Hacking Wii Brick Fixing Thread (By DeadlyFoez)

XFlak · Jul 9, 2010

ATTENTION: This thread is no longer supported by the creator DeadlyFoez.
He asked me post these guides just to 'give the people what they want'.

If you need help then ask the people of the forum and hopefully they can help you, don't ask me personally (XFlak) for help in this thread.


Note: This tutorial is not officially complete, and may not be for a while. This thread is now open to help people because it is usable enough to help people.

I am always looking for more information and anything that I may have missed. If you see something that should be added to this first post then mention it to me and I'll add it in. Thank you.

Introduction;

So you, or "your friend" bricked a wii. Somethings not working right and you're about to post a new thread on how to fix it instead of searching first.

Well this thread is to help eliminate the amount of new threads out there. The end result of this thread will be able answer almost every question out there that could be a bricked wii situation.

What this thread is not;

This thread is not for questions regarding game errors or how to pirate things. That might come in a later tutorial <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="

" border="0" alt="biggrin.gif" />

I will not touch upon hex editing. That will also be a different tutorial.


My warning to you;

If a question has been answered in the first post of this thread and you fail to read it, I will flame you, ignore you. If you were dumb enough to brick a wii in the first place by not properly reading and researching before doing whatever action then you're probably not smart enough to read this whole first post, and because of that I do reserve the right to treat you how ever I want. Since I have now at least said that, if you bother to post in this thread or even worse PM me when you are someone that I dont care about then you agreeing to be subject to my flaming especially if I am drunk or haven't smoked a bowl in a few hours.

Consider that my contract for my free help.

The hardware failure clause;

There is also the possibility of a hardware issue. This could be caused by anything. The average life span of any electric device is about 10 years. That statistic includes that you can buy something and the hardware can be DOA (dead on arrival) or it could fail in 10 days. So it is entirely possible that your wii just died. It might be fixable if your good with a soldering iron and know how to test components. But if you know how to do that stuff anyways then you dont need my tutorials.

But most times these hardware failures are because you dropped the wii or did something else neglectful. I will not get into anything about component level repairs, or even replacing a broken disc drive. You can get that info elsewhere.

What I will touch upon is if a brick is from faulty Bluetooth and Wifi modules.

Now onto the more important things

Things to try first

Lets go over a few things that will help us break down how to fix your wii.

Do you get any visual out put from your screen?
If you see a 003 Error then continue on to the "003 Error" section. If you see either BootMii, the Health Warning screen, or bunch of scrambled text come up then this is definitely fixable. Proceed with the following steps to try to get into the Homebrew Channel.

1. Preloader - Hold down the Reset button when you power your wii on. Maybe Preloader will come up. If it does then you can try loading the Homebrew Channel. If homebrew channel does not come up then you either dont have it installed or you probably have the official Preloader version .29 or less and a newer version of Homebrew Channel with the JODI title.

2. Bootmii as Boot2 - If you have BootMii installed as boot2 (I'm not referring to it being installed as an IOS), then if you have an SD card in your wii you can plug it into your computer and check to see if the bootmii directory is in it.

If the directory is not there then you need to somehow get a hold of the files maybe from a friend or something (don't ask me as I am not allowed to distribute them), and put them on your SD card and proceed.

If the directory was there, then you will need to open up bootmii.ini in wordpad or similar editor. This file is found in the "SD:/bootmii/" folder

Here is an example bootmii.ini file

<div class='codetop'>CODE</div><div class='codemain'># BootMii config file

# Video mode, possible settings:
# NTSC, PAL50, PAL60, PROGRESSIVE
VIDEO=NTSC

# Autoboot, possible settings:
# SYSMENU, HBC
AUTOBOOT=SYSMENU
BOOTDELAY=0</div>

Compare the example to your boot.ini file. Change the following 2 lines to say "AUTOBOOT=HBC" and "BOOTDELAY=5". Now put that SD card back in your wii and turn it on again. Hope and pray that Bootmii will come up. If Bootmii does boot up then try to load the Homebrew Channel. If the Homebrew Channel does not come up then you still may be able to fix your wii by using <a href="http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=156199" target="_blank">WiiGator's Cboot2</a> to run Wad Manager. Either way, if you were at least able to get BootMii to come up then proceed to the "Determining what is wrong with your wii" section.

3. Recovery Menu - Try the a SaveMii or the SaveMeFrii method to see if you can get into recovery mode. For the SaveMeFrii method you need to have a GameCube controller and take it apart so you can press all 4 of the directional buttons. Plug the controller into the GameCube port 4 on the Wii. Power on the Wii while pressing all 4 of those directional buttons. If you see a firmware version pop up in the lower right corner then make note of the firmware version and proceed to the "Determining what is wrong with your wii" section.

4. Replace Bluetooth or Wifi module - If none of my 3 suggestions yielded any positive results and you only get a black screen on startup then the last thing you can try doing is replacing the Bluetooth or Wifi modules. If this works then great and you are all done.

5. Use an Infectus - If nothing works then your wii is a "Full Brick". The very last thing you can do is use an Infectus modchip. If you were smart enough to make a nand backup before fucking with your wii then you can manually reprogram is back into the wii, or if your wii was purchased on or around October 2008 because you might have a vulnerable boot1 so you may be able to use an Infectus to manually install bootmii into boot2 and then be able to fix your wii.

If you are interested in learning what it takes to do a repair with an Infectus you can read my thread <a href="http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=199055" target="_blank">Wii brick fixing. Using an infectus tutorial.</a>

Other than that, your wii is toast and you need to send it to Nintendo and possibly get slapped with a hefty fee for them to fix it. Good luck with that

Determining what is wrong with your wii;

You first have to know what YOU did last. What program you ran, what error code you may have had.

There always is the possibility that when you ran something that it horribly glitched for any unknown reason, or even an official nintendo update failed. Shit does happen sometimes, but because that is a lot more rare to have happened let's just assume that it was your fault.

So whats exactly happening?

Scrambled message when powered on;

You get a scrambled message that appears to say "The system menu files are corrupt". This generally is caused because you have preloader installed and then you reinstalled the system menu's IOS. What you need to do to repair this is just reinstall Preloader. Try this out and see if it fixes your issue.

1. Turn on the wii and hold down the reset button to bring up Preloader
2. Select to go into the Homebrew Channel.
3. Run the Preloader installer again.

If that works then great, if not then we may need to help you figure out what the issue is. Proceed to section "Asking for help".

003 Error

This type of brick is caused because you have a Korean Wii that was region changed and you updated your system menu to 4.2

Currently, the only way to fix this type of a brick without sending it to Nintendo is if you have bootmii installed as boot2 (because you updated to 4.2 manually), if you have the ability to install bootmii as boot2 (You did an official update that removed bootmii from boot2), or if you have a nand backup and the keys for your wii. Obviously not all wii's can install bootmii into boot2, only the ones sold around or before October 2008.

Screen goes to black after Health Screen

There are 2 types of situations that can cause this. If you installed a wad file before the brick then you are Banner Bricked. If you did not, then it could be the very rare Mail Brick.

To determine if this is a Mail Brick try getting into Maintenance Mode by pressing and holding both the "+" and "-" minus buttons before you press the "A" button at the Health Warning screen. If you do it right and this gets you into the System Menu then proceed to the "Mail Brick" section.

If the Wii did not go into the System Menu by trying the Maintenance Mode trick, then you're wii is probably Banner Bricked. Basically what has happened is that you installed some type of wad file that was corrupt, incorrectly made, or for whatever other reason and because of that the system menu crashes when trying to read it so it can display it.

There are a few ways of fixing this, but the overall goal is to delete the bad channel or uninstall it using wad manager.

WARNING: Never delete an IOS or the System Menu. You will end up with a full brick!!!

You will need to know the last thing that was installed. If you just installed a bunch of crap at once, then you're an idiot and will have to try uninstalling them all (Except for any IOS's or the System menu...duh).

If you were able to get into the Homebrew Channel when you reading the "Things to try first" section, then go into the Homebrew Channel and run Wad Manager to uninstall the wad.

If you weren't able to get into Homebrew Channel through Preloader or BootMii, but BootMii does show up, then you can use Cboot2 to run Wad Manager and then uninstall the defective wad from your wii. If you are unsure about how WiiGator's Cboot2 works and how to do it then read the <a href="http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=156199" target="_blank">Cboot2 Thread</a> and see if that gives you any success.

(NOTE: The Cboot2 installer will fail if you do not have the unpacked boot2v2 files on your SD card because Nintendo took them off their server. Sorry, I can not provide them)

If both of those options don't work then you're last option is to use <a href="http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=194182" target="_blank">Dbgtgoten's SDDm</a> method to enter into Data Management, and from there you can delete the channel.

Mail Brick

As I have said before, this is a very rare type of brick that does occur from time to time. I personally have never had to deal with one before.

Here are a few methods to fix this.

Det1re's Method
First download <a href="http://det1re.de/d/hb/mailbox_brick_fix-det1re.rar" target="_blank">Det1re's Mailbox Brick Fix</a>.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Det1re)</div><div class='quotemain'>1. Copy "apps" and "fstoolbox" to your SD card root and overwrite if asked.
2. Startup the Wii and boot HBC (you can use BootMii, Preloader or the Maintainance mode)
to do so.
3. From HBC, run FSToolbox r50 and follow the on-screen instructions until you see your
Wii's file struct (import, meta, shared1, shared2, sys, ticket, title, tmp).
4. Navigate to shared2/wc24/ and replace any file with the one from SD by pressing PLUS.
5. Navigate to shared2/wc24/mbox/ and do the same there.
6. End the app and restart the Wii. You will get a message that your Mail account is broken
and will be restored.

Doing the steps above will remove all your saved friends and all messages from your
Message Board.</div>

Alternative Method
1. Start the Wii up in Maintenance Mode
2. From the System Menu got to Wii Options->Wii Settings.
3. Click "Format Wii System Memory".

This will delete all of your saved games and any channels that you had installed so back them up first with Waninkoko's Savegame Manager.

I have also read that the "Format Wii System Memory" function can cause a full brick. Although I have never seen proof that it can happen, I take no blame if you decide to try this method and it gives you a full brick.

Asking For Help

If you are going to ask for help in this thread then there is some information that you need to provide to us first;

1. Last known System Menu version
2. Any cIOS's installed including cIOSCORPS and what version number used.
3. The last thing you did that may have caused the brick and what program was used.
4. What has worked or failed that you have tried in that is listed in this post.

You MUST provide us that information. I don't want to have to pull it out of you and hand hold you on it. If I can clearly tell that you have not read the first post then I will ignore you and hope you figure it out on your own.

Thank you

Thank you Team Twiizers, especially Marcan and Bushing, WiiGator, Dbgtgoten, Det1re, Waninkoko, GBAtemp, and all the other people that I have helped learn from and gather this information from.

If I forgot your name then mention it to me and I will be sure to add you.

chinmi · Jul 9, 2010

thank u xflak

and thank u to deadlyfoez for this guide, i hope he will be back to the scene

DarkIdiot07 · Jun 25, 2016

XFlak said:
ATTENTION: This thread is no longer supported by the creator DeadlyFoez.
He asked me post these guides just to 'give the people what they want'.

If you need help then ask the people of the forum and hopefully they can help you, don't ask me personally (XFlak) for help in this thread.


Note: This tutorial is not officially complete, and may not be for a while. This thread is now open to help people because it is usable enough to help people.

I am always looking for more information and anything that I may have missed. If you see something that should be added to this first post then mention it to me and I'll add it in. Thank you.

Introduction;

So you, or "your friend" bricked a wii. Somethings not working right and you're about to post a new thread on how to fix it instead of searching first.

Well this thread is to help eliminate the amount of new threads out there. The end result of this thread will be able answer almost every question out there that could be a bricked wii situation.

What this thread is not;

This thread is not for questions regarding game errors or how to pirate things. That might come in a later tutorial <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="" border="0" alt="biggrin.gif" />

I will not touch upon hex editing. That will also be a different tutorial.


My warning to you;

If a question has been answered in the first post of this thread and you fail to read it, I will flame you, ignore you. If you were dumb enough to brick a wii in the first place by not properly reading and researching before doing whatever action then you're probably not smart enough to read this whole first post, and because of that I do reserve the right to treat you how ever I want. Since I have now at least said that, if you bother to post in this thread or even worse PM me when you are someone that I dont care about then you agreeing to be subject to my flaming especially if I am drunk or haven't smoked a bowl in a few hours.

Consider that my contract for my free help.

The hardware failure clause;

There is also the possibility of a hardware issue. This could be caused by anything. The average life span of any electric device is about 10 years. That statistic includes that you can buy something and the hardware can be DOA (dead on arrival) or it could fail in 10 days. So it is entirely possible that your wii just died. It might be fixable if your good with a soldering iron and know how to test components. But if you know how to do that stuff anyways then you dont need my tutorials.

But most times these hardware failures are because you dropped the wii or did something else neglectful. I will not get into anything about component level repairs, or even replacing a broken disc drive. You can get that info elsewhere.

What I will touch upon is if a brick is from faulty Bluetooth and Wifi modules.

Now onto the more important things

Things to try first

Lets go over a few things that will help us break down how to fix your wii.

Do you get any visual out put from your screen?
If you see a 003 Error then continue on to the "003 Error" section. If you see either BootMii, the Health Warning screen, or bunch of scrambled text come up then this is definitely fixable. Proceed with the following steps to try to get into the Homebrew Channel.

1. Preloader - Hold down the Reset button when you power your wii on. Maybe Preloader will come up. If it does then you can try loading the Homebrew Channel. If homebrew channel does not come up then you either dont have it installed or you probably have the official Preloader version .29 or less and a newer version of Homebrew Channel with the JODI title.

2. Bootmii as Boot2 - If you have BootMii installed as boot2 (I'm not referring to it being installed as an IOS), then if you have an SD card in your wii you can plug it into your computer and check to see if the bootmii directory is in it.

If the directory is not there then you need to somehow get a hold of the files maybe from a friend or something (don't ask me as I am not allowed to distribute them), and put them on your SD card and proceed.

If the directory was there, then you will need to open up bootmii.ini in wordpad or similar editor. This file is found in the "SD:/bootmii/" folder

Here is an example bootmii.ini file

<div class='codetop'>CODE</div><div class='codemain'># BootMii config file

# Video mode, possible settings:
# NTSC, PAL50, PAL60, PROGRESSIVE
VIDEO=NTSC

# Autoboot, possible settings:
# SYSMENU, HBC
AUTOBOOT=SYSMENU
BOOTDELAY=0</div>

Compare the example to your boot.ini file. Change the following 2 lines to say "AUTOBOOT=HBC" and "BOOTDELAY=5". Now put that SD card back in your wii and turn it on again. Hope and pray that Bootmii will come up. If Bootmii does boot up then try to load the Homebrew Channel. If the Homebrew Channel does not come up then you still may be able to fix your wii by using <a href="http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=156199" target="_blank">WiiGator's Cboot2</a> to run Wad Manager. Either way, if you were at least able to get BootMii to come up then proceed to the "Determining what is wrong with your wii" section.

3. Recovery Menu - Try the a SaveMii or the SaveMeFrii method to see if you can get into recovery mode. For the SaveMeFrii method you need to have a GameCube controller and take it apart so you can press all 4 of the directional buttons. Plug the controller into the GameCube port 4 on the Wii. Power on the Wii while pressing all 4 of those directional buttons. If you see a firmware version pop up in the lower right corner then make note of the firmware version and proceed to the "Determining what is wrong with your wii" section.

4. Replace Bluetooth or Wifi module - If none of my 3 suggestions yielded any positive results and you only get a black screen on startup then the last thing you can try doing is replacing the Bluetooth or Wifi modules. If this works then great and you are all done.

5. Use an Infectus - If nothing works then your wii is a "Full Brick". The very last thing you can do is use an Infectus modchip. If you were smart enough to make a nand backup before fucking with your wii then you can manually reprogram is back into the wii, or if your wii was purchased on or around October 2008 because you might have a vulnerable boot1 so you may be able to use an Infectus to manually install bootmii into boot2 and then be able to fix your wii.

If you are interested in learning what it takes to do a repair with an Infectus you can read my thread <a href="http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=199055" target="_blank">Wii brick fixing. Using an infectus tutorial.</a>

Other than that, your wii is toast and you need to send it to Nintendo and possibly get slapped with a hefty fee for them to fix it. Good luck with that

Determining what is wrong with your wii;

You first have to know what YOU did last. What program you ran, what error code you may have had.

There always is the possibility that when you ran something that it horribly glitched for any unknown reason, or even an official nintendo update failed. Shit does happen sometimes, but because that is a lot more rare to have happened let's just assume that it was your fault.

So whats exactly happening?

Scrambled message when powered on;

You get a scrambled message that appears to say "The system menu files are corrupt". This generally is caused because you have preloader installed and then you reinstalled the system menu's IOS. What you need to do to repair this is just reinstall Preloader. Try this out and see if it fixes your issue.

1. Turn on the wii and hold down the reset button to bring up Preloader
2. Select to go into the Homebrew Channel.
3. Run the Preloader installer again.

If that works then great, if not then we may need to help you figure out what the issue is. Proceed to section "Asking for help".

003 Error

This type of brick is caused because you have a Korean Wii that was region changed and you updated your system menu to 4.2

Currently, the only way to fix this type of a brick without sending it to Nintendo is if you have bootmii installed as boot2 (because you updated to 4.2 manually), if you have the ability to install bootmii as boot2 (You did an official update that removed bootmii from boot2), or if you have a nand backup and the keys for your wii. Obviously not all wii's can install bootmii into boot2, only the ones sold around or before October 2008.

Screen goes to black after Health Screen

There are 2 types of situations that can cause this. If you installed a wad file before the brick then you are Banner Bricked. If you did not, then it could be the very rare Mail Brick.

To determine if this is a Mail Brick try getting into Maintenance Mode by pressing and holding both the "+" and "-" minus buttons before you press the "A" button at the Health Warning screen. If you do it right and this gets you into the System Menu then proceed to the "Mail Brick" section.

If the Wii did not go into the System Menu by trying the Maintenance Mode trick, then you're wii is probably Banner Bricked. Basically what has happened is that you installed some type of wad file that was corrupt, incorrectly made, or for whatever other reason and because of that the system menu crashes when trying to read it so it can display it.

There are a few ways of fixing this, but the overall goal is to delete the bad channel or uninstall it using wad manager.

WARNING: Never delete an IOS or the System Menu. You will end up with a full brick!!!

You will need to know the last thing that was installed. If you just installed a bunch of crap at once, then you're an idiot and will have to try uninstalling them all (Except for any IOS's or the System menu...duh).

If you were able to get into the Homebrew Channel when you reading the "Things to try first" section, then go into the Homebrew Channel and run Wad Manager to uninstall the wad.

If you weren't able to get into Homebrew Channel through Preloader or BootMii, but BootMii does show up, then you can use Cboot2 to run Wad Manager and then uninstall the defective wad from your wii. If you are unsure about how WiiGator's Cboot2 works and how to do it then read the <a href="http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=156199" target="_blank">Cboot2 Thread</a> and see if that gives you any success.

(NOTE: The Cboot2 installer will fail if you do not have the unpacked boot2v2 files on your SD card because Nintendo took them off their server. Sorry, I can not provide them)

If both of those options don't work then you're last option is to use <a href="http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=194182" target="_blank">Dbgtgoten's SDDm</a> method to enter into Data Management, and from there you can delete the channel.

Mail Brick

As I have said before, this is a very rare type of brick that does occur from time to time. I personally have never had to deal with one before.

Here are a few methods to fix this.

Det1re's Method
First download <a href="http://det1re.de/d/hb/mailbox_brick_fix-det1re.rar" target="_blank">Det1re's Mailbox Brick Fix</a>.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Det1re)</div><div class='quotemain'>1. Copy "apps" and "fstoolbox" to your SD card root and overwrite if asked.
2. Startup the Wii and boot HBC (you can use BootMii, Preloader or the Maintainance mode)
to do so.
3. From HBC, run FSToolbox r50 and follow the on-screen instructions until you see your
Wii's file struct (import, meta, shared1, shared2, sys, ticket, title, tmp).
4. Navigate to shared2/wc24/ and replace any file with the one from SD by pressing PLUS.
5. Navigate to shared2/wc24/mbox/ and do the same there.
6. End the app and restart the Wii. You will get a message that your Mail account is broken
and will be restored.

Doing the steps above will remove all your saved friends and all messages from your
Message Board.</div>

Alternative Method
1. Start the Wii up in Maintenance Mode
2. From the System Menu got to Wii Options->Wii Settings.
3. Click "Format Wii System Memory".

This will delete all of your saved games and any channels that you had installed so back them up first with Waninkoko's Savegame Manager.

I have also read that the "Format Wii System Memory" function can cause a full brick. Although I have never seen proof that it can happen, I take no blame if you decide to try this method and it gives you a full brick.

Asking For Help

If you are going to ask for help in this thread then there is some information that you need to provide to us first;

1. Last known System Menu version
2. Any cIOS's installed including cIOSCORPS and what version number used.
3. The last thing you did that may have caused the brick and what program was used.
4. What has worked or failed that you have tried in that is listed in this post.

You MUST provide us that information. I don't want to have to pull it out of you and hand hold you on it. If I can clearly tell that you have not read the first post then I will ignore you and hope you figure it out on your own.

Thank you

Thank you Team Twiizers, especially Marcan and Bushing, WiiGator, Dbgtgoten, Det1re, Waninkoko, GBAtemp, and all the other people that I have helped learn from and gather this information from.

If I forgot your name then mention it to me and I will be sure to add you.

Help... I Bricked my wii after installing 4.2u darktheme system menu... I installed cios 36,202,224-250... i Installed bootmii but as an ios only... My System firmware version before installing that crap was 4.3u

TotalInsanity4 · Jun 25, 2016

Dat first post is hella broken

Hacking Wii Brick Fixing Thread (By DeadlyFoez)

Wiitired but still kicking

Well-Known Member

Member

GBAtemp Supreme Overlord

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