Hacking how risky is homebrew?

[farcry15]

so i'm interested in installing the homebrew and maybe even playing some backup games, but i don't know how far i can get into homebrew with very little to no risk of bricking. i'm not interested in the dangerous stuff like cioscorp or custom themes or out of region games or anything asking to update. so do i risk bricking if i install HBC to try out the homebre games and emulators? how dangerous is it to get backup GC/Wii games working? is it any safer to not install the hbc and just run one program at a a time with bannerbomb? and finally can nintendo ban my wii if i were to download a wiiware games that i didn't buy?
i'm interested in the potential the wii himebrew community has to offer, but i don't want to risk bricking my wii.

btw it's a brand new wii, came with system menu 4.2U is preloader or priiloader compatible with 4.2, and how helpful wil savemefrii be in blocking bricks?

i'm sorry about asking so many questions, and possibly putting this in the wrong place, but i didn't want to make a seperate thread for each question.

 

[lolzed]

brick chance=.01 percent,while softmodding it install bootmii as boot2 and ios and make a backup and your pretty much brick-proof.stay away from cioscorp it might complicate things later on when you don't want it.no Ninty can't ban you in any way

 

[farcry15]

thanks for the replies. i was deathly afreaid of bricking it after reading through the fixmii section to see what caused peoples bricks.
@lolzed as i stated it's a brand new wii, bootmii boot2 is not possible so my only anti brick options are preloader/priiloader and the savemiifrii thing.
i thought of a few more things, what exactly is the difference between preloader/priiloader? i've seen that some people are still using preloader on 4.2 but as i understand it priiloader is a new version of it based on the source code of preloader. what's that about? i also read that i can have the preloader go straight to system menu and hold down y on the GC controller at startup if i need it (in the case of a bannerbrick) is that true or not?

finally about the updates, will they just erase all homebrew or will they cause problems? i know that i should look on wiibrew before i update at all to make sure it's safe, and i have wiiconnect24 turned off, but how do you receive update notifications? does it just send you a message or does it ask you on boot up, because i'm afraid another family member will accidentally do an update and brick.

 

[DKAngel]

the newwer priiloaders theres really nothing overly wrong with them

 

[techboy]

the newwer priiloaders theres really nothing overly wrong with them

Actually there is. Quite a few releases have been unstable. Read my experience with it. Thankfully I had bootmii as boot2.

I decided to give it a go and update my 0.29 to the latest Priiloader. The installer code dumped while installing and left a brick. Started HBC from bootmii, and a new system menu later, the wii worked fine. I tried priiloader again...and found myself installing a system menu...again.

Wait until the bugs are squashed.

 

[nabster92]

thanks for the replies. i was deathly afreaid of bricking it after reading through the fixmii section to see what caused peoples bricks.
@lolzed as i stated it's a brand new wii, bootmii boot2 is not possible so my only anti brick options are preloader/priiloader and the savemiifrii thing.
i thought of a few more things, what exactly is the difference between preloader/priiloader? i've seen that some people are still using preloader on 4.2 but as i understand it priiloader is a new version of it based on the source code of preloader. what's that about? i also read that i can have the preloader go straight to system menu and hold down y on the GC controller at startup if i need it (in the case of a bannerbrick) is that true or not?

finally about the updates, will they just erase all homebrew or will they cause problems? i know that i should look on wiibrew before i update at all to make sure it's safe, and i have wiiconnect24 turned off, but how do you receive update notifications? does it just send you a message or does it ask you on boot up, because i'm afraid another family member will accidentally do an update and brick.

If you do have WiiConnect24, THEN you might get a message sent about an update or something in which case you would have to click on said message and the update button attached with it.

Other ways of updating involve having a legit disc that can be read in the disc channel have something more up to date than something on your Wii, in which case it will require you to update when you click on the disc channel to try to play it.

This prompt can be blocked completely with the skip update check hack in preloader (which you can set to autoboot pretty much whatever you want (system menu, HBC, or any application) and then access it afterwards by holding down the reset button on the Wii while turning it on).

It will also prompt you to update when you set your internet connection up initially, but you can decline the prompt. The 4.2 update pretty much accounted for anything that could've been done to a Wii and took measure to remove all of it. In some sense it's a somewhat easy way to revirginize a hacked Wii, but it still is somewhat dangerous as it does update boot2 and HAS bricked some Wii's that weren't even modded at all.

So basically to answer your original question, the risk of homebrew is proportional to your level of stupid.

 

[farcry15]

so from what you're saying i can't use preloader? because it's a new wii and came with 4.2(but not the latest version of 4.2 because it did a minor update when i connected it to the wifi) should i wait for a stable priiloader then?

 

[nabster92]

so from what you're saying i can't use preloader? because it's a new wii and came with 4.2(but not the latest version of 4.2 because it did a minor update when i connected it to the wifi) should i wait for a stable priiloader then?

You should be able to use preloader fine, but there may be some bugs with priiloader (dunno myself haven't tried it, but I do have preloader on 4.2). But if you do use preloader 0.29, make sure it's a version that boots the new JODI HBC title ID. As with everything you are going to be doing, read up on ANYTHING you want to use so you know exactly what you should be using and when you should be using it (and preferably why as well).

Also, you could have said no to that update when you connected to wifi for future reference.

 

[farcry15]

well i've just installed the homebrew channel. first thing i did was make a nand backup with bootmii(ios)
not sure if it's anything but there were errors at blocks 250,332,1838,2614,2872 bu they were fine after verifying. i saw in the fixmii forum that someone got a brick by using a homebrew app from the homebrew browser. what should i avoid? are the games/emulators safe? also the wii crashed when i clicked on the strobe light app, but it's still fine. should i be worried?

So next i would use trucha bug restorer, and a cios right? what is the risk of installing these?

EDIT: when i first booted it up it was 4.2, i did an update when it connected to the wifi, so i presume i'm running the latest version of 4.2
it's late i'm going to bed now

 

[ng80092a]

It's as risky as trying to cross a highway on foot, if you take care into looking to all sides and know exactly where you will place your foot, u have a very high chance of sucess, but even so you can always get hit!

 

[Kkolko]

the newwer priiloaders theres really nothing overly wrong with them

HA, seriously, don't try to pawn that off. That is completely untrue. Like issues of not being able to autoboot the system menu and the wiimote not syncing so the user is screwed without a GC controller.

So there is no way to make the wiimote sync and no way to navigate without a GC controller? I'm screwed...

 

[Kkolko]

the newwer priiloaders theres really nothing overly wrong with them

HA, seriously, don't try to pawn that off. That is completely untrue. Like issues of not being able to autoboot the system menu and the wiimote not syncing so the user is screwed without a GC controller.

So there is no way to make the wiimote sync and no way to navigate without a GC controller? I'm screwed...

Will any GC controller work?

 

[farcry15]

ok, so I'm following this guide: http://sites.google.com/site/completesg/ha.../trucha-bug-4-2
and i have everything on the sd card ready to go. but it bothered me that he didn't use trucha bug restorer like the other guides i've looked at so i decided to ask here first

 

[techboy]

That's a new feature of DOP-IOS v9. They basically took TBR and stuffed it into DOP-IOS MOD, so you only need one app. Just follow that guide exactly and it should work. If for some reason it fails, you can always use TBR 1.1.

Also, before you ask, there is NO chance of bricking your wii the TBR feature of DOP-IOS MOD, or the original TBR 1.1. Worst that could happen is IOS15 or IOS36 goes corrupt and you have to install a new one to fix it (extremely easy to do).

 

[farcry15]

i installed it and got an error, (1018 i think) should i have deleted the stub first?

yeah i didn't patch ios70 with dop ios and do the stub check it does. i'm kinda nervous about modifying the system menu ios

 

[farcry15]

so is patching ios70 with dop ios safe?

 

[dan_s]

I think doing anything to electronics that it wasn't designed for carries some risk.

With that said though, i have never owned a console before and successfully have my wii loading backups from a hard drive.

I simply followed the guide in this forum.

I would not install priiloader though, as i read alot before i modded and alot of bricked wii's are from priiloader. This can be verified from just a quick glance around this forum and seeing the problems with it.

 

[farcry15]

yeah i don't know know if i should use preloader .30 or the .29 JODI version i think .29 patches ios60 so that means 4.0 only?