Inconsistent Boot Behavior. Sometimes Freezes on Boot Attempt.

[KIlly728]

There is not much of a point dumping the MLC. And if someone really wants it, it can be achived trough the format redNAND option, which will write the MLC to a partition

Ok, I won't worry about that then.

What you could also try would be disabling Standby Services in the settings if that makes a difference. Also clould you try without a SD or with another SD? Looking again at the logs above in post #13 it looks like the SD card has a hardware problem.
(idx 0 is the sdcard I belive and idx 3 the mlc)

I will proceed with the assumption that my main SD card is faulty. I have a brand-new, never-used 32GB SanDisk SD card that I'll load up with fresh installs of Aroma, ISFSH, and Minute. I'll monitor what happens.

 

[KIlly728]

Not only is there no noticeable change, but it would appear the problem is getting progressively worse over time.

Before, it wasn't uncommon to have to force shutdown (holding the power button till it turns off) the console a couple of times before a normal boot event would happen. Now, it's sometimes taking 5 or more times shutting the console off before I get a normal boot.

It may be important to note that when installing the minute menu, I did not install them to the SLC. I have been booting into minute off my SD card since reinstalling ISFShax.

This is using the brand new SD card. It is a SanDisk Ultra 120mb/s 32 GB (which I assume is not a counterfeit, given the price and seller). It should be set up correctly, formatted to FAT32 32K cluster using the SD Card Formatter program, and all directories are laid out via the Aroma and ISFShax tutorials.

To try and describe the symptoms, whether or not it's actually useful, when booting into the minute menu, the disc drive will make the sound of pulling in a disk before stopping midway through. That has been my audio indicator that I have a good boot. My failed boots have the console's disc drive cycle completely (pulling a disk in and ejecting a disk). When having the Minute autoboot .ini enabled, this disc drive cycle happens twice.

 

[SDIO]

When you have a bad boot, will it get to minute?

 

[KIlly728]

When you have a bad boot, will it get to minute?

Nothing

 

[SDIO]

Is the LED still purple when it happens? What exactly is the led doing?

 

[KIlly728]

Is the LED still purple when it happens? What exactly is the led doing?

The LED is purple, yes.

I cobbled together a quick video to show what I've been rambling on about. I boosted the audio so the disk drive can be heard.



Why my gamepad wasn't triggering a boot was a new one. After the successful boot into Minute, I turned the console off, and the gamepad was able to turn on the console like normal (it failed to boot again).

 

[SDIO]

If minute powers off the console, then it won't wake up by the gamepad. probably because it doesn't set the 5ghz wifi module to listen for the wakup signal.
If you have standby services enabled and no autoboot configured, then once the timer wakes up the console, minute doesn't know what to do and turns it off. And in that state it can't be woken up by the gamepad as explained above.

Post automatically merged: Jul 29, 2025

ok, when it failes, it is still running isfshax, as indicated by the quick flashing of the LED and the LED being purple (but color is hard to tell on video). Also it doesn't try to load minute from SLC and doesn't go to fallback mode, as the LED never turns orange. So either it is successful in loading minute (but you can't see it) or it is hanging somwhere in the load process of minute.
Tomorrow or so I can make you a minute, which changes the led and enables the display earlier. Maybe we see something there. Very strange.

 

[KIlly728]

If minute powers off the console, then it won't wake up by the gamepad. probably because it doesn't set the 5ghz wifi module to listen for the wakup signal.
If you have standby services enabled and no autoboot configured, then once the timer wakes up the console, minute doesn't know what to do and turns it off. And in that state it can't be woken up by the gamepad as explained above.

Ok, that is interesting. Is that intentional? I don't remember that ever being an issue. This was the first time it happened, and it just so happened to be in a video.

And for the default Wii U System Settings, the Standby Function is disabled.

ok, when it failes, it is still running isfshax, as indicated by the quick flashing of the LED and the LED being purple (but color is hard to tell on video).

The LED is purple. Probably should have cranked down the brightness on my phone.

Also it doesn't try to load minute from SLC and doesn't go to fallback mode, as the LED never turns orange. So either it is successful in loading minute (but you can't see it) or it is hanging somwhere in the load process of minute.

I didn't try it for that video, but my eject button will trigger the disk drive. That at least implies to me that even if the minute menu wasn't showing up on my TV or monitors, the power and eject buttons aren't interacting with it.

Tomorrow or so I can make you a minute, which changes the led and enables the display earlier. Maybe we see something there. Very strange.

I look forward to it. I'll keep monitoring it in the meantime (basically, just trying to boot the console every now and then).

 

[SDIO]

lets see what this does

 

[KIlly728]

lets see what this does

I put the modified fw.img onto my SD card and renamed the other one that was on there so it wouldn't cause issues.

I cobbled together another video of me just trying to get into the Wii U main menu, and aside from a steady blinking purple light when on Minute Menu, there wasn't any noticeable change that I could tell. It did boot into minute after the second boot attempt, but I chalk that up to being inconsistent.

I again boosted the audio so the disk drive can be heard.



One symptom that is fairly prominent is not being able to pass the minute menu. I did notice this once before, fairly recently, but assumed it was all part of the same problem.

If you want, I can install this fw onto the SLC and see what happens. I didn't install anything on my SLC after removing ISFShax and Aroma from my Wii U a while back. Minute has been booting from the SD card.

 

[SDIO]

That is very strange... Since the LED doesn't pulse when it is not able to reach minute, that means that either ISFShax boot1 portion crashes or it crashes once minute should take over. But we know the boot1 part of isfshax starts executing, as the LED flashes. One possible could be with the DRAM, since boot1 runs out of the SRAM and minute runs from the DRAM. A DRAM problem would also the color artifacts you saw when trying to boot.
But if the DRAM has problems, I would expect general instability.

If I understand correctly, this problem also happened while you didn't have ISFShax installed (blue led)?

Does preheating the Wii U with a hairdryer change something? But I guess this is probably a hardware problem, that can't be fixed without SMD rework, if at all. If it's something like a cracked joint between the Latte Chip and it's interposer, then the only repair would be swapping the entire SoC, which would be totally not worth it.

 

[KIlly728]

That is very strange... Since the LED doesn't pulse when it is not able to reach minute, that means that either ISFShax boot1 portion crashes or it crashes once minute should take over. But we know the boot1 part of isfshax starts executing, as the LED flashes. One possible could be with the DRAM, since boot1 runs out of the SRAM and minute runs from the DRAM. A DRAM problem would also the color artifacts you saw when trying to boot.
But if the DRAM has problems, I would expect general instability.

If I understand correctly, this problem also happened while you didn't have ISFShax installed (blue led)?

When I uninstalled Aroma and ISFShax, yes, the issue did persist.

Does preheating the Wii U with a hairdryer change something? But I guess this is probably a hardware problem, that can't be fixed without SMD rework, if at all. If it's something like a cracked joint between the Latte Chip and it's interposer, then the only repair would be swapping the entire SoC, which would be totally not worth it.

I am somewhat familiar with motherboard work, but if it's any work on that main SOC, then that is outside of what I can do. Reflowing, maybe, but without a board heater, that might be tough.

Thank you for your help. I was holding out hope it wouldn't be a hardware issue, but it would seem that is the only explanation.