Hacking CIOS patches and permissions

[mauifrog]

For some time now I have helped many people fix their bricked wiis from a variety of stupid reasons. At the moment I am seeing a growing number of full bricked wiis, who have bricked while playing via usbloaders. These bricks are only fixable via boot2 bootmii or nand reprogramming and to my knowledge are unexplained. The occurrence of such bricks appears to be on the rise and an explanation is needed.

This brings a few questions to my mind. What is causing the brick? Is it the cios? Is it the usbloader? Or is it some bug in the game itself? These question have lead me to another question, is it truly necessary to have cios with so much access to the wiis nand to play games? Does cios truly need trucha, es-identify, and nand access to load a game via usb? Or would a cios with only usb and disc support work just as well.

My point is, when I am loading games from my usb drive or my nand, I really don't want the app, the game or anything else to have the privilege of modifying the nand contents. Perhaps, if possible, it would be better to have cios installed for modifying nand contents when needed and another less privileges cios group installed to play games, load apps and such when nand modification is not desired. Perhaps such a setup would prevent unknown bugs in apps, games, etc from modifying the nand and corrupting it.

This issue is real, and on the rise. I read and respond to most bricked wii posts and this forum and others. This issue is very irritating as the cause is unknown and it can not be fixed. Would it be possible to have a cios that could load usb/disc games, but is unable to modify the nand contents in any way. Think of it this way, perhaps the big N makes new games that try to brick the wii when run on a cios with nand modification privileges, that would really suck. Is trucha, es-identify, and nand access even used when loading games via usb/disc? Or is it just an unneeded risk provided in an all purpose cios? Perhaps cios should be more tailored to a specific purpose. A cios to install shit, and cios to play shit.

 

[xzxero]

I've never heard of this issue before.

 

[VashTS]

I've heard of it.

Spoiler

When people use USB loader GX

Playing a game WILL not brick your Wii. The software used can. Why would a game, commercially available to the public, have even the smallest chance to delete software. It wouldn't. It would be a PR nightmare.

I think you are listening to n00bs who bricked their friends or their own Wii and are scared and think you can help them but only if they don't admit they broke it. Forgive me if I am wrong, but this is what I think. I have, and many others here, been messing with this crap for years and experienced no such problem.

 

[mauifrog]

Games are software like anything else, and they can have bugs. Perhaps a game with bugs is not an issue since it normally would not have the ability to change much on the nand. Perhaps this all changes when a game is manipulated in a way it was not intendend to be manipulated. I have seen people brick their wii with usbloader gx, cfg usbloader, running a variety of cios and a variety of games. There is no real correlation between any of them, except they all seem to be loading from usb. Granted, the issue is not very common considering the number of people loading from usb, but it is without question happening on a regular basis. As for listening to noobs, well that is true since most everyone who bricks their wii in anyway is typically a noob, but it is not relevant to the issue. The circumstances of the brick are simple enought, it usually goes like this.

"Help, I softmoded my wii and everything has been fine for weeks. Today I played a game from usb and the screen went black and my system menu won't turn on. I can power it on with the wiimote, the disc spins, but there is nothing but a black screen. Oh shit please someone help."

I will agree, more people have this issue with usbloader gx.

Which brings me back to my question. Is trucha, es-identify, nand permission required for usbloading? Or would a cios work with only usb2 support, play games but be unable to modify the nand under normal circumstances. Perhaps that is just a crazy stupid idea.

Edit: I have a nand.bin from a bricked wii that had boot2 bootmii. The story is he bricked it simply playing games via cfg usbloader. He made a nand backup of the bricked wii for evaluation. Restoring is functional nand.bin fixed his issue, so it is not a hardware issue. If anyone is interested in examining such a nand.bin, PM me and I will give you the link to the functional nand.bin and the bricked nand.bin. Perhaps someone will be able to figure out why it bricked in the first place. The only thing I know is that in the bricked state, cboot2 fails to load any ios and crashes try to load ios2, which is typical of a nand with no ios 36 and below. I have not had the opportunity to extract to, so I don't know what is in it, not that I would have a clue anyway.