vWii Homebrew doesn't work anymore, vWii itself does

[MikaDubbz]

Alright, long story short, I managed to somehow brick my vWii when I last updated my environment loader and version of Aroma at the same time. Don't know how that led to a vWii brick, but I used lIght Mode in decafiienator and that was able to get the vWii functioning again. And while I can run Wii games from the vWii menu, I can't load any vWii Homebrew anymore, including the vWii Homebrew channel itself. If I do, I just get a black screen. Again though, actual Wii games installed to the vWii menu (whether legit or not) work just fine. Is there some cIOS I need to reinstall or something? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

 

[MikaDubbz]

I hate to bump my own thread here, but I found that I have my vWii's slccmpt.bin and otp.bin backed up from like a year ago. If I restore these 2 files would that feasibly get my vWii homebrew functioning again? I'm also considering using decaffeinator in aggressive mode, but that would wipe out installed channels and data on the vWii and I'd like to avoid that if possible as it will be a headache to try and restore all the things I have installed to my vWii's menu.

If so, how do I restore the slccmpt.bin and otp.bin? I've never had to do so before.

 

[4d1xlaan]

there's no possible way that just updating aroma and environment loader would break vwii. so it must be just a coincidence that the problems started happening after that update. I would suspect slc corruption, it's a lot less likely to happen than mlc corruption but it can still happen

make a new dump and check it with nandbincheck

https://gbatemp.net/threads/release-wii-u-nand-tools.465386/

this will at least tell you if there is something wrong with your nand

because homebrew channel is supposed to just work, it doesnt need cios. in fact hbc is installed first, and then you run cios installers through hbc normally

 

[MikaDubbz]

Well i did a nand restore of my vWii and that did indeed take me back to my earlier vWii NAND, but still all vWii homebrew including the homebrew channel itself doesn't work despite the vWii itself working fine. I don't understand it, I may have to go with the aggressive decaffeinator, but I really don't want to. As I'll have to find and reinstall wads, and that sounds like a headache. But I may not have any other option.

Post automatically merged: Dec 17, 2024

there's no possible way that just updating aroma and environment loader would break vwii. so it must be just a coincidence that the problems started happening after that update. I would suspect slc corruption, it's a lot less likely to happen than mlc corruption but it can still happen

make a new dump and check it with nandbincheck

https://gbatemp.net/threads/release-wii-u-nand-tools.465386/

this will at least tell you if there is something wrong with your nand

because homebrew channel is supposed to just work, it doesnt need cios. in fact hbc is installed first, and then you run cios installers through hbc normally

I'll try that later, but I mean even if it is an slc corruption, is there a way to fix that without an aggressive decaffeinator? I have a backup of my slc file as well, is there a Wii U homebrew program that can restore that?

 

[4d1xlaan]

if you restored a backup and it still doesn't work, then that probably rules out corruption. unless the chip had so many bad sectors that it wasnt able to correctly restore everything, but I would expect that whichever program restores the backup would complain if it couldnt restore everything correctly. but I've never used any of those programs and I guess it's possible that it might not notice, depending on how it does the nand restore (if it can detect failed writes, or if it verifies the data after writing, etc)

I assume your backup was made at a time where everything was functional. so if it's not the software then it would be hardware, but I dont know what kind of hardware fault would let wii menu and wiiware work correctly, while making hbc black screen

otherwise I know there are aroma plugins that change some vwii stuff, if you use any of those then I would try removing them and see if it helps. I dont know if there could be incompatibilities with newer versions, but also the latest aroma update was in july and nobody has complained about broken vwii hbc so I wouldnt think that there would be breaking incompatibilities

one more thing I would try is booting hbc using a forwarder from wii u menu instead of running it directly from wii menu, I dont know if it could make a difference, how forwarders run vwii channels vs how the wii menu runs them, but if you're out of options then I guess it can't hurt to try

I guess you could try reinstalling hbc too, clearly there is a big problem somewhere though if nothing worked at all anymore until you reinstalled the system titles

also, about slc, the main slc is wii u stuff and slccmpt is vwii stuff. but both are on the same nand chip. the stuff on slc (wii u) shouldnt affect vwii side so I wouldnt touch that right now. it can be restored in the future if you ever need to, but I would avoid doing that unless absolutely necessary, because of scfm. it's not a death sentence because you can just rebuild a fresh mlc after restoring slc, but you would lose everything on mlc

I would probably ask @SDIO in case it's some kind of wii u failure, or @XFlak in case it's a wii software problem that might also apply to vwii

 

[MikaDubbz]

if you restored a backup and it still doesn't work, then that probably rules out corruption. unless the chip had so many bad sectors that it wasnt able to correctly restore everything, but I would expect that whichever program restores the backup would complain if it couldnt restore everything correctly. but I've never used any of those programs and I guess it's possible that it might not notice, depending on how it does the nand restore (if it can detect failed writes, or if it verifies the data after writing, etc)

I assume your backup was made at a time where everything was functional. so if it's not the software then it would be hardware, but I dont know what kind of hardware fault would let wii menu and wiiware work correctly, while making hbc black screen

otherwise I know there are aroma plugins that change some vwii stuff, if you use any of those then I would try removing them and see if it helps. I dont know if there could be incompatibilities with newer versions, but also the latest aroma update was in july and nobody has complained about broken vwii hbc so I wouldnt think that there would be breaking incompatibilities

one more thing I would try is booting hbc using a forwarder from wii u menu instead of running it directly from wii menu, I dont know if it could make a difference, how forwarders run vwii channels vs how the wii menu runs them, but if you're out of options then I guess it can't hurt to try

I guess you could try reinstalling hbc too, clearly there is a big problem somewhere though if nothing worked at all anymore until you reinstalled the system titles

also, about slc, the main slc is wii u stuff and slccmpt is vwii stuff. but both are on the same nand chip. the stuff on slc (wii u) shouldnt affect vwii side so I wouldnt touch that right now. it can be restored in the future if you ever need to, but I would avoid doing that unless absolutely necessary, because of scfm. it's not a death sentence because you can just rebuild a fresh mlc after restoring slc, but you would lose everything on mlc

I would probably ask @SDIO in case it's some kind of wii u failure, or @XFlak in case it's a wii software problem that might also apply to vwii

Damn, how odd. Forwarding to any vWii homebrew from the Wii U also yields a black screen. It's a real head-scratcher. It's so strange how it's only vWii side homebrew that's an issue and nothing else. I have also tried reinstalling the vWii homebrew channel to the same result, as well as running Aroma with no plugins and just running from Tiramisu instead with no luck. I'll live with just the Wii U side (and non homebrew vWii content) working, but it's still a sad strange situation to behold. Worst part is, I do think it had something to do with the Aroma and Environment Loader update (nothing else makes sense as to what could have caused this), which i didn't even need! Everything had been working fine. I'm really kicking myself over that.

I'm at my buddy's bar at the moment, but I'm gonna give it another go when I get home by removing the SD card and hard drive and see if the homebrew channel will launch then. Expectations are low, but I could see it feasibly working then.

Edit: Nope, no luck, removing the SD card and external hard drive still gave me a black screen when loading up any kind of vWii Homebrew. Wish I understood this, but it is what it is. I can't for the life of me understand what makes vWii homebrew be recognized as different from the likes of Wiiware, where it wont work but Wiiware will, but I'm stuck. Wii U software and homebrew works fine so I'm grateful for that. And I have an old hacked out OG Wii I can dig out of storage which will be nice for being able to play GBA to GameCube linked up experiences that the Wii U never could. Still, I'll miss the convenience of the mostly all in one package I had going for me. Though it certainly could be much worse.