I was given a Wii by a coworker which would not load the system menu anymore. They aren't sure what happened to it. I think someone uninstalled something. I have a lot of info about the issue at hand. Hopefully my detailed post won't scare you away from reading to the end 
. Important bits are bolded.
System is a 4.2U with bootmii installed as IOS and boot2. Priiloader is also installed. Unfortunately without doing more digging I don't know specifics as to which versions of these are on there. I did this console a LONG time ago and only did a few updates here and there to add new loading support for some newer games.
When I went to restore using my nand backup for this console I was told by bootmii that the console id did not match the nand image. I googled and found an old bug where the words "console" and "id" in the header portion of keys.bin needed a space inserted so I did this (hex editor, inserted hex 20) and saved a new copy of keys.bin with this change.
I then copied the entirety of keys.bin and appended it to the end of nand.bin as this was the next step to do according to the links I found about this console mismatch when the nand was definitely the correct file. There was two methods described for how to do this, one involved the hex editor and the other involved the command line and doing a "copy /b nand.bin + keys.bin nand.bin" command. I did the command line syntax because it seemed easier. Maybe this is where I messed up?
When I started the restore on my newly modified keys.bin and nand.bin I was happy to find that the simulation restore ran fine so I told it to do a real restore. It did great up until the next to last row on the block display object. About 7 or 8 blocks from the end of the second to last row the restore progress indicator stopped moving and never moved again.
After 3 hours of no action I gave up and shut the console off.
I tried taking my newly modified keys.bin and using my original nand.bin but when I tried the restore here I found that it thought the files were for a different console again.
I think there is some sort of correlation between the patch I made to the end of nand.bin and where my restore progress got stopped. Not sure if that makes any sense though. It's as if it hit the keys.bin portion at the end of nand.bin and saw garbage data and stopped the restore.
So my question to anyone reading this is what approach I should take for my next repair steps?
I do not have any other duplicate backups of this wii owner's 4.2U image. So unless I can patch theirs in a manner which will allow for the restore then I believe I will have to look at something like Betwiin. My hopes are that even if the original nand image is corrupt that I can take this other 4.2U nand image and push it across. I recently had to restore my own personal launch-day wii and I used a copy of my 4.2U nand backup and it went on without difficulty.
Betwiin has been out a while now. Is that still the go-to software for an operation such as this? Is there a better software option, or a different fix process entirely that I can follow to get to the same end result?
I hope I provided enough info to understand the context of my problem. This is the most badly broken Wii i've ever gotten back in my hands so i'm optimistic that I can learn more about the hardware in the process of this fix. I just need a little guidance so I do not fully brick it before i've pursued all possible fixes.
Thanks to anyone who takes time to read this and responds.
. Important bits are bolded.System is a 4.2U with bootmii installed as IOS and boot2. Priiloader is also installed. Unfortunately without doing more digging I don't know specifics as to which versions of these are on there. I did this console a LONG time ago and only did a few updates here and there to add new loading support for some newer games.
When I went to restore using my nand backup for this console I was told by bootmii that the console id did not match the nand image. I googled and found an old bug where the words "console" and "id" in the header portion of keys.bin needed a space inserted so I did this (hex editor, inserted hex 20) and saved a new copy of keys.bin with this change.
I then copied the entirety of keys.bin and appended it to the end of nand.bin as this was the next step to do according to the links I found about this console mismatch when the nand was definitely the correct file. There was two methods described for how to do this, one involved the hex editor and the other involved the command line and doing a "copy /b nand.bin + keys.bin nand.bin" command. I did the command line syntax because it seemed easier. Maybe this is where I messed up?
When I started the restore on my newly modified keys.bin and nand.bin I was happy to find that the simulation restore ran fine so I told it to do a real restore. It did great up until the next to last row on the block display object. About 7 or 8 blocks from the end of the second to last row the restore progress indicator stopped moving and never moved again.
After 3 hours of no action I gave up and shut the console off.
I tried taking my newly modified keys.bin and using my original nand.bin but when I tried the restore here I found that it thought the files were for a different console again.
I think there is some sort of correlation between the patch I made to the end of nand.bin and where my restore progress got stopped. Not sure if that makes any sense though. It's as if it hit the keys.bin portion at the end of nand.bin and saw garbage data and stopped the restore.
So my question to anyone reading this is what approach I should take for my next repair steps?
I do not have any other duplicate backups of this wii owner's 4.2U image. So unless I can patch theirs in a manner which will allow for the restore then I believe I will have to look at something like Betwiin. My hopes are that even if the original nand image is corrupt that I can take this other 4.2U nand image and push it across. I recently had to restore my own personal launch-day wii and I used a copy of my 4.2U nand backup and it went on without difficulty.
Betwiin has been out a while now. Is that still the go-to software for an operation such as this? Is there a better software option, or a different fix process entirely that I can follow to get to the same end result?
I hope I provided enough info to understand the context of my problem. This is the most badly broken Wii i've ever gotten back in my hands so i'm optimistic that I can learn more about the hardware in the process of this fix. I just need a little guidance so I do not fully brick it before i've pursued all possible fixes.
Thanks to anyone who takes time to read this and responds.
