Hacking Noob Starter Guide

[bowser2010]

Thanks for the great guide. I've been modding the wii since soft modding first came out, but now after reading your guide, I understand what & why you need to do those steps.
Btw, I'm now fully modded on 4.2U running backups with neogamma r7 (installed both as a channel and in hbc) and can run backups from the sd card menu as well. Have preloader and bootmii in boot2 (gave an older wii). Having bootmi with 3 second delay is awesome brick protection (along with the nand backup on my laptop) and is cool to watch when the Wii starts up. The one problem I had was deleting ios 249 & 250, but following xzxeroo's guide just ran the tbr over a few times and then was able to delete them. Never had a modded wii run so well (had it freeze on me a lot running gamma loader 0.3) and having preloader and boatmii.
Will be buying a hard drive next. Anyone have recommendations for a usbloader that is pretty configurable and is able too get cover art over wifi automatically?
Thanks again for the guide!

 

[nabster92]

I think pretty much all loaders can get cover art over wifi. USB Loader GX is pretty popular and also has a feature to auto update through wifi as well. I'm still using Coverfloader just because I like the looks and it hasn't given me any problems with anything so far. Wiiflow might be another option that might have a few more options to customize it and what not.

 

[pontypool]

I have a question can someone help please?
I was attempting to install carefully and methodically. i got to the step where you install bootmii as IOS & boot2 if possible. (shouldnt it be one or the other?)
anyway i got some sort of error installing as boot 2 so went back into the main menu to attempt to install it once more. However now the sd memory card shows up in data management as a ?.

I am fully aware that some memory cards arent compatible, but it was working fine before, no question mark and i could just access the memory card. I formatted the card again and re extracted the update.zip but still a question mark.
Why is this happening? I basically followed the instructions to a T and theres no mention of this sort of problem anywhere on the guide or here at the "noob" section.

 

[pontypool]

also if i uninstall homebrew has my wii returned to its original state? im thinking maybe not and thats why it wont read that data on the card.
because i can load save games off the sd card fine, it just doesnt recognize the homebrew files like it did before. How can i get my wii back to exactly as it was before i messed with this stuff? so i can try again on a fresh system????????????

 

[razorback78]

you could revirginize by following this: http://sites.google.com/site/completesg/other-stuff/virgin. but reading your post you are just starting to install bootmii right? so i don't see the need to revirginize at this point. you cannot install bootmii as boot2 no matter how many tries you do because you have a new boot1 that cannot be bugged. just install bootmii as an ios with priiloader as your brick recovery because bootmii cannot install as boot2.

 

[nabster92]

It doesn't sound like he said it couldn't be installed on his, but that it had some error when actually installing (which is really rare and probably not a good thing if that's what you meant). And no it doesn't need to just be installed as one or the other. They are completely different types of installations. Boot2 bootmii just loads when you turn the system on and IOS bootmii can only be loaded from the HBC. If you install both versions, you simply have the option of loading it both ways. But basically if your system is newer than like mid 2008ish or so, then you can't install bootmii to boot2 and bootmii isn't going to be very useful to you at all since you can only install the far more inferior IOS version.

So what exactly did you get through to ACTUALLY doing on your Wii? Did you get the HBC installed? Did you uninstall it for some reason after getting it installed? If so, in what way did you uninstall it? And what are you looking in data management for with your SD card? To load up bannerbomb again to reinstall the HBC? If you have the bannerbomb files on your card, then the Wii is SUPPOSED to not properly read the SD card and it should make it crash/load up the boot.dol file on the root of the card.

If you are trying to use bannerbomb again to reinstall stuff again or something, are you sure you're using the right version of it and clicking the right areas to load it? bannerbomb v2 should be used if you're on 4.2 and to load it you should be clicking the sd card menu icon on the main menu. If it's not 4.2, then you can use the older one and load that one by going into data management and clicking the sd tab under the channels section.

Give more info about what you actually did, what the error was that you had, and what state your system is in at the moment.

 

[razorback78]

Boot2 bootmii just loads when you turn the system on and IOS bootmii can only be loaded from the HBC.

i think the latest preloader mods/priiloader could also load IOS bootmii, not only HBC.

 

[nabster92]

Boot2 bootmii just loads when you turn the system on and IOS bootmii can only be loaded from the HBC.

i think the latest preloader mods/priiloader could also load IOS bootmii, not only HBC.

Yea, but that doesn't really make it any more useful. If you can still load priiloader at all, chances are you have much safer options of restoring your brick than IOS bootmii.

 

[razorback78]

Yea, but that doesn't really make it any more useful. If you can still load priiloader at all, chances are you have much safer options of restoring your brick than IOS bootmii.

you said it right. bootmii as ios really is too risky especially when doing a restore.

 

[pontypool]

OK I followed the instructions exact. I ran both options including boot2. but when i did that i got a black screen with an error message saying there was some kind of exception. So I figured i made a mistake and shouldnt have tried to install it with boot2 and the first option. I got to the part where it says press A to disable the emulator. and i remember seeing no mention of disabling an emulator anywhere, which worried me because I wanted to follow the guide 100%.
And when i came to the part of the guide that says install these 3 files. & System Menu-NUS-v481.wad [NTSC-J = v480; PAL = v482]
i could only see pal v82 coudltn see the first two at all. so at this point i thought something had gone wrong and wanted to put things back to original state to try again from scratch.
So i go into the channels and uninstall homebrew and delete homebrew from the system. However i went back into the sd memory card and it now shows as a ?
i formatted the card as fat 16 and the card still shows as a ? i even used the panasonic tool to format it but same result. I cant figure out why it read the data before but now it wont. Surely its got to be the right card yeah??
i cant even run these files (Wad Manager, Any Title Deleter MOD, & NANDclean) from this link http://sites.google.com/site/completesg/other-stuff/virgin to uninstall all traces of the homebrew channel since the card refuses to be read on the wii. even though it works flawlessly on the pc . but i did use the wii menu to perform a system format (on the wii not the memory card)
still no luck yet. even tried formatting as fat 32 because of some suggestion.

but the memory card can be used to store wii savegames just fine. and to begin with i even ran the boot.dol/elf file off it with no problems. so its gotta be some kind of wii related problem. is there anything else i can do? is there another way to transfer the files to completely "virginize" my wii. in the hopes that will get the memory card working again?

EDIT : im not sure when this started happening but now the sd card appears as completely blank on the wii instead of a question mark : /

 

[nabster92]

OK I followed the instructions exact. I ran both options including boot2. but when i did that i got a black screen with an error message saying there was some kind of exception. So I figured i made a mistake and shouldnt have tried to install it with boot2 and the first option. I got to the part where it says press A to disable the emulator. and i remember seeing no mention of disabling an emulator anywhere, which worried me because I wanted to follow the guide 100%.
And when i came to the part of the guide that says install these 3 files. & System Menu-NUS-v481.wad [NTSC-J = v480; PAL = v482]
i could only see pal v82 coudltn see the first two at all. so at this point i thought something had gone wrong and wanted to put things back to original state to try again from scratch.
So i go into the channels and uninstall homebrew and delete homebrew from the system. However i went back into the sd memory card and it now shows as a ?
i formatted the card as fat 16 and the card still shows as a ? i even used the panasonic tool to format it but same result. I cant figure out why it read the data before but now it wont. Surely its got to be the right card yeah??
i cant even run these files (Wad Manager, Any Title Deleter MOD, & NANDclean) from this link http://sites.google.com/site/completesg/other-stuff/virgin to uninstall all traces of the homebrew channel since the card refuses to be read on the wii. even though it works flawlessly on the pc . but i did use the wii menu to perform a system format (on the wii not the memory card)
still no luck yet. even tried formatting as fat 32 because of some suggestion.

but the memory card can be used to store wii savegames just fine. and to begin with i even ran the boot.dol/elf file off it with no problems. so its gotta be some kind of wii related problem. is there anything else i can do? is there another way to transfer the files to completely "virginize" my wii. in the hopes that will get the memory card working again?

EDIT : im not sure when this started happening but now the sd card appears as completely blank on the wii instead of a question mark : /

K well deleting the HBC from the data management was stupid, that doesn't even remove the ticket. Formatting was also probably a bad move, but might've removed the HBC ticket. Also you seem to not really understand what you're supposed to be installing/putting on your SD card. That step saying to install the system menu wad wasn't telling you to install all 3 of those files. Those are just the system menu's for each different region. DON'T install a system menu that isn't your region. If your system is PAL, then you're SUPPOSED to have only seen the pal system menu 4.2 wad there (v482). And if you didn't see the NAND emulator option, are you sure you were using wad manager 1.5?

And in the state you're in now, what are you trying to look at your SD card with to be seeing that ? mark or just blankness? Are you trying to load bannerbomb? Are you using the right version of it? What system menu are you on now? Are you seeing the blank stuff in the same place where you originally used bannerbomb the first time? Have you tried the different versions of bannerbomb?

Also, I kinda remember hearing somewhere some time ago about some cases of formatting Wii's making them unsoftmoddable for some reason, but that's probably not the issue and I'm not even sure if that IS an issue anymore. Regardless the better way of virginizing your Wii probably would've been just officially updating to 4.2 at least over formatting (especially considering formatting doesn't really virginize anything, you really didn't get anywhere in the modding process, and all it accomplished was making you lose whatever other data you may have had on it.)

So yea, I guess if you're on some older system menu version and no bannerbomb version is working in any way (make sure you are using whatever version you're trying properly and on the right system menu) you could try officially updating to 4.2 then starting from the modify portion of xzxero's guide.

And about bootmii, just don't even worry about the IOS version, it generally won't do you any good. If you can install to boot2 do it. Also about the error you had with bootmii what options did you get through? Did you manage to install it as an IOS and then it had the error when trying to install to boot2? What did you do after that? just skip it and move on? Generally that's a pretty stupid move when hacking your Wii. There are reasons why big red messages say not to skip any steps and to read everything carefully.

Edit: And a general rule of thumb with Wii hacking, DON'T UNINSTALL ANYTHING. Unless you're explicitly told to do so and you're sure you need to for something like the stubbed cIOS slots after an official update.

 

[omegadelta]

Just wanted to say thanks for this guide, It explained all the basics for Wii soft modding clearly. Used it as as a base to upgrade my dusty, unloved 3.1U Wii to 4.1U chock full of IOS goodies.

 

[pontypool]

I must have been using the correct wad manager because I got it from right there off the link on the guide. I was carefully looking for a mention of the emulator but couldn't see anything. The error message consisted of a black screen that shows what files had been installed, amongst the list it displayed several exceptions. I didn't see any mention of this on the guide or the noob section.
I guess I was confused about which files I was supposed to install exactly. But the way the guide was wrote me and my brother both agreed it was easily misinterpreted... notice the part of the guide that says "Bootmii as IOS & boot2 if possible." To me that means install as both, although your ability to install as boot2 is only a possibility and might not work. What the guide should have said is (Bootmii as IOS OR boot2 if possible) That's just a slight change in wording, but in my opinion it makes a clear distinction and if I had read that it would have been perfectly clear that I should install as boot2 if possible, if not just ios and ios alone. But like you said that wouldn't cause any problems anyway..
Prior to my sd card being unreadable. I followed the guide and double checked the video tutorial and managed to go into channels and get the notification about boot.dol/elf . so i ran it installed the ios and everything went as expected until I saw no mention of the nand emulator. And since I should have only installed as pal anyway, that's the only thing I could/did install so that wouldn't have created the problem. It must be just like you said and uninstalling hbc is what has caused this current problem. At the moment the sd card just shows up as completely blank, I have no idea when this made the transistion from a question mark to completely blank, it's possibly after I used the panasonic tool though. I suppose I will just try to update to 4.2 officially Since I have no idea what version of menus or whatever else I have. Do I need a wireless connection to officially update? Because I only got a normal ethernet router, ive never had wii online before and I think it's a fair bet to say that whatever I stick on the memory card isn't going to get read by the wii.

 

[nabster92]

I think the wording is fine. It makes absolutely no difference installing both IOS and boot2 versions of it and if you can't install to boot2, it won't even give you an option to try in the first place.

"And since I should have only installed as pal anyway"

Does that mean you DID install the 4.2 system menu wad? If so, that would be why the old bannerbomb isn't working anymore. If you did install 4.2, then you have to use bannerbomb v2 which should be in the modify package, and then click on the SD card menu on the wii menu instead of the channel data in data management.

You can see the system menu you are on if you click on the wii options button in the bottom left then click wii settings and it will say at the top right.

 

[rafb]

this seems like a perfect place for my question - topic i created today (http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=196218&st=0)

i ran sighChech to see what i already have for IOSs, any ideas how can i check is i have cIOScorp and what version?

thanks

 

[longtom1]

you can check to see if it's installed but I don't think there's a way of checking which version of cIOSCORP you have

 

[razorback78]

this seems like a perfect place for my question - topic i created today (http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=196218&st=0)
i ran sighChech to see what i already have for IOSs, any ideas how can i check is i have cIOScorp and what version?
thanks

lol. i was reading your thread and discussions became off topic and was focused on mail bricks. i am also not aware of the revision numbers of cioscorp ios. i think dop-ios mod shows latest official ios revision versus the ios revision installed on your wii. though you could not tell what cioscorp release you have of course.

 

[rafb]

k, how do i check if its there? and can i uninstall it as per suggestion in "Modify any Wii 4.2 & below, aka the simplistic mod" tutorial

 

[longtom1]

You just run dop-ios and look at the version numbers of your IOS's if most of them are v65535 then you have cIOSCORP installed

 

[nabster92]

doing the update section of xzxero's guide will account for cIOSCORP as you will manually reinstall every official IOS over whatever you have anyways, so at least as far as the IOS part of CIOSCORP is concerned it will be overwritten.