Hardware Wii U stuck on boot screen

[gorrth]

The problem is fixed now, thx everyone for your support

solution: https://gbatemp.net/threads/wii-u-stuck-on-boot-screen.499714/#post-7893437


Hello guys,
When I played Zelda botw today the game crashed(freeze) while I was fighting one of those shrine guardians. I couldn't reboot the console via the WiiU gamepad so I had to push the power button on the console itself for 5s. After rebooting the console is stuck on the boot screen (White screen with wii u logo). I waited for about 15 min but nothing happens. Then I tried again without my usb hdd attached and without sd card but the problem stays the same. The same white wii u logo is seen on the gamepad.

I usually boot up my wii u and launch the homebrew launcher via browser(loadiine.ovh). Then I load mocha and finally I load my games from USB.
I was running 5.1.1 firmware as far as I remember

Is there any possibility to unbrick my WiiU? Anyone got any idea why it did brick in the first place? Any help would be highly appreciated.

 

[TheTechGenius]

Thats weird, when it comes to modding and messing around with different things, I always have to hard reset my Wii U once in awhile, especially when messing around with TCP Gecko and Cheats. But this never happened to me. I would hard reset my Wii U by holding the console's Power Button for a few seconds, but when I turn it back on it boots up just fine. It may give me a message telling how to "Properly" shutdown the console next time, but it never gives me a problem. lol.

When you try booting the Wii U, does it get to the Wii U Logo?

If so, then you might be able to Boot Straight into vWii from the start of the Wii U Logo on Boot.

What to do:
Power on the Wii U console and then press and hold down the B Button on the Wii U GamePad, Wii Remote, or Wii U Pro Controller when you see the Wii U logo splash screen.



If that works and your able to boot straight into vWii, try to launch the Wii U Menu from vWii.

I got this information from Nintendo's Support Site - http://en-americas-support.nintendo...w-to-boot-the-wii-u-console-into-the-wii-menu

There is more information on that Support Page, so make sure you check it out to see if you can boot into vWii, then try getting into WiiU mode from there.
Thats not exactly what that is for, but it may work for your situation. However, im not 100% positive it will fix your problem, I never had a problem like that on my Wii U.

 

[naddel81]

were u using any other homebrew apps in the background?
do you have CHBC or just mocha?

 

[gorrth]

I already tried that but unfortunetly it didnt help. I also noticed, when I tun on the volume on the gamepad, that the soundfile playing is crashing after about 15s. I think the hard shut down after the crash killed my emmc memory
WiiU consoles without the gamepad sell for around 70€ on ebay. Can I use one of those consoles or are those not compatible with my gamepad? Could I possibly backup my savegames from my external hdd only using a pc?

No I was not running any homebrew apps in background, just mocha cfw. I didnt use chbc

 

[naddel81]

sorry for your loss. there could be a possibility of getting your save because the wii U encryption is known. but unfortunately nobody created a wii U backup manager tool that can do that.
so without your Wii U booting I do not see a huge change of getting your save back. even a backup save on a USB thumb drive would not help because that would be encrypted as well.

for the future:
save your important savegames using saviine or some save manager homebrew separately!

 

[TheTechGenius]

I already tried that but unfortunetly it didnt help. I also noticed, when I tun on the volume on the gamepad, that the soundfile playing is crashing after about 15s. I think the hard shut down after the crash killed my emmc memory
WiiU consoles without the gamepad sell for around 70€ on ebay. Can I use one of those consoles or are those not compatible with my gamepad? Could I possibly backup my savegames from my external hdd only using a pc?

No I was not running any homebrew apps in background, just mocha cfw. I didnt use chbc

Actually, there might be a way to get your save games and maybe even save your Wii U, with a Hard Mod.

But I don't know to much about the Hard Mod to give you a definite answer.

@Kafluke might be able to help you, since he wrote a Guide/Tutorial for the Hard Mod. Even though his guide is to fix a CBHC brick, it may still be possible to fix your situation too.

 

[naddel81]

I don't want to be rude, but hard mod will only help him IF he has a NAND backup, right?

 

[gorrth]

luckily i found a savefile on my sd card which is like 1 1/2 month old. that way i lose only like 40h instead of 200h....

just tried botw in cemu and in runs just fine at 1440p. think i will stick to this rather than replacing the wiiu. thanks for your help anyways.


edit: I have a nand backup. But anyways, the method with the teensy board is a bit too much of a struggle tbh and the teensy board also costs like 20€

 

[naddel81]

so your wii u is finally dead? how come you have a save? saviine or saveMii?

 

[TheTechGenius]

luckily i found a savefile on my sd card which is like 1 1/2 month old. that way i lose only like 40h instead of 200h....

just tried botw in cemu and in runs just fine at 1440p. think i will stick to this rather than replacing the wiiu. thanks for your help anyways.


edit: I have a nand backup. But anyways, the method with the teensy board is a bit too much of a struggle tbh and the teensy board also costs like 20€

Would you like to sell your dead console? Not the gamepad (unless you want to sell that too), but just the console itself?

I'm trying to buy a bunch of dead Wii U consoles to repair them with a Hard Mod.

I think it's still possible to fix a bricked Wii U without a nand backup. The only difference is the console will be completly wiped of all data.

But I'm still not 100% sure how all that works, if it's even possible to repair a bricked Wii U without a nand backup for that specific console. I'm still doing my research about the Hard Mod.

I'm looking into using a nand backup from another console, or just a way to restore a bricked Wii U back to stock, with nothing on the Nand at all but the stock files.

If I do find a way to do that, I'll be able to repair the 2 Bricked Wii U consoles that I got from friends of mine.

Basically I'm just experimenting with dead Wii U consoles. But I can't do anything with a dead Wii U if it's a hardware failure of course.

My Wii U is still perfectly fine by the way. lol.

 

[gorrth]

so your wii u is finally dead? how come you have a save? saviine or saveMii?

I did a 1.5.0 install with dlcs on a fresh harddrive(I played 1.2.1 and took a long break) and did backup with saviine(not sure anymore) ~ 1 1/2 month ago.

 

[naddel81]

I did a 1.5.0 install with dlcs on a fresh harddrive(I played 1.2.1 and took a long break) and did backup with saviine(not sure anymore) ~ 1 1/2 month ago.

I hope your old save is compatible with the new version. otherwise you would have to get update 1.2.1 and import your save there.

I use saveMii since it is the saviine successor (sort of) and much easier to use.

 

[gorrth]

Would you like to sell your dead console? Not the gamepad (unless you want to sell that too), but just the console itself?

I'm trying to buy a bunch of dead Wii U consoles to repair them with a Hard Mod.

I think it's still possible to fix a bricked Wii U without a nand backup. The only difference is the console will be completly wiped of all data.

But I'm still not 100% sure how all that works, if it's even possible to repair a bricked Wii U without a nand backup for that specific console. I'm still doing my research about the Hard Mod.

I'm looking into using a nand backup from another console, or just a way to restore a bricked Wii U back to stock, with nothing on the Nand at all but the stock files.

If I do find a way to do that, I'll be able to repair the 2 Bricked Wii U consoles that I got from friends of mine.

Basically I'm just experimenting with dead Wii U consoles. But I can't do anything with a dead Wii U if it's a hardware failure of course.

My Wii U is still perfectly fine by the way. lol.

The problem is I don't really know what bricked the WiiU. I did nothing special just playing zelda when it crashed
My guess is, that either the filesystem is corrupted or the emmc is damaged. Because the console tries to boot and is definatly loading for about 10s(after that the soundclip on the pad crashes) I think the filesystem or some files are corrupted. So again my guess is, that it could be fixed by just writing my nand backup via a microcontroller to the WiiUs nand.

However I will investigate a bit further before getting rid of the console.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

I hope your old save is compatible with the new version. otherwise you would have to get update 1.2.1 and import your save there.

I use saveMii since it is the saviine successor (sort of) and much easier to use.

Yeah I already tried it, it just works fine. Could be possible that I used SaveMii I'm not sure as I rarely use my WiiU. Basically its a Zelda machine.

 

[TheTechGenius]

The problem is I don't really know what bricked the WiiU. I did nothing special just playing zelda when it crashed
My guess is, that either the filesystem is corrupted or the emmc is damaged. Because the console tries to boot and is definatly loading for about 10s(after that the soundclip on the pad crashes) I think the filesystem or some files are corrupted. So again my guess is, that it could be fixed by just writing my nand backup via a microcontroller to the WiiUs nand.

However I will investigate a bit further before getting rid of the console.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------



Yeah I already tried it, it just works fine. Could be possible that I used SaveMii I'm not sure as I rarely use my WiiU. Basically its a Zelda machine.

Oh ok, yeah that's a good idea. You could just ask a trusted person on here if they would be willing to fix your console via hardmod. And ask them how much would they charge you to do it.


I would offer to fix it, but I don't even have the hardware to do the hardmod yet.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

luckily i found a savefile on my sd card which is like 1 1/2 month old. that way i lose only like 40h instead of 200h....

just tried botw in cemu and in runs just fine at 1440p. think i will stick to this rather than replacing the wiiu. thanks for your help anyways.


edit: I have a nand backup. But anyways, the method with the teensy board is a bit too much of a struggle tbh and the teensy board also costs like 20€

Do you have an OTP/SEEPROM backup along with that NAND backup?
With OTP/SEEPROM you can decrypt the contents of the USB drive to get the save off it so you don't lose 40 hours of progress.

 

[suzsuzuki]

Try to power on your wiiu from the console and keep the gamepad far away.

Edit: something like that happened to me, after some days I tried again to power on and I kept the gamepad far awat from console, it went to menu and i needed to sync my gamepad again. idk why it worked

 

[gorrth]

Try to power on your wiiu from the console and keep the gamepad far away.

Edit: something like that happened to me, after some days I tried again to power on and I kept the gamepad far awat from console, it went to menu and i needed to sync my gamepad again. idk why it worked

To be perfectly honest this sounded like a customer support advice at first("did you try to power it off and on again")
The funny part is, it actually worked lol
I didn't even had to sync the gamepad again, this time when I booted up I got the message that I should not force a power off(oh rly?). I'm not 100% sure the issue was related to the gamepad could also be that powering off for hours fixed the problem, but probably it was the gamepads fault.

Really happy now thank you all for your support!

 

[The Real Jdbye]

To be perfectly honest this sounded like a customer support advice at first("did you try to power it off and on again")
The funny part is, it actually worked lol
I didn't even had to sync the gamepad again, this time when I booted up I got the message that I should not force a power off(oh rly?). I'm not 100% sure the issue was related to the gamepad could also be that powering off for hours fixed the problem, but probably it was the gamepads fault.

Really happy now thank you all for your support!

I guess something with the quick start menu was corrupted. Though that shouldn't happen, it's possible.
But didn't you try switching the TV input to the Wii U to check if it was just the gamepad?

 

[suzsuzuki]

To be perfectly honest this sounded like a customer support advice at first("did you try to power it off and on again")
The funny part is, it actually worked lol
I didn't even had to sync the gamepad again, this time when I booted up I got the message that I should not force a power off(oh rly?). I'm not 100% sure the issue was related to the gamepad could also be that powering off for hours fixed the problem, but probably it was the gamepads fault.

Really happy now thank you all for your support!

glad to be useful