Hacking Virgin NAND + BootMii Restore

[fgfemperor]

Ok, this may sound like a noob question, but I'll ask it anyway...
Can I restore to my Wii (via BootMii) a virgin NAND?

This is why I'm asking: My wii is a 4.2U that suddenly stopped loading original games and channels (before it was softmodded).
I tried softmodding it with ModdMii but it didn't work, everytime I tried loading any original game or any channel (like Mii Channel) I just got that stupid "An error has occurred bla bla" error...

So I have come to the conclusion that my NAND is corrupt. My idea: Create a virgin NAND and restore it using BootMii. But I think there are more to that (like key encryption and stuff).
So, can it be done? Does anyone have any other idea that could help me?

Btw: I've managed to get SNEEK+DI r151 (with a nand built on ModMii) to run and it loads games just fine, so my problem is really not hardware, but a corrupt nand.

Thanks!

 

[Taleweaver]

Did you make a nand backup earlier? If so, it's probably better to just restore it.

The fact that you can still get into the system menu means that not the entire nand is corrupt (the system menu and the IOS it's loading on are still fine). It may be wise to check out the installed IOS'es and update those if needed (modmii can do that as well).


Creating a virgin nand and restoring it can be done...but it's not THAT simple to just restore any created nand on your wii. It uses keys that are unique to your wii, and you have to take into account that most wii's have some bad blocks in them. If you restore a critical part on a bad block, things won't be better. As such, it's ill-advised to use bootmii to restore any nand but the ones you created yourself.

However, onsmyswarsenegg...onswy...this program by giantpune should be able to do exactly what you're asking.

 

[fgfemperor]

Thanks for the (fast) reply!

No, unfortunately my first backup was after the problem began...
How can I check and update my IOS'es ? I went through ModMii but only find an option to overwrite IOS'es when saying that my original firmware is a 4.3 (which is not the case).

I thought about upgrading it to 4.3 to see if it got rid of the problem, but then it occurred to me: If it doesn't work, I'll be stuck with a Wii that I can't do anything with (correct me if I'm wrong, but 4.3 doesn't support bannerbomb, so the only exploits available are those on games, which I can not use since my Wii doesn't load any games anymore, so I'll be stuck with a 4.3 Wii that I can't hack anymore...)

Now, that tools seems very promising. Does it use my keys (from my extracted nand.bin) to generate a new one from scratch?

Thanks a lot!

 

[Taleweaver]

Among others, dop-mii and MMM can both check and update your IOS'es (just make sure not to install a stub). You can also use syscheck to verify your settings, and use modmii to download the IOS'es as wads.

Your remark on 4.3 is correct. If you have 1.0.8 of the HBC, it won't be overwritten by the update (you'll only have to reinstall your cIOS'es and priiloader...and perhaps bootmii as well). Still, I'd keep that as a backup option (after the option 'use modmii to manually update your wii').

Questions about the program are best asked in the thread itself (after reading through it and the readme, of course). I haven't tried it myself, but from the instructions, I think it uses an already made nand backup as a benchmark to find out the keys and position of the bad blocks.

 

[fgfemperor]

Ok, so if I update to 4.3 via ModMii I won't lose BootMii as boot2 right? So I can go back to 4.2 if it doesn't work?

I tried the program, and launching Mii Channel worked for ~5 seconds, then I got the stupid error again =X
After that, it just got the error whenever I tried to launch it...

Edit: I tried the program = I created a new 4.2U NAND and applied it using BootMii ...