Hacking Some sort of half-brick? All help is welcome.

[WiiBrewGuy]

My apologies if this is not the correct section for posting this.

I have a friend who tried to softmod his wii, however failed in some regards, and we followed up (stupidly as we had no idea) by factory resetting the wii. He had the homebrew channel installed, plus some sort of dark custom wii theme along with some homebrew titles I cant remember.

Now, the system is at its factory version (I cannot remember the numbers, I do not have the wii currently in my possession) and is absolutely unable to update. Why? I believe its something with the previous homebrew installed blocking the update or something of the sort- if I can get my friend to try to update again, I'll post the error message. Note that the homebrew channel is now gone along with all of the other channels related to it.

A thought recently came to mind (the wii has been like this for quite a while now, but I've finally gotten around to really digging up information on this), that being that if I managed to install homebrew on the wii, I might be able to update the system back to 4.3 (U) and fix it/or uninstall all other versions of homebrew and the other crap.

Sorta long story short; am I able to install another homebrew version to uninstall the other, and then proceed to update the wii back to 4.3U? We have no plans on sending it to nintendo for them to say "Sorry, its modded- you shouldnt have done that" or some crap like that.

 

[Lacius]

Updates might be blocked by Priiloader and/or StartPatch. What happens when you hold the Reset button on the Wii?

 

[FancyNintendoGamer567]

What happens, then? You can't access the Wii Menu? You can't play any games? I'm confused, can you respond to what side effects are there after doing what's said in the post?

 

[WiiBrewGuy]

Sorry for the lack of info- if I had the wii on me, I could name everything, but the main issues that I've seen so far are:
-Unable to update, though I think it can still connect to the internet
-Unable to play certain games (Ie. Zelda Skyward Sword as it requires a system update
-The weird wii theme is still installed

It can play older games, but it pretty much has no data in the system except the factory data, and whats been homebrewed in (though inaccessible). When my friend comes back online, I'll ask him to hold the reset button.
Edit: The system works, it just cant update past factory version, making some games such as skyward sword unplayable, so I am unable to really do much with it.

 

[Lacius]

Sorry for the lack of info- if I had the wii on me, I could name everything, but the main issues that I've seen so far are:
-Unable to update, though I think it can still connect to the internet
-Unable to play certain games (Ie. Zelda Skyward Sword as it requires a system update

It can play older games, but it pretty much has no data in the system except the factory data, and whats been homebrewed in (though inaccessible). When my friend comes back online, I'll ask him to hold the reset button.

I would recommend performing a sysCheck and dragging the report into ModMii. It will generate the recommended files you should install to update the system. This should solve your game compatibility problems.

As I mentioned in my post above, it sounds like updates are intentionally blocked using Priiloader or StartPatch. You could simply remove these things to update, but it's not a way of updating I would recommend. There's no telling what kind of junk is installed on the Wii, and often times, the official system update process doesn't overwrite these things.

 

[FancyNintendoGamer567]

Can you try uninstalling the homebrew, getting to fully vanilla firmware?

 

[WiiBrewGuy]

Can you try uninstalling the homebrew, getting to fully vanilla firmware?

No. The homebrew channel is completely gone, and I'm unsure of any other ways to uninstall it.

 

[FancyNintendoGamer567]

What firmware version are you on? Try reinstalling HBC and see if you can get on HBC and delete the homebrew.

 

[WiiBrewGuy]

What firmware version are you on? Try reinstalling HBC and see if you can get on HBC and delete the homebrew.

I cannot remember, but I do know it was not anything in the 4.x range. I'm probably going to have to try the Twilight Hack to install the HBC since letterbomb apparently does not work with anything lower than 4.2/3. Which is where my original question mentions, whether or not its possible to uninstall the other homebrew and then update

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What homebrew did you install? It seems you installed possibly DARKCORP?

That I'm not 100% certain of as my friend did the installation with little to no knowledge of how to do it, however, the channel looked like the normal homebrew you get from letterbomb 4.3
Edit: I also do not recall seeing anything regarding Darkcorp on it

 

[FancyNintendoGamer567]

What homebrew did you install? It seems you installed possibly DARKCORP?

 

[XFlak]

When the wii is in your possession you can use ModMii to rehack your wii as if nothing has been done to it. That or use Modmii's syscheck analyzer function as someone else recommended earlier.

Do not stress, this is an easy fix.

Oh, and if your firmware doesn't work with banner bomb which is unlikely, and u don't have a disc to do en exploit, you can use flashhax instead (note this is a new exploit and isn't in modmii, but assuming banner bomb or disc exploits fail, which I highly doubt, just use flashhax instead of the banner bomb Exploit in you custom modmii guide)

Lastly, do not ever uninstall anything from your wii, if anything overwrite. Uninstalling the wrong thing can lead to a larger problem

Edit: you'll know if your friend had darkcorp installed if he played burned disks from the disk channel without a modchip. Kind of pointless even before USB loaders because you could just launch the backup disc via neogamma, you just don't get the flashy animation that comes with the disc channel

 

[FancyNintendoGamer567]

you'll know if your friend had darkcorp installed if he played burned disks from the disk channel without a modchip. Kind of pointless even before USB loaders because you could just launch the backup disc via neogamma, you just don't get the flashy animation that comes with the disc channel

DARKCORP is in some kind of gray area right now, so i'ts better just to use a USB loader or NeoGamma.

 

[XFlak]

In case it wasn't clear, I am not promoting dark Corp, I was merely explaining how he can detect if it was ever installed at some point. I again recommend using ModMii, which has nothing to do with dark Corp at all not even in the slightest

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Can you try uninstalling the homebrew, getting to fully vanilla firmware?

Bad advice. As per my earlier post, do not uninstall anything. That is how you might find yourself in a full brick situation. If you remod your wii it can overwrite old mods just fine, so no need to get yourself to "vanilla" state