii discs? My friend got me an ISO of Wii Play but it looks like it's in PAL format. WiiFlowLite will play it, but it's in black and white, slightly jittery, and the bottom quarter of the screen is cut off. I have the disc, but it looks like making an ISO from a Wii disc requires specific hardware that I won't likely have time to deal with. I tried poking around in the settings on WiiflowLite, but couldn't seem to find anything that made a difference.

Once again, a sincere thanks for all of the information that you guys shared. My kids are having a lot of fun with the limited games that I've been able to get running, so that leaves less time for tinkering, but I'll get there slowly.

NyxSS · Dec 20, 2020

Hey guys! Need some help with a Wii modding problem!

I modded my wii so I can play LOZ Skyward Sword last week and I got it to finally work with an almost full hard-drive. I don't have the motion plus controller yet so I figure I'd play it when I receive the one I ordered online.

Fast forward today, I decided to install Nintendont on my wii so I could play GameCube games. But now, when I tried accessing skyward sword, the game won't load and would just kick me back to homebrew.

I tried a few fixes such as changing the loader IOS (tried 249 and 250) and reinstalling the CIOS (I used the beta v10 first, tried v8, and reverted back to v10), but still the same problem.

I'm using loader IOS 58 because it's the only loader that detects my HDD

DA88 · Dec 22, 2020

Hello, I could use some help. I hacked my wii a few months ago so I could check out homebrew and play some emulators. I have been using FCE Ultra GX to play NES games. Recently, it stopped working. When I try to load it, I get a code dump/stack dump screen. It was working fine for a while. The only changes I made recently were to delete and then re-install a wii game (from a disc) through USB loader GX. I am not very knowledgeable about hacking or code, so I don't know what to do to fix this. I did delete and re-install FCE Ultra GX, but that did not fix it. Thanks for any help!

jeannotte · Dec 22, 2020

DA88 said:
Hello, I could use some help. I hacked my wii a few months ago so I could check out homebrew and play some emulators. I have been using FCE Ultra GX to play NES games. Recently, it stopped working. When I try to load it, I get a code dump/stack dump screen. It was working fine for a while. The only changes I made recently were to delete and then re-install a wii game (from a disc) through USB loader GX. I am not very knowledgeable about hacking or code, so I don't know what to do to fix this. I did delete and re-install FCE Ultra GX, but that did not fix it. Thanks for any help!

View attachment 238962

Hello,

Several questions arise? :

post a syscheck report by following this guide please == <https://gbatemp.net/threads/posting-a-system-check.300279/

What is your USB (USB key, external hard drive) ?? and in what format is it (NTFS, fat 32) ??

Avoid USB keys (often black screen or does not start).

Where are your homebrews, emulators placed?

Your SD card, how is it formatted?

DA88 · Dec 23, 2020

jeannotte said:
Hello,

Several questions arise? :

post a syscheck report by following this guide please ==

What is your USB (USB key, external hard drive) ?? and in what format is it (NTFS, fat 32) ??

Avoid USB keys (often black screen or does not start).

Where are your homebrews, emulators placed?

Your SD card, how is it formatted?

I am using a small USB drive (8 gb). I don't have an SD card and was able to get the homebrew channel installed without it. I had a lot of problems getting the homebrew browser installed, but finally ended up getting it. I also have a few emulators installed (Not64, FCE Ultra GX, Nintendont, C-64-network.org (Frodo), Genesis Plus GX) as well as USB Loader GX, Multi-Mod Manager 13.4, FCE Ultra GX Channel Installer, and YAWMM. All my files are on the flash drive. The emulators and programs are in the Apps folder, and the ROMS are in various other folders on the USB home directory (fceugx, frodo, games, wbfs). My USB is formatted in MS-DOS FAT (I have an old Macbook Pro).

Is there a way to do a syscheck without an SD card? So far, I have been able to do everything with only my USB drive.

Thank you!

XFlak · Dec 23, 2020

You should be able to save the syscheck app to your USB apps folder instead of sd card and proceed in the same fashion

DA88 · Dec 23, 2020

XFlak said:
You should be able to save the syscheck app to your USB apps folder instead of sd card and proceed in the same fashion

I extracted the syscheck folder to the apps folder on my USB drive. After running the check, I turned off the Wii and checked for the report on my USB. It was not there (the directions say that this will happen SD is supported but USB is not). I tried to do this again so I could take screenshots of the report, but now the app is not functioning. When I open the SyscheckHDE app from the homebrew browser it says there "no description available" and when I load the app is goes to a black screen and does nothing. I assume it is locking up.

DA88 · Dec 23, 2020

Now things have gotten worse. When I load the home brew channel, none of my apps show up. I get only some bubbles floating up the screen. Seems like my Wii is not recognizing my USB drive. Would running the Syscheck cause that to happen?

XFlak · Dec 23, 2020

You could try formatting it as fat32, also make sure you have it plugged into port0 on the wii (port nearest the edge)

DA88 · Dec 25, 2020

I took my USB out of the Wii and put it into my computer to see if something had changed. A large number of .png files had been placed into the root of the USB. I did not put them there. I deleted and re-installed the syscheckHD folder and put my USB back into the Wii. It still did not work and USB Loader GX did not work now either, whereas USB Loader had worked fine even when FCE Ultra GX was not working. So I put the USB back into my computer, and it was no longer recognized. My computer couldn't read it. So I re-formatted the USB as MS-DOS FAT. I think MS-DOS FAT is the same as FAT32 (and that is the closest thing on my macbook pro anyway). After re-formatting the USB and re-installing all of the files I had before, everything went back to working.

jeannotte mentioned that USB's were error prone or not reliable, so that is likely the problem. I don't have an external HD, so this is what I am using right now.

However, this experience has left me with a few questions. First, can any information be gathered from the stack dump/code dump error screen that I showed in my original post? Does that screen relay any specific or useful information relative to any problems that may be going on? Second, is I was able to generate a syscheck report, what should I look for on it? What would indicate a problem? And if so, does the information in the report provide clues as to what needs to be done to fix any problems?

Thanks everyone for your input and for helping. I appreciate it.

XFlak · Dec 25, 2020

Stack dump won't really help. I'm surprised syscheck doesn't have usb support!

Anyway, you can use ModMii to update your softmods. Use a usb in place of an SD card and all should work except for bootmii. This will overwrite anything u have that may be outdated or problematic (if u are on 4.3, it will ask if u want to update active ios's, say yes). Once we know you are on an optimal setup we can start to drill down into other causes for any issues you might still have

Edit: modmii doesn't work with macs, sorry

davidrodmad · Dec 27, 2020

I have been looking for the Tales of Symphonia Multiplayer Camera codes for a while to use on dolphin, but every time I find archives of the wiird forums where it was shared, they are down, I can't find a site that's still up with the codes from "dcx2" who seem to have wrote them... anyone has any updated info about that?

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