Hacking Issue removing channels installed with WiiModLite

[newbee]

Hi,

I installed several WADs (all WiiWare games) using WiiModLite WAD Manager. All installed fine. But I installed too many. So when I returned to the Wii System Menu, it told me that I was running out of memory and forced me to go delete channels or Save Data. No matter what I did (even a hard reboot), the wii would not let me go anywhere else right after booting up.

That's when I got myself into trouble... I let it take me to the memory management setting and I proceeded to delete a bunch of Save Data. There was a bunch of it that I did not need so no big deal. After deleting several game save states I noticed that the "blocks free" counter was still at ZERO. So, I backed out of that menu and went to the wii menu that allows you to delete channels and deleted a few of the channels I had installed with the WiiModLite. :-( The channels got deleted alright, but the blocks free counter remained at ZERO, so i still could not use the Wii!!

I booted the system with PriilLoader so I could get to Homebrew. Then once in homebrew I launched WiiModLite. I used the WAD Manager and told it to delete the WADs that I had already deleted in the Wii Menu (I thought maybe it would clean up stuff and get the "blocks free counter" to increase, but instead it gave me a bunch of errors). Anyway, I rebooted and the problem persisted: the wii sent me to go delete more stuff. But I instead went back to WiiModLite WAD manager again and this time I used it to delete some of the games (channels) I hadn't yet touched through the wii memory mgmt menu, and those deleted just fine and increase the block count according to what these were using. So, with that I am able to use the wii again.

However, it seems that all the blocks that should have been freed when I deleted through the wii memory manager are not counted in the free blocks count still. How do I get those free blocks back!?

I do have a dump of my NAND before I ever had installed WiiModLite, so maybe restoring that will solve it? It seems like a big hammer approach though, especially considering that my Wii did not allow me to install bootmiii as boot2, instead it is on an SDCard and bootmii (restoremii) tells me that restoring NAND when bootmii is not on boot2 is risky (and maybe I even need to go buy a gamecube controller to even do the restore procedure too???).

So, hoping someone out there has a process to force the Wii to recognize that those blocks are indeed free (not being used).

 

[JuanMena]

You have to use the same Wad File to uninstall the same channel using Wad Manager.

You could've just literally transfered all your channels to an SD card using the System Menu.


Let's say that you installed... Zelda Ocarina of Time.wad.
You have to have that same wad, and choose Uninstall in order to succesfully uninstall it.

Or use Dop-Mii which will give you access to all the channels installed on your system. Wait... was DOP-Mii used only to install cIOS?
I don't remember.

What I do remember is deleting channles using it, but that was 10 years ago.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

BY ANY CHANCE DID YOU INSTALLED A WAD THAT WASN'T FROM YOUR SYSTEM REGION?

 

[newbee]

You have to use the same Wad File to uninstall the same channel using Wad Manager.

You could've just literally transfered all your channels to an SD card using the System Menu.

Yes, I realize all that now but that doesn't help me get my blocks back. :-(

Let's say that you installed... Zelda Ocarina of Time.wad.
You have to have that same wad, and choose Uninstall in order to succesfully uninstall it.

Yes, I know I should have done that but I did not. I did do it for some and those returned their free blocks to the system just fine. For those for which I did not do (because I did not know at the time), I actually did try it afterwards and got a bunch of errors from WiiModLite WAD Manager when i did that (obviously, since they're not installed anymore).

Or use Dop-Mii which will give you access to all the channels installed on your system. Wait... was DOP-Mii used only to install cIOS?
I don't remember.

What I do remember is deleting channles using it, but that was 10 years ago.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

BY ANY CHANCE DID YOU INSTALLED A WAD THAT WASN'T FROM YOUR SYSTEM REGION?

No, I did not.

 

[JuanMena]

It's probably a Semi-Brick.
I'm guessing that you hadn't solved this by now.

If you have a backup of your NAND before this happened, then use BootMii to restore it.

Can you access to the Menu? Like, where the Disc Channel and the Mii channel are?

 

[newbee]

thanks for your help.

It's probably a Semi-Brick.
I'm guessing that you hadn't solved this by now.

I have not fixed it still

If you have a backup of your NAND before this happened, then use BootMii to restore it.

Yes, that's one plan. I tried it but it requires a gamecube controller, which I don't have. I found a cheap one at walmart.com so I ordered it. Should be here in a few days.

Can you access to the Menu? Like, where the Disc Channel and the Mii channel are?

I managed to free up some blocks through the WAD manager, so the Wii is usable now. But not all blocks that were freed made it back to the block count.

My plan A is probably going to be to do a factory reset, redo the softmod with banner bomb, install homebrew, and bring back the game saves I have backed up to the sdcard using gamesave manager gx.

 

[XFlak]

U can carefully use any title delete if you wanted to go a different route.

If yiu decide to reset have to resoftmod I suggest you look into modmii.

 

[newbee]

U can carefully use any title delete if you wanted to go a different route.

Could you please expand on that? I am very new to this stuff, so not familiar with what a "title delete" means.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Could you please expand on that? I am very new to this stuff, so not familiar with what a "title delete" means.

AnyTitleDeleter. It's a very powerful application, deleting the wrong thing could brick your Wii. It shouldn't really be needed though. Either Data Management or uninstalling the WAD from a WAD manager is normally fine. AnyTitleDeleter probably won't even show the wads you already uninstalled, but it's worth a try.

 

[newbee]

AnyTitleDeleter. It's a very powerful application, deleting the wrong thing could brick your Wii. It shouldn't really be needed though. Either Data Management or uninstalling the WAD from a WAD manager is normally fine. AnyTitleDeleter probably won't even show the wads you already uninstalled, but it's worth a try.

Thanks! You are correct, it does not see anything to delete other than what is still there in the menu.

I am going to go through the factory reset. But before I do that, could I please ask for some pointers on how to make sure I have the saved game data backed up and the necessary software to put it back in after resetting the system? My kids' animal crossing information is on there so I can't screw this up! :-)

So far what I have done is install SaveGameManagerGX. Then I launched SaveGameManagerGX and clicked on every game that it showed and selected "extract" and selected for it to write into sd:/savedgames. Is that all I need to do before proceeding with the reset?

 

[newbee]

I got some help in the SaveGame-Manager-GX thread and got this done!

You basically MUST also backup/restore your Miis and play the game before restoring the game save...

See this: https://gbatemp.net/threads/savegame-manager-gx.210111/page-94#post-9026952