Hacking Bricked Wii on my hands, any help appreciated

[Heere]

Hi, a friend of mine just gave me his Wii, which he said was bricked a long time ago. I booted it up, and could only get to the System Menu by pressing - & + to enter maintenance mode. There's no HBC, Bootmii is not installed (I have a "prepared" SD card), and Priiloader is not installed. So it seems like I can't run homebrew. The message center is disabled in maintenance mode, so Letter Bomb is not an option.

What's really odd, to me, is that there seems to be absolutely no data on the Wii whatsoever. With it seeming like there was nothing else I could try, I ran the "Format System Memory". I let it run for about an hour, but it appears to be stuck.

What are my options at this point? I have a copy of Lego Batman, so I could try Bathaxx. Do you think I could get HBC installed that way while in maintenance mode? Once I can run homebrew, what should I do? Immediately install bootmii as boot2 and do a backup? Or try to fix the System Menu issue. This looks to me like a "mail brick", but how can I diagnose that?

Thanks for any information or suggestions

 

[endoverend]

Go ahead and try to follow the instructions here to see if it is a mail brick.

 

[Heere]

Yeah, as I mentioned, I can enter maintenance mode by pressing - & + at the "Press A" screen.

So it seems to be mail bricked, but I also don't seem to have a way to run HBC?

Should I try Bathaxx?

 

[endoverend]

OK, I see that those instructions won't work without HBC. Absolutely go ahead and use Bathaxx at this point and run the mail brick fix after you install HBC.

 

[Heere]

Ok, I'll try Bathaxx when I'm back at home

 

[Heere]

I couldn't find my copy of Lego Batman, so I bought a copy of Lego Indiana Jones. Indiana Pwns worked, and I installed the HBC!

Now the Wii is in a situation that I've never heard of before. If I exit to the System Menu from the HBC, it works, and the Wii will start up fine and enter the System Menu if it's restarted. If I exit to the System Menu from an official channel, it blackscreens, and the Wii will not enter the System Menu upon restarting.

I ran the NAND filesystem tool mail brick fix with no luck, it got root and deleted the files, but I didn't get a "your mailbox will be reset" message or similar and it didn't fix the brick as I described.

I've tried re-installing the System Menu (4.3U) using MMM, and reinstall IOS80 via MMM from NUS with no luck.

Something about exiting to System Menu from HBC fixes the boot to System Menu, until an official channel is run, then the System Menu seems to be mail bricked again.

Any suggestions?

Here's my SysCheck:

Spoiler

SysCheck v2.3.2 HacksDen Edition by JoostinOnline, Double_A, R2-D2199, and Nano
...runs on vIOS58 (rev 6176).

Region: NTSC-U
System Menu 4.3U (v513)

Drive date: 05.26.2006
Homebrew Channel 1.1.2 running on IOS58

Hollywood v0x11
Console ID:
Console Type: Wii
Shop Channel Country: United States (49)
Boot2 v4
Found 83 titles.
Found 50 IOS on this console. 7 of them are stub.

IOS4 (rev 65280): Stub
IOS9 (rev 1034): No Patches
IOS10 (rev 768): Stub
IOS11 (rev 10): Trucha Bug, ES Identify, Flash Access, NAND Access
IOS12 (rev 526): No Patches
IOS13 (rev 1032): No Patches
IOS14 (rev 1032): No Patches
IOS15 (rev 1032): No Patches
IOS16 (rev 512): Stub
IOS17 (rev 1032): No Patches
IOS20 (rev 12): Trucha Bug, ES Identify, Flash Access, NAND Access
IOS21 (rev 1039): No Patches
IOS22 (rev 1294): No Patches
IOS28 (rev 1807): No Patches
IOS30 (rev 1037): Trucha Bug, ES Identify, Flash Access, NAND Access
IOS31 (rev 3608): No Patches
IOS33 (rev 3608): No Patches
IOS34 (rev 3608): No Patches
IOS35 (rev 3608): No Patches
IOS36 (rev 3608): Trucha Bug, ES Identify, NAND Access
IOS37 (rev 5663): No Patches
IOS38 (rev 4124): No Patches
IOS40 (rev 3072): Stub
IOS41 (rev 3607): No Patches
IOS43 (rev 3607): No Patches
IOS45 (rev 3607): No Patches
IOS46 (rev 3607): No Patches
IOS48 (rev 4124): No Patches
IOS50 (rev 5120, Info: rev 4889): No Patches
IOS51 (rev 4864): Stub
IOS52 (rev 5888): Stub
IOS53 (rev 5663): No Patches
IOS55 (rev 5663): No Patches
IOS56 (rev 5662): No Patches
IOS57 (rev 5919): No Patches
IOS58 (rev 6176): USB 2.0
IOS60 (rev 6174): No Patches
IOS61 (rev 5662): No Patches
IOS62 (rev 6430): No Patches
IOS70 (rev 6912, Info: rev 6687): No Patches
IOS80 (rev 6944): No Patches
IOS202[60] (rev 65535, Info: hermes-v5.1): Trucha Bug, NAND Access, USB 2.0
IOS222[38] (rev 65535, Info: Hermes-v55.1): Trucha Bug, ES Identify, NAND Access, USB 2.0
IOS223[37] (rev 65535, Info: Hermes-v55.1): Trucha Bug, NAND Access, USB 2.0
IOS224[57] (rev 65535, Info: Hermes-v55.1): Trucha Bug, NAND Access, USB 2.0
IOS236 (rev 65535): Trucha Bug, ES Identify, NAND Access
IOS249[56] (rev 65535, Info: d2x-v10beta52): Trucha Bug, NAND Access, USB 2.0
IOS250[57] (rev 65535, Info: d2x-v10beta52): Trucha Bug, NAND Access, USB 2.0
IOS251[58] (rev 21010, Info: d2x-v10beta52): Trucha Bug, NAND Access, USB 2.0
IOS254 (rev 65280): Stub
BC v6
MIOS v10 (DIOS MIOS Lite 2.11+)
Report generated on 02/20/2015.

 

[endoverend]

Would you mind listing all the channels that are installed on the Wii? Thanks.

 

[Heere]

All of the channels are official Nintendo channels, and were installed since the attempted System Format mentioned above.

 

[endoverend]

All of the channels are official Nintendo channels, and were installed since the attempted System Format mentioned above.

Doesn't matter if they're official or not, sometimes channels that access the Internet could cause a brick.

 

[Heere]

I decided to restore the Wii by building a clean NAND using these instructions:

WARNING, IF YOU'VE ARRIVED AT THIS POST FROM A SEARCH ENGINE, THE FOLLOWING LINK CONTAINS INSTRUCTIONS ON HOW TO DO THE MOST RISKY THING POSSIBLE WITH YOUR WII. UNLESS YOU UNDERSTAND AND CONSIDER THE IMPORTANCE OF EACH STEP IN THE FOLLOWING GUIDE, YOUR WII WILL BE BRICKED AND WE CANNOT HELP YOU.
http://spawn.link/factory-reset-revirginizing-your-wii/

It worked, the Wii is no longer "mail bricked"

It wasn't mail bricked to begin with, something else on the filesystem was messed up.

 

[stomp_442]

it would have been nice to know what was causing the problem before you fixed it

 

[endoverend]

it would have been nice to know what was causing the problem before you fixed it

Yeah lol I kind of hate the nuclear option but I digress.

 

[Heere]

I have a NAND dump before the fix that I would send to anyone with sufficient skill to debug it.

NAND check seemed clean to me.