Hacking [Guide] Fully Softmod Any Wii (everything you need)

[felaw]

hey, first of all great guide! i followed everything to the dot, and nothing went wrong.
however, it is post-mod that i'm having a little bit of trouble with,

whenever i tried to insert a dvd-r and run with neogamma it always gives me an 'dvd read error 1101'
ive tried using verbatim dvd-r, and maxell and burnt about 3 different copies at 4x, but to no avail. i've also tried running neogamma r6, but that doesn't work either, so i was wondering if there is another solution?

yes it's in correctly (though i had really hoped that this would be the problem heh), and i had installed cIOS, the disc appears to be spinning for about 5 seconds before it stops and pops up the error message.

 

[Deviyl]

What game is it?

 

[felaw]

i've been trying virtua tennis 2009, resident evil 4, and resident evil umbrella chron.
should i restore my NAND backup and start again?

 

[Deviyl]

No need to restore, starting over will overwrite anything you have already. Try the steps again and see if anything changes. Maybe you just missed somethin' along the way..

 

[Mouser X]

Back again. Thanks for your help on getting my NAND backup recognized by BootMii. I was able to restore my Wii to fully working order. Now for the hard part. Figuring out how to update my Wii, since I don't have a wireless network.

Currently, the 3 options I'm considering is:

1) Take my Wii/laptop (I have video-in, which is how I play my games) to Barnes and Noble and use their wireless (on their door it says it's free. No setup, just walk in). Personally, this might look a little odd, but if I leave everything except the laptop in my backpack, I shouldn't draw attention.

2) Take my Wii/laptop to the local Library, which also has free wireless. However, I don't know what kind of setup they have, or what kind of bandwidth to expect from them. And looking odd applies here as well, but they have a "silent study" room, which would allow me to be less obtrusive.

3) Go to my friend's house, and use his wireless. The problem with this option is that his internet sucks. Honestly, I think he's on dial-up speeds. And, if there's more than one person using it, I might get disconnected.

Are you sure there's no good way to update to 4.1 without a network? Mouser X over.

 

[xzxero]

Back again. Thanks for your help on getting my NAND backup recognized by BootMii. I was able to restore my Wii to fully working order. Now for the hard part. Figuring out how to update my Wii, since I don't have a wireless network.

Currently, the 3 options I'm considering is:

1) Take my Wii/laptop (I have video-in, which is how I play my games) to Barnes and Noble and use their wireless (on their door it says it's free. No setup, just walk in). Personally, this might look a little odd, but if I leave everything except the laptop in my backpack, I shouldn't draw attention.

2) Take my Wii/laptop to the local Library, which also has free wireless. However, I don't know what kind of setup they have, or what kind of bandwidth to expect from them. And looking odd applies here as well, but they have a "silent study" room, which would allow me to be less obtrusive.

3) Go to my friend's house, and use his wireless. The problem with this option is that his internet sucks. Honestly, I think he's on dial-up speeds. And, if there's more than one person using it, I might get disconnected.

Are you sure there's no good way to update to 4.1 without a network? Mouser X over.

use NUSD to get the system menu 4.1 wad and as described in my guide. works everytime

 

[darkworldz]

i need some help here... i installed the first step, bootmii, homebrew channel and dvdX as boot2.. suddenly the controllers wont work... any idea how to fix this????

 

[darkworldz]

oh i figured it out.. i jus had to press the wii button wif reset....

 

[slime_uk]

Hi - Just to say thanks for this guide - worked fine.

Only issues I had (may help others??)

1) Although I could not install BootMii as boot2, so had to install as an IOS and run through the HBC, luckily the power and reset buttons worked because I have no GC controller!
2) Doing the NAND dump, it failed with some message like "wtf - error 2" so I re-formatted the 2GB SanDisk SD card to FAT (it was FAT32 before).
3) I did all this and then did a Nintendo update to 4.1E (was on 3.3E before) so not sure if I needed to do it all again afterwards but I did anyway!
4) The NG R7 WAD link (zshare.net) seems to be down and as yet not found an alternative - so running from HBC.

Thanks

 

[slime_uk]

Errrm - doh! Spoke too soon. Now when I power off and on, PreLoader 0.29 boots up but whatever I seem to do, it won't go to system menu

I have ensured all the black screen at startup type settings in the 4.1E INI file are disabled and saved settings. Then into other settings and told PreLoader to boot system menu (return to PreLoader - not 100% sure what this does) and now it boots to black screen rather than PreLoader or System menu.

Looks like my system menu is nacked - any ideas? Or do I restore my NAND backup that I took earlier? Luckily, PreLoader still seems to launch HBC OK.

Thanks,
Slime

 

[slime_uk]

Well - I noticed that the system menu was set to 30 by default in the PreLoader settings menu. Set this to 60 and all seems OK now.

 

[darkworldz]

Go to settings and change your IOS from 60 to 30 [or vice versa.] Restart again if change IOS back to 60 if it still doesn't work.

 

[Mouser X]

use NUSD to get the system menu 4.1 wad and as described in my guide. works everytime

Thanks a ton! This was exactly what I needed. Mouser X over and out.

 

[KingOfLeon]

Thanks for putting together this excellent guide!

The only glitch I ran into was that after the "Use IOS 36 to downgrade 15" steps, my system refused to connect up to to the network to download the necessary files. I kept getting error stating "net_inet failed: -116". I ended up having to use the NUS Downloader to pre-create the files and run through that one step. Network connectivity worked fine for the "use 36 to restore 15" step and everything else following that.

When the next menu update is available, will it be possible to upgrade to it (via the Wii upgrade menu) and then follow similar steps to re-add HBC, cIOS etc ? or must the upgrade be done via a different method so as to preserve these modifications ? (i.e. basically the steps you mentioned to upgrade to menu 4.0/4.1 - except for whatever the new menu version will be) ?

Also, if newer cIOS becomes available, would I just install on top of current one ? or are there other steps that will need to be followed ?

For others planning to follow this guide, I highly recommend reading through MOST of the posts in this thread

Going through the steps, I had a few "Hmm, what now" moments, but having read through others experiences and how they got around the problems based on feedback by Deviyl, xzxero and several others was invaluable and saved me a bunch of pain and anguish.

 

[Deviyl]

Thanks for putting together this excellent guide!

The only glitch I ran into was that after the "Use IOS 36 to downgrade 15" steps, my system refused to connect up to to the network to download the necessary files. I kept getting error stating "net_inet failed: -116". I ended up having to use the NUS Downloader to pre-create the files and run through that one step. Network connectivity worked fine for the "use 36 to restore 15" step and everything else following that.

When the next menu update is available, will it be possible to upgrade to it (via the Wii upgrade menu) and then follow similar steps to re-add HBC, cIOS etc ? or must the upgrade be done via a different method so as to preserve these modifications ? (i.e. basically the steps you mentioned to upgrade to menu 4.0/4.1 - except for whatever the new menu version will be) ?

Also, if newer cIOS becomes available, would I just install on top of current one ? or are there other steps that will need to be followed ?

For others planning to follow this guide, I highly recommend reading through MOST of the posts in this thread

Going through the steps, I had a few "Hmm, what now" moments, but having read through others experiences and how they got around the problems based on feedback by Deviyl, xzxero and several others was invaluable and saved me a bunch of pain and anguish.

When a new SM menu comes out, wait until it's tested to not break any of your homebrew stuff. Or just wait for a safe updater to come out.

When a new cIOS is out, you just install it like the first one and it will overwrite the old.

 

[Neon01]

I'm sorry if this is the wrong place to post this, but I plan on following your procedure to the letter (just bought my Wii), I just have one question: should I update to the latest FW version through the Wii settings menu before starting? I currently only have a 16 GB SDHC card that I use for a camcorder, and with my current version 3.4U Wii I don't think I can use SDHC cards, so I'd have to go out and buy an overpriced 2 GB SD card I'd probably never use again just to use the bannerbomb hack to get HBC on there. Then again, I've read about problems using bannerbomb if you upgrade to the latest FW, so which would you recommend: upgrade now and use my SDHC card to do it; or hold off on FW update, buy a cheapo 2GB SD card, and update to 4.1 through your recommended method after loading HBC and all other.

Thanks!

 

[niklasnyfiken]

Hello all!

My Wii's system menu is corrupted. I'm pretty sure it happened after I installed Preloader.

PAL (european) Wii
3.4E firmware
boot2v4 (aka LU64+, though my serial is LEH265xxxxx)

I followed this guide to the letter as far as I know (except I installed USBLoader GX instead of NeoGamma). Did 2 NAND backups, one after installing BootMii/HBC/DVDX, and another one after installing PreLoader and latest cIOS38 rev14.

I can run PreLoader and load HBC, but as soon as I try to boot to the system menu, I get that error message saying "the system files are corrupted, see Wii manual."

The Preloader options, if they're important:
Autoboot: disabled
Return to preloader: off
Shutdown to: off
Stop disc: off
Show beta update: off
Light slot on error: off
Ignore standby setting: off
System menu IOS: 50

And at the bottom of main Preloader screen:
IOS v50
Systemmenu v386

Is it possible to fix this without restoring the NAND (because that could fail), and how? Someone else said change to systemmenu IOS 60, but I don't have that one so can't try it.

 

[spkelly]

Excellent Tutorial!
Thanks very much!

 

[arctic_canoe]

Hi all I'm new to the soft mod thing and need some clarification Yesterday I installed the homebrew channel /bootMii today I'm trying to load NeoGamma by way of WAD-Manager v1.5 I have followed the guide over and over again and I must be missing something.
OK I load the SDHC as specified I go to the homebrew channel load wad manager my default IOL is IOL36 I press A source device < Wii SD Slot> press A The only available WAD files are the read me files.
My Wii is LU55 I had to update to the new firmware 4.1 to load homebrew. Do I need cIOS249 the IOL listed on the homebrew page is IOL61 v19.26 it also says network is not initialized I don't know of any other info I can give you.
Thanks AC

 

[RRoD420]

@arctic- You need to set up the network settings, get the wii to connect to your home network over WiFi and try again.