Hacking Completely lost with softmodding

[jahlu]

So I have a Wii, it was running 4.3U.

I followed a very extensive tutorial that involved downgrading to 4.1U, installing a ton of cIOS, wads, and I don't even remember what else; took me 5 hours.

I got it mostly working, but it wouldn't boot any game from the USB HDD (black screen freeze), so I wanted to start from scratch. I formatted the Wii (I understood it wouldn't erase the HBC, but it did).

I ran letterbomb again, LB thinks I have 4.3, but the wii says 4.1. I now have the HBC installed and nothing else. I also have a copy of my NAND (did a backup before).

What do I do now, I would essentially like to get the wii back to factory untouched umodded and restart softmodding from scratch.

Bonus question: which of the millions of tutorials available online should I follow to softmod my Wii and play downloaded games form the USB HDD?

 

[Shadow#1]

So I have a Wii, it was running 4.3U.

I followed a very extensive tutorial that involved downgrading to 4.1U, installing a ton of cIOS, wads, and I don't even remember what else; took me 5 hours.

I got it mostly working, but it wouldn't boot any game from the USB HDD (black screen freeze), so I wanted to start from scratch. I formatted the Wii (I understood it wouldn't erase the HBC, but it did).

I ran letterbomb again, LB thinks I have 4.3, but the wii says 4.1. I now have the HBC installed and nothing else. I also have a copy of my NAND (did a backup before).

What do I do now, I would essentially like to get the wii back to factory untouched umodded and restart softmodding from scratch.

Bonus question: which of the millions of tutorials available online should I follow to softmod my Wii and play downloaded games form the USB HDD?

Don't verginoze the Wii just follow this guide

http://www.wiihacks.com/showthread.php?t=96886

 

[Dust2dust]

Bonus question: which of the millions of tutorials available online should I follow to softmod my Wii and play downloaded games form the USB HDD?

Way back when, the recommended way was to run a PC windows program called ModMii, that would basically hold you by the hand in hacking your Wii to do everything you want. The thread for ModMii is still stickied, so I would think it's still relevant. Give it a try > http://gbatemp.net/threads/modmii-for-windows-official-support-topic.207126/

 

[Cyan]

you don't even need tons of things to install.

1. install HBC
2. install only one cIOS if you want USBLoaders.
3. Done, enjoy
4. additionally, you can install a brick protection such as priiloader if your Wii can't install bootmii @ boot2


no wad download or installation involved at all.
no modmii to learn how to use on computer and struggle if network is not working
no patching old and deprecated IOS/cIOS

optional step : make a NAND backup, in case you brick or do stupid things (like formatting without asking first if it's not dangerous), but why would you do anything on your file system when everything works fine?


If you are now on 4.1, you don't use letter bomb anymore, but banner bomb.
if you already have The Homebrew channel installed, don't use any "bomb" exploit at all.


So, you are at this point :

Wii 4.1 (or 4.3, doesn't matter)
HBC 1.1.2 or newer

You need this now

d2x cIOS installer for Wii

download that file, and extract it into this folder (create it) :
SD:/apps/d2x_installer/

You should have this :

Sd:/apps/d2x_installer/boot.dol
SD:/apps/d2x_installer/meta.xml
SD:/apps/d2x_installer/icon.png
SD:/apps/d2x_installer/ciosmap.xml
SD:/apps/d2x_installer/7/
SD:/apps/d2x_installer/8/
SD:/apps/d2x_installer/10/


put your SD card on Wii, launch HBC and run d2x installer.
Note: You need a working network connection, you'll get files directly from nintendo's servers. be sure you don't block the update server (in case you filter it for your WiiU or 3DS, etc.)


Press A to go to the selection screen, and choose this with d-Pad :

What : d2x v8 final
where : 249
base : 57
version 21008

press A to install from network, wait, and when completed successfully press Home to exit.


Done !
run your USB Loader now.


possible issues :
Your HDD is not recognized : set the IOS used by your USBLoader to IOS58
You are using a flash drive : use a real hard drive, not a flash device, they are mostly incompatible
You have black screen when launching a game : delete your USBLoader config file, be sure you play games from your region, check video mode and select "disc" mode, not console or anything else, and again no flash drive.
game still not working : verify your game is not corrupted (Sha1 checksum), verify your game's file (the .wbfs) is not in "Write protected" mode on your FAT32 or NTFS partition. verify you are using FAT32 32k/cluster (best setup).

 

[dafyddpryce]

"Note: You need a working network connection, you'll get files directly from nintendo's servers. be sure you don't block the update server (in case you filter it for your WiiU or 3DS, etc.)"

This one line brought to an end hours of headscratching/fruitless googling and replaced it with a combination of joy and intense anger at my own stupidity. Thanks!

 

[jahlu]

Thanks for all the answers, I redid the guide from here http://www.wiihacks.com/showthread.php?t=96886 and it worked the second time around.

 

[portugeek]

Note: You need a working network connection, you'll get files directly from nintendo's servers. be sure you don't block the update server (in case you filter it for your WiiU or 3DS, etc.)

I didn't know this was a thing. Which files are they, and how will this affect Wii softmodding when they shut these servers down?

 

[GreyWolf]

I didn't know this was a thing. Which files are they, and how will this affect Wii softmodding when they shut these servers down?

The IOSes. If NUS ever gets shut down you can always dump yours from the console with BlueDump but I think they're probably canned all the servers they're going to for the Wii.

 

[Cyan]

that's downloading all the official IOS from nintendo, patching them and installing the result in a >200 slot

When nintendo shutdown their servers, we will have to rely on :
1. getting the IOS from NAND, if it's present and not patched (fix94 mod2.2 installer is already doing it for vWii)
2. using wad on root of SD, to use offline install mode. already a working feature in current d2x installer, but you need to "get" copyrighted IOS wad files somewhere else. Modmii is also getting them from nintendo's servers, so getting them from modmii will not be a solution either.

You can get them from :
a disc update partition, your nand, or illegal shared links.
or just make yourself a nice backup with all possible IOS files and versions (and all existing cIOS version from modmii) in prevision of server shutdown. you can use NUSD while it still work. (I should do that, but never took the time, I'll be more sorry than safe...)

 

[portugeek]

I'll be making backups soon.