Hacking Delay when starting ANY channel

[Dark Morford]

I'm having a really strange issue with my Wii. Every time I start a channel—whether it's the Homebrew Channel, Disc Channel (with a retail game), Netflix, what have you—the system hangs on a black screen for a long time before actually starting the software. I've timed this delay several times, and it generally takes 2–2.5 minutes after pressing the Start button on the IPL before the software loads. In the case of disc games, this delay occurs before the optical drive begins reading the disc, as the spin-up is audible. All my tests were performed with no Gamecube controllers connected, and no Gamecube memory card or SD card inserted. I do have the Homebrew Channel and BootMii installed.

Due to my typical usage of the console, I initially observed this happening only with disc-based games, and so believed it to be a possible conflict between the 4.3U software update and one of the custom IOS packages I had installed. To rectify this, I used DOP-Mii v15 to remove any IOS numbered higher than 200, as well as any stub IOS. After that, I performed a System Update from the Wii's menu (which ended up replacing most of the stubs I'd deleted), then reinstalled BootMii and HBC from the latest installer. My hope was that this would put the Wii's software in a state equivalent to taking a fresh 4.3 system and cracking it for the first time.

Needless to say, it didn't work. I'm still seeing the same delays loading discs that I had before, and everything on the System Menu—from Photo Channel 1.1 to the Mii Channel—exhibits some delay before loading. (To be fair, I did not test non-disc software before cleaning out my IOS list, but I have no reason at this point to believe they did not have a delay earlier.)

I can't find an option to attach files to this post, so I'm going to put my latest SysCheck report (after cleaning and reinstalling) inline here. Apologies for the huge vertical scroll.

sysCheck v2.0.1 by Double_A
...runs on IOS58 (rev 6176).

Region: NTSC-U
System Menu 4.3U (v513)
Hollywood v0x11
Console ID: xxxxxxxx
Boot2 v4

Found 90 titles.
Found 45 IOS on this console. 16 of them are stub.

IOS4 (rev 65280): Stub
IOS9 (rev 1034): No Patches
IOS10 (rev 768): Stub
IOS11 (rev 256): Stub
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 256): Stub
IOS21 (rev 1039): No Patches
IOS22 (rev 1294): No Patches
IOS28 (rev 1807): No Patches
IOS30 (rev 2816): Stub
IOS31 (rev 3608): No Patches
IOS33 (rev 3608): No Patches
IOS34 (rev 3608): No Patches
IOS35 (rev 3608): No Patches
IOS36 (rev 3608): No Patches
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): Stub
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): No Patches
IOS60 (rev 6400): Stub
IOS61 (rev 5662): No Patches
IOS70 (rev 6912): Stub
IOS80 (rev 6944): No Patches
IOS222 (rev 65280): Stub
IOS223 (rev 65280): Stub
IOS249 (rev 65280): Stub
IOS250 (rev 65280): Stub
IOS254 (rev 65281): BootMii
BC v6
MIOS v10

Report generated on 2011/03/07.

Aside from doing a full format/system restore and starting over from scratch (which I'm not keen to do; VC data and such), I'm not sure what action I can take at this point. Hopefully one of you guys who's really deep into things can see something I can't. Maybe a wonky version number somewhere. Much appreciated.

EDIT: Removed my console ID from the report for possible security reasons.

 

[mauifrog]

I think it is possible that you have a hardware issue, perhaps your disc drive is almost bad, but not quite bad. A bad drive causes all sorts of issues. It sounds you like reinstalled system menu and all ios, so the issue should not lie there.

 

[siliconmessiah]

Aside from doing a full format/system restore and starting over from scratch (which I'm not keen to do; VC data and such)...

Throughout the last year, there have been a couple of threads where Wii-users tell stories how their Wii:s tend to get sluggish & slow over time.
This has been chased down to be a very simple problem: too much wii-ware, vc-games, channels and overall game-data stored on the Wii itself.
Most users tell stories of a faster wii, once formatting or simply deleting channels etc.

For me, I never install channels of any kind. I run everything from SD-card and boot directly into HBC. The only thing I store on my Wii is save-data.
My tip to you is to "clean" your Wii internally. Good luck! =)

 

[troy512]

without knowing what channels you have installed, i agree, remove unused/unneeded channels

reinstall system menu and reinstall priiloader

 

[dead4u2day]

my ? is how are you possibly running anything with all those stubs and no truncha???????

 

[Dark Morford]

I think it is possible that you have a hardware issue, perhaps your disc drive is almost bad, but not quite bad. A bad drive causes all sorts of issues. It sounds you like reinstalled system menu and all ios, so the issue should not lie there.
I'll admit that just about anything's possible when it comes to console hardware. That said, though, I can't see how a failed/failing disc drive would affect software that never touches a disc (Mii Channel, for instance). On top of that, I haven't noticed any performance issues once a game finally starts that would indicate a drive on its last legs. Anything's possible, sure, but this seems unlikely.

Throughout the last year, there have been a couple of threads where Wii-users tell stories how their Wii:s tend to get sluggish & slow over time.
This has been chased down to be a very simple problem: too much wii-ware, vc-games, channels and overall game-data stored on the Wii itself.
Most users tell stories of a faster wii, once formatting or simply deleting channels etc.

For me, I never install channels of any kind. I run everything from SD-card and boot directly into HBC. The only thing I store on my Wii is save-data.
My tip to you is to "clean" your Wii internally. Good luck! =)
I suppose it's worth a shot. I'm in the middle of making a full NAND backup with BootMii right now, but I'd like to have things like save data saved as separate files so I can restore them individually later. Game saves and the channels themselves are easy enough to transfer from the System Menu, but I'm concerned about data that isn't so readily copied. I have some Miis that I very much want to keep around, for example, and while I'm not completely attached to my Everyone Votes data, I'd rather not lose it if I don't have to. Also, I need to keep my Shop Channel account available so I don't have to re-buy VC games. How can I back up these "hidden" saves?

After that, what's the best way to give the system a thorough cleaning? Essentially, I'd want to get the thing as close to a virgin 4.3U console as possible while still leaving an avenue to re-crack it once I know everything works. (And given that it's a day-one launch system, I don't think it's possible to remove every exploit.)

without knowing what channels you have installed, i agree, remove unused/unneeded channels

reinstall system menu and reinstall priiloader

Maybe I just haven't done my homework enough, but what does Priiloader get me? It's a launch console, so I can install BootMii as a boot2 package, not just an IOS. I don't know what extra features and/or protections I'd get from Priiloader.

QUOTE(dead4u2day @ Mar 7 2011, 11:03 PM)

my ? is how are you possibly running anything with all those stubs and no truncha???????

As I said, that report was generated after paring things down to the bare minimum necessary to run HBC and BootMii. If doing that had fixed my delay issue, of course I'd install some cIOS packages to give me more ways to work with the system. On the other hand, if it had worked, this thread wouldn't exist, would it? And since my system is old enough that I can use the AHBPROT exploit, it's not terribly necessary for me to run a Trucha-patched IOS anyway.

 

[mauifrog]

You can extract your savegame data from a bootmii nand.bin and reinstall it via savegame manager. It should be possible to do the same with mii's and such. Since you have boot2 bootmii, make that nand backup and then do a system format. Then you'll know if it is related to what is installed on the nand, and you can always restore your nand.bin. Also, for full effect your can use comix nand formater.

 

[neotank19]

Savegame manager gx. Backup all you game/channel save data and miis. Wish I had it before sending my wii to nintendo cause they murdered all my miis.

 

[Dark Morford]

Hm... I think something's very wrong with this thing. It's been "formatting" for the better part of an hour now; I don't think it's supposed to take that long.

I dug up an old NAND backup I made back in May 2010, well before I started getting these delay problems. I'm restoring from that one right now, and I'm hoping that will get the system back to a point where it will load things quickly. Once I'm there, I'll try formatting again and getting a fresh start on things.

I do think it's an issue with something in the NAND at this point. Before I started the format process, I went into the System Menu to copy my saves and channels to an SD card. It took a good deal of time—I didn't time it, but it felt like the same two-minutes-or-so—for the Wii to get the data up on the screen for me to select. And I don't have that many games that it would be full.

UPDATE: Yup, that fixed it. After restoring that old NAND backup, discs (both Wii and Gamecube) and channels are all loading quite nicely. So something I did or installed between then and now must have screwed up the NAND access somehow. Now I just need to figure out how to get all my data from the backup I just made into this environment. But I'll do that tomorrow; it's getting late.

For posterity, and in case it helps anyone—either developer or end-user—here's a SysCheck report from my old backup. We can see what's changed.

sysCheck v2.0.1 by Double_A
...runs on IOS36 (rev 3351).

Region: NTSC-U
System Menu 4.2U (v481)
Hollywood v0x11
Console ID: xxxxxxxx
Boot2 v4

Found 71 titles.
Found 37 IOS on this console. 13 of them are stub.

IOS4 (rev 65280): Stub
IOS9 (rev 778): No Patches
IOS10 (rev 768): Stub
IOS11 (rev 256): Stub
IOS12 (rev 269): No Patches
IOS13 (rev 273): No Patches
IOS14 (rev 520): No Patches
IOS15 (rev 523): No Patches
IOS16 (rev 512): Stub
IOS17 (rev 775): No Patches
IOS20 (rev 256): Stub
IOS21 (rev 782): No Patches
IOS22 (rev 1037): No Patches
IOS28 (rev 1550): No Patches
IOS30 (rev 2816): Stub
IOS31 (rev 3349): No Patches
IOS33 (rev 3091): No Patches
IOS34 (rev 3348): No Patches
IOS35 (rev 3349): No Patches
IOS36 (rev 3351): Trucha Bug, ES Identify, NAND Access
IOS37 (rev 3869): No Patches
IOS38 (rev 3867): No Patches
IOS50 (rev 5120): Stub
IOS51 (rev 4864): Stub
IOS53 (rev 5406): No Patches
IOS55 (rev 5406): No Patches
IOS56 (rev 5405): No Patches
IOS57 (rev 5661): No Patches
IOS60 (rev 6400): Stub
IOS61 (rev 5405): No Patches
IOS70 (rev 6687): No Patches
IOS222 (rev 65280): Stub
IOS223 (rev 65280): Stub
IOS236 (rev 1): Trucha Bug, ES Identify, NAND Access
IOS249 (rev 65280): Stub
IOS250 (rev 65535): Trucha Bug, NAND Access, USB 2.0
IOS254 (rev 260): Stub
BC v6
MIOS v10

Report generated on 2011/03/08.

 

[OriginalHamster]

In my experience clean the NAND from titles doesn't help, my nephew got its NAND full once I installed some WiiWare/VC titles (he doesn't have a SD) and his Wii is faster than mine, even when my Wii have like 500 blocks free. The only difference is that I have more TICKETS installed on NAND than him, so maybe is the high number of tickets, not the actual titles.

 

[Dark Morford]

One more for good measure. For this one I used my old (4.2) NAND backup, formatted it from the System Menu, then set it up as though it were a new system—I took the 4.3 update, created a Mii, set the location for the Forecast channel. Then I installed the Homebrew Channel via Smash Stack and pulled a SysCheck report. This weekend I'll see what I can do with Savegame Manager to recover my Miis and such from the more recent backup. (EDIT: Alternately, I could try restoring from the recent backup and then using DOP-Mii to revert all of the IOS to the version numbers in this dump. Do you think that would work?)

One thing I find interesting is that almost all of the cIOS packages I'd had installed before this latest test are still there, with the same version numbers. I had expected the format process to clear those out, but I guess I was mistaken. I don't have a need to do it right now, but for future reference, how does one go about completely clearing out a system (with the possible exception of BootMii/boot2 for brick protection)?

sysCheck v2.0.1 by Double_A
...runs on IOS58 (rev 6176).

Region: NTSC-U
System Menu 4.3U (v513)
Hollywood v0x11
Console ID: xxxxxxxx
Boot2 v4

Found 63 titles.
Found 46 IOS on this console. 15 of them are stub.

IOS4 (rev 65280): Stub
IOS9 (rev 1034): No Patches
IOS10 (rev 768): Stub
IOS11 (rev 256): Stub
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 256): Stub
IOS21 (rev 1039): No Patches
IOS22 (rev 1294): No Patches
IOS28 (rev 1807): No Patches
IOS30 (rev 2816): Stub
IOS31 (rev 3608): No Patches
IOS33 (rev 3608): No Patches
IOS34 (rev 3608): No Patches
IOS35 (rev 3608): No Patches
IOS36 (rev 3608): No Patches
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): Stub
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): No Patches
IOS60 (rev 6400): Stub
IOS61 (rev 5662): No Patches
IOS70 (rev 6912): Stub
IOS80 (rev 6944): No Patches
IOS222 (rev 65280): Stub
IOS223 (rev 65280): Stub
IOS236 (rev 1): Trucha Bug, ES Identify, NAND Access
IOS249 (rev 65280): Stub
IOS250 (rev 65535): Trucha Bug, NAND Access, USB 2.0
IOS254 (rev 65281): BootMii
BC v6
MIOS v10

Report generated on 2011/03/08.