Hacking Is it possible to restore the IOSes to their default/vanilla state

[supercasi]

It's going to be a long write and I feel it deserves its own topic.

Basically, my little brother finally persuaded our parents to buy him a Wii, and I decided to softmod it for him so he could play back-ups.

Like a lazy noob bastard I am, I found an easy guide on the internets and decided to *generally* stick with it, but ehem... ran into some minor problems.

Well what I did is this:

(Step 0: New/vanilla Wii with firmware 4.3E)
Step 1: Installed the HomeBrew Channel and BootMii via the Letterbomb exploit (as per instructions on the WiiBrew site)
- Also backed up the NAND via BootMii

Step 2: Followed the instructions for further softmodding here: http://chrislowthian...3-nintendo-wii/
- Basically, as far as I followed the output of 'Wii Mod Batch v2.9', it installs a bunch of cIOS routines
- Also added some bricking protection by installing Priiloader and disabling software updates

Step 3: I was supposed to install a content loader of some sort, but I went playing around with the included Wii Mod and discovered a menu called 'Other menu'. Being a curious noob, I delved further and discovered this menu hides the option to install IOS 36 (or maybe 38?) w/Fakesign patch... Proceeded to install this patch (I read on some older guide it is beneficial), but it threw an error somewhere during the install. Fortunately, the Wii did not brick and as of now still works.

Step 4: I read somewhere that on newer Wiis you're not supposed to downgrade IOSes, and realised I just made a serious mistake by installing that IOS patch. Nevermind, everything still works, let's install USB Loader GX. The program ran fine in HBC and successfully loaded an USB back-up, but trying to install the included channel via the Wii Mod's WAD manager threw me a serious error: 'Unknown error'. I don't know about you guys, but I have some experiences with Unix systems of various sorts and 'Unknown errors' scare the shit out of me. Definitely it shows a bad state of IOS affairs.

Now, this is as things stand as of right now. The bloody thing is functional and even loads back-ups, but I am still looking to revert the state to Step 1 (or maybe even 0?) and try to softmod it again from scratch. How do I remove all the cIOSes and revert the IOSes to ther original (vanilla) state? Is there a program that does this for me or do I have to revert them manually? What can I use as a reference for the default state? Is this even possible?

 

[JoostinOnline]

Step 0 was a dumbass move, but whatever. System Menu 4.1 (no, it's not firmware) is the best you can have in terms of functionality and safety.

Just resoftmod with Softmod ANY Wii or ModMii. No need to remove anything.

 

[PsyBlade]

edit: nothing to see here, move along please

 

[JoostinOnline]

Step 0 was a dumbass move, but whatever.

Yea really dumb move TO BUY A WII.

He edited his post. Originally he said he bought a new Wii, then updated it.

 

[Pong20302000]

why not restore using nand dump

then re install the mod again without being nosey and installing stuff you dont need?

hopefully you kept the files you had previously to remod it all

 

[JoostinOnline]

why not restore using nand dump

then re install the mod again without being nosey and installing stuff you dont need?

hopefully you kept the files you had previously to remod it all

Because he has a new Wii, which won't allow installing bootmii as boot2.

 

[Pong20302000]

why not restore using nand dump

then re install the mod again without being nosey and installing stuff you dont need?

hopefully you kept the files you had previously to remod it all

Because he has a new Wii, which won't allow installing bootmii as boot2.

he said
"- Also backed up the NAND via BootMii"

 

[JoostinOnline]

why not restore using nand dump

then re install the mod again without being nosey and installing stuff you dont need?

hopefully you kept the files you had previously to remod it all

Because he has a new Wii, which won't allow installing bootmii as boot2.

he said
"- Also backed up the NAND via BootMii"

He can install it with bootmii as IOS. Unfortunately, restoring your nand with bootmii as IOS is not safe.

 

[KiiWii]

modmii ftw.

 

[Pong20302000]

didnt something go down last night that affected ModMii?

 

[KiiWii]

temporarily: http://gbatemp.net/topic/207126-modmii-for-windows-official-support-topic/page__st__6210

 

[DeadlyFoez]

He can install it with bootmii as IOS. Unfortunately, restoring your nand with bootmii as IOS is not safe.

It is safe. I've done it endless amounts of times and never once had it mess up on me. Sure, it is not as safe as bootmii being installed to boot2, but there certainly isn't anything unsafe about it.

 

[supercasi]

Okay, thanks for the quick responses.

First of all, I didn't buy the Wii, my brother persuaded the parents, against my recommendations to buy an used one or to wait for the new Nintendo console (7 year old hardware ftw).

Well, I could restore the NAND backup despite the BootMii as IOS limitation, but I don't have a Gamecube controller to input the NINTENDO code required at the prompt (really l33t, Twizzers )

All the problems are probably caused by the downgrade that occured on that IOS36 w/unsigned patch. Could I just manually restore (via WAD manager and a official NUS-downloaded .wad) the IOS36 to the latest version (3608) and get rid of at least that problem? Does this pose a serious bricking threat to my Wii? Can I just overwrite the IOS and the new one will come into effect?

Let me first solve this problem and then think of patching the console further... but I think the cIOS patches in the above softmodding tutorial work(ed) perfectly so no further hacking is needed. I just need to remove the patch that I did to the IOS36...

EDIT: Ha, just saw this ModMii application. Can it be used to restore all the IOSes to their default state for 4.3E?

EDIT2: And to remove the cIOS patches, I just delete (if they are present) all IOSes numbering 202,222,223,249,250? Both of these steps should bring me back to stage 1 of my first post?

 

[KiiWii]

All the problems are probably caused by the downgrade that occured on that IOS36 w/unsigned patch.

What problems are you experiencing exactly? I'm very confused here.

 

[XFlak]

I dunno what you're doing... but at any point you can stop and just start using ModMii. ModMii will overwrite all your old softmods and basically make sure everything installed on your Wii is what is up to date with current hacks\recommendations.

 

[ddetkowski]

I don't think people get that you overwrite, they all think they must uninstall things, which of course is a bad thing

 

[JoostinOnline]

He can install it with bootmii as IOS. Unfortunately, restoring your nand with bootmii as IOS is not safe.

It is safe. I've done it endless amounts of times and never once had it mess up on me. Sure, it is not as safe as bootmii being installed to boot2, but there certainly isn't anything unsafe about it.

More than being unsafe I'd say it's just an unnecessary risk. I don't know how much different the code is between bootmii as IOS and bootmii as boot2, but if it fails (I've only heard of that happening like twice, and that was years ago with one of the first releases) the average user has no way to recover from it.

If you can access bootmii as IOS, then you don't need to restore a NAND backup to fix your Wii.

 

[SifJar]

More than being unsafe I'd say it's just an unnecessary risk. I don't know how much different the code is between bootmii as IOS and bootmii as boot2, but if it fails (I've only heard of that happening like twice, and that was years ago with one of the first releases) the average user has no way to recover from it.

If you can access bootmii as IOS, then you don't need to restore a NAND backup to fix your Wii.

There's no difference in the code once bootmii is running. There is only one armboot.bin and ppcbootmelf.elf on sd card i.e. The exact same code must be running. It just knows how it was launched so it can add the safety mechanism. It's not necessary to restore a dump with bootmii/ios, but it is no more dangerous a procedure than with boot2. Just if it does go wrong, you have no way to recover easily.

And yes it is almost always unnecessary.

 

[XFlak]

just to confirm... say I have the latest version of bootmii installed on my Wii, but I have a "bootmii" folder from an older installation saved to my sd card, would launching bootmii actually launch the old version that's saved to the sd card?

 

[SifJar]

just to confirm... say I have the latest version of bootmii installed on my Wii, but I have a "bootmii" folder from an older installation saved to my sd card, would launching bootmii actually launch the old version that's saved to the sd card?

the part installed on the Wii is only the loader. Whatever is on SD is all there is and is what will be loaded.

To clarify further:

BootMii "loader stub" - part installed on wii, loader only
MINI - ARM code, armboot.bin
Ceiling Cat - PPC code, default BootMii GUI, ppcboot.elf

So while you can have the latest bootmii, all it does is load MINI+Ceiling Cat, so if those parts aren't updated it won't matter. Generally all three parts are known collectively as "BootMii" and that's fine.

EDIT: Edited for clarification, I thought of a better way to word it. (Addition of "loader stub")