Hacking BootMii

[JohnnyCheeks]

Anyways, I'm going to attempt to flash my Wii with a NAND dump from a fellow friend's system within the next few days. I'll thoroughly test it out and post the results when I get around to it.

I don't think you can do that, I thought I saw somebody ask about this somewhere (I can't find it atm) and someone else replied and said that it would brick the wii because of the signing stuff in NAND

(pulls himself away from work... dammit)

Even with a boot2 installation? I thought that the boot2 installation gave you virtually the same capabilities for backup/restore as that of the infectus chip sans soldering?

Well in any case, I'll do some research and test the waters before I dive in. Lemme know if you find that post.

@FenrirWolf - That sounds logical. But I still want to get my hands on another NAND dump for research purposes.

 

[Bloodlust]

What the... this seems to be escalating into a flame thread...

 

[DozerGuy]

Fuckleheads

I KNOW IT WAS FUNNY WHEN I SAID THAT RIGHT?

?_?




Ok I need to go back to work...

Had a good laugh with that one

BTW can sombody tell me what bootmii is can i flash my nand with my friends backup

 

[FenrirWolf]

The reason it wouldn't install is because your friend's Wii has different NAND keys than you do. If someone comes out with a method to extract your keys from your own NAND dump and inject those keys into your friend's nand dump, then I think you'd be able to install it.

 

[cwstjdenobs]

The reason it wouldn't install is because your friend's Wii has different NAND keys than you do. If someone comes out with a method to extract your keys from your own NAND dump and inject those keys into your friend's nand dump, then I think you'd be able to install it.

You'd need to decrypt the other NAND dump and re-encrypt it with your keys

 

[JohnnyCheeks]

The reason it wouldn't install is because your friend's Wii has different NAND keys than you do. If someone comes out with a method to extract your keys from your own NAND dump and inject those keys into your friend's nand dump, then I think you'd be able to install it.

Ya know I was thinking that shortly before you posted that. I recall during the installation process of BootMii it shows you the key IDs.

I'm not home at the moment so I can't contribute anything. But if anyone reading this is pretty savvy with a hex editor, you know what to do...

I'm envisioning a method/utility that will take a clean (yet illicitly acquired) 3.2 dump, yank the keys from a bricked Wii and put them in. I for one, would see this as something VERY useful, especially for those that don't want to ship their munged systems to the Big N and be assraped with insane repair charges (provided they have BM installed... but then again if they did you'd think they'd be wise to make a backup of their own system...).

But mostly I'm thinking this would be most useful to those who 'anti-pir8-bricked' their systems via upgrading to the latest firmware without prior removal/installation of cIOSes. (for according to SlowKing, 'moron's like me')

 

[FOUNTAINEER]

I still have a virgin wii 3.4. waited for softmii and bootmii. first question i have is if i'll be able to install bootmii on the lower level boot2? i bought my wii in 2007 and upgraded eventually 3.4(regrettably). so does the limitation to installing boot2 comes from hardware release sometime after mid 2008 or simple software upgrade after mid 2008? I think it's software but am not sure.

since i haven't installed anything at all regarding sofmodding i should simply install twilight hack, bootmii second and then back up my nand. Now i have a backup of a very "clean" system 3.4. i can then create another backup where i downgrade to 3.2 with other stuff. Eventually installing 4.0 and backing up that.

Ultimately i can have nand back up from 3.4 original, 3.2, 4.0, etc.. and go back and forth with a few simple clicks. Is that right or it's not that easy?

 

[cwstjdenobs]

Fouantaineer, it's all to do with hardware. Through the sounds of things you can do. The worst that would happen is you run the installer and are only given the install as IOS option


Edit: Can't spell

 

[FOUNTAINEER]

if you edit to add can't spell that you might as well re-edit the message. jk thanks for the reply.

i read the limitations to ios vs boot2. not super clear whether it's something that they will be able to change in the future or the limitation is permanent to those with newer wiis?

Fouantaineer, it's all to do with hardware. Through the sounds of things you can do. The worst that would happen is you run the installer and are only given the install as IOS option


Edit: Can't spell

 

[cwstjdenobs]

if you edit to add can't spell that you might as well re-edit the message. jk thanks for the reply.

i read the limitations to ios vs boot2. not super clear whether it's something that they will be able to change in the future or the limitation is permanent to those with newer wiis?

Fouantaineer, it's all to do with hardware. Through the sounds of things you can do. The worst that would happen is you run the installer and are only given the install as IOS option


Edit: Can't spell

I did. I spelt is ios

 

[JohnnyCheeks]

i read the limitations to ios vs boot2. not super clear whether it's something that they will be able to change in the future or the limitation is permanent to those with newer wiis?

It's hardware. So you're good to go on the boot2 method. I installed it on my 4.0 system (bought in early 07) without a hitch.

Now if you're a 'moron' like me who foolishly upgraded without removing an outdated 249 (this was before USB Loader, but when backup launchers were all the rage. I followed a tutorial right here on this site which involved upgrading to 3.4, but it didn't cross my mind that 249 would interfere with anything at the time), you can install BootMii just fine, but it's a matter of time until there's fixes around. (Maybe adapting AnyTitle Deleter as a windows app that works with NAND.BIN files perhaps? now THAT'S an idea)

 

[YellowYoYos]

A moderator needs to clean his thead.

 

[NakedFaerie]

The HBC is upgraded to add BootMii to the menu when you press HOME.

 

[YellowYoYos]

The HBC is upgraded to add BootMii to the menu when you press HOME.

Only for users who have installed BootMii as an Ios.

 

[FGOD]

anybody has any idea on how to get the sd card be read on pc after the format/backup with the bootmii nand dumper? i cannot back it up to pc as the sd card cannot be read on pc :s

That's odd. Does the SD partition appear in Disk Management? (start -> run -> compmgmt.msc -> disk management)
Also try to access it with a Linux LiveCD (e.g. Knoppix).

thanks, i'll try both the options, and report back tomorrow (i'm going to bed now...)

it is indeed a very odd issue... in windows he keeps on asking to format the sd card when i try to read it after the nand dump... tried formatting to fat and fat32 in windows and doing a dump afterwards... never had any problems with the card :s

for some strange reason i did the backup today, formatted my sd with bootmii, did the backup, put the sd in the card reader and today it did read the card :s same card same setup :s but thanks anyway for the help

 

[kedest]

anybody has any idea on how to get the sd card be read on pc after the format/backup with the bootmii nand dumper? i cannot back it up to pc as the sd card cannot be read on pc :s

That's odd. Does the SD partition appear in Disk Management? (start -> run -> compmgmt.msc -> disk management)
Also try to access it with a Linux LiveCD (e.g. Knoppix).

thanks, i'll try both the options, and report back tomorrow (i'm going to bed now...)

it is indeed a very odd issue... in windows he keeps on asking to format the sd card when i try to read it after the nand dump... tried formatting to fat and fat32 in windows and doing a dump afterwards... never had any problems with the card :s

for some strange reason i did the backup today, formatted my sd with bootmii, did the backup, put the sd in the card reader and today it did read the card :s same card same setup :s but thanks anyway for the help

Same thing happened to me. First, I made a backup of my 3.2 system. I copied that succesfully to my computer.
Then I updated my wii to 4.0 and again made a backup of that. But this time, the computer refused to read the card and claimed it was unformatted. But when I put the card back in the wii and used the sd browsing feature of bootmii, it could read the card just fine. So I then i made the backup again in bootmii and tried copying it again to computer. And this time it worked.
So it's defenitely a bug somewhere. Perhaps bootmii doesn't unmount the card properly or something like that.

 

[Cuber]

if you use preloader and delete the systemmenu, preloader is deleted too so you cant recover

Who the hell would do that?

QUOTE(jan777 @ May 15 2009, 12:31 AM) i advise you to stick to preloader for the moment and try not to experiment with your wii much

Where's the fun in that.

well, theres no fun in a bricked wii either, is there?

Unlike most of the dicks on here, I research before I do anything to my Wii.

Well just in case a program does mess up on you... It's good. ^^ Also ... Soon there will be special homebrew apps for it or something.

Also I have a question... My brother has a serial number that starts with LEH20, how good would that be for this?

 

[TiMeBoMb4u2]

The HBC is upgraded to add BootMii to the menu when you press HOME.

Only for users who have installed BootMii as an Ios.

Hmmm... Currently, I'm using the boot2 with "AUTOBOOT=xxx" method. For those of us using this method without installing the IOS... It would be nice to have a link in HBC that would reboot the Wii into BootMii without autobooting.

What do you guys think?? I think I'll put this suggestion on the BootMii forum too.

 

[FOUNTAINEER]

if i have 3.4u backed up with bootmii and i update to 4.0 through nintendo will i be able to restore to 3.4 using my backup? i guess the first question is whether official 4.0 will uninstall bootmii?

 

[kedest]

if i have 3.4u backed up with bootmii and i update to 4.0 through nintendo will i be able to restore to 3.4 using my backup? i guess the first question is whether official 4.0 will uninstall bootmii?

Yes you can restore your 3.4 firmware that way. Installing 4.0 will not overwrite bootmii.
for restoring the backup, you should have installed bootmii as boot2. that's the safest.