Hacking Unexplained Black Screen - A Cautionary Tale

[IggyNignokt]

I’m posting this in the hopes that other people suffering from the same odd problem can fix their Wii faster than I did.

My system:
Early 2006 Wii running 4.3, softmodded with Smash Hack to have HBC, BootMii, USB Loader GX 2.0, MultiModManager, cIOS, some WADs, and a WBFS-formatted USB drive.

My problem:
I’ve been using this set-up fine for months. All games have worked, all saves have worked, etc. What motivated me into getting into the mod scene to begin with was my unhacked Wii was giving me errors that the Mii Channel’s data was corrupted and I was looking for ways to save all my Miis. I installed the Smash Hack mod months ago, but still couldn’t save my Miis. I deleted all the Mii Channel data, and I haven’t gotten that message again. Everything else has been working fine, all new Miis are fine, and I haven’t installed any new homebrew in at least a month.

I last used the Wii sometime in the past week. I go to turn it on today, and it only flashes the drive light a few times, the disc drive makes some whirring noises, and that’s it. No video is displayed, no sound is passed through, and my Wiimote doesn’t sync after the initial ability to power the Wii on. Having an SD card in or not doesn’t matter. Having a game DVD in or not doesn’t matter. I can hard reset back to a red light, I can turn the Wii on with the Wiimote, and I can boot into BootMii. I have a backup of my NAND from when I first softmodded, which I didn’t try restoring as I didn’t want to lose my online-enabled game saves. I also made a backup of my current NAND, and BootMii only reported 2 bad pages (although, is that for my Wii’s NAND or my SD’s NAND backup?). Trying to load the System Menu from BootMii results in a black screen. I can get to HBC via BootMii, and I can load USB Loader GX or load into the System Menu. I can load a backup off the USB drive via USB Loader GX, but the same game will not load off the original disc. In fact, putting any disc into the Wii will lock up the System Menu. Playing backups works fine, but as soon as I choose to drop out to the Wii Menu, the Wii locks up on a black screen and Wiimote sync is lost. The “cascade of Wii logos” loading screen never appears. I’ve tried unplugging my Wii and the AC convertor for a few minutes, and there is no change.

My Solution:
Since I could get into BootMii, I could get to the Homebrew Channel. From there, I could get into MultiModManager v13.4. As I couldn’t get the System Menu up and running without going through BootMii and then Homebrew Channel, and as any try for a channel or game to reload the System Menu would result in a crash, I figured that was where I should focus my efforts. I tried reinstalling System Menu 4.3 via MMM’s “Manage System Menu” but got a warning saying IOS80 wasn’t installed. I next went to the “Wii System Information” option, which showed all of the expected information with the exception of the last line. What had normally appeared as “AHBPROT: 00000000” instead was 2 lines of garbled text: “v1p00-h0-v1h-00000-p-000v1” or some such. From MMM, I reran Install & Patch IOS36, opting to download all IOSs from Nintendo’s servers. After that, I went to “IOS Manager”, and despite IOS80 being yellow (installed), I selected it and reinstalled IOS80 without any patches. I could then go reinstall System Menu 4.3. Once that was done, everything appeared to be back to normal. Original discs work. Backup images off my WBFS USB drive via USB Loader GX 2.0 work. Saved data from NAND work. Saved data from SD cards work. I can turn my Wii on and off, and it boots normally. I can switch games or channels and the System Menu loads normally. Everything works! Checking the MMM “Wii System Information” now displays everything correctly again.

My Questions:
Does anyone have an idea why this happened? Once I figured the solution it was a quick fix, but the idea my Wii can get corrupted without any modifications to the Homebrew is a little concerning. Especially since I’ve been using what I thought was a stable set-up for months! Do possible NAND corruption issues still exist with USB Loader GX 2.0? Was this even a NAND issue? Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Hope this helps others!

 

[Linkpal]

I know that this is an old-ass topic, but, this problem is almost mine exactly. I still have access to a backup I made months ago, and I've never wanted to lose it...

However, whenever I want to update back to 4.3, it always, always, always gets stuck at step 2/9. No matter what mod thing I use, no matter how I install the system menu, it gets stuck there. Not to mention, whenever I try to downgrade (out of desperation), I don't even get video signal and anymore access to the homebrew channel.

One thing to note: I got this from trying to uninstall priiloader. No matter if I install or uninstall it again, I get the PASSWORD FILE NOT FOUND error. Another thing to note is that I was running Waninkoko's 4.3.

I've since learned my lesson from all of this, but yeah. If I could somehow figure out how to progress past the health & safety screen, that'd be fabulous.

 

[Taleweaver]

*reads through thread*


Hmm...I can tell you that priiloader overwrites the system menu. I don't know much of Waninkoko's 4.3 version, but I assume it does the same thing. I think the remaining config files of priiloader somehow throw that error, but I don't really know why. Perhaps this thread may help: it's about someone who accidentally locked himself out of his wii with priiloader. Of course, that'll probably only work if priiloader is still there.
(and is it? what happens if you hold the reset button while turning on the wii?).

 

[Linkpal]

No. Priiloader is gone; all that happens is that I get a health and safety screen. If I install it, the Wii menu doesn't even output a video signal, and holding reset to get to priiloader doesn't work.

EDIT: The solution above didn't work; I try to open FS Browser and it gives me ret -1017.