Hacking Homebrew Wii U (vWii) shutting down system shortly after launching Homebrew apps.

[nyoumfly]

Pretty worried ngl.

So my vWii seems fine, I seem to be able to play retail game discs without issue, but it seems that whenever I load a homebrew app (ive tried Nintendont and USB Loader GX) seem to just crash after a minute or two and im worried that its some sort of brick? Ive spent all day looking and asking in the Nintendo Homebrew discord but i cant seem to find anything thats all that similar. Is there any way of Diagnosing and fixing the issue or am i boned for vWii homebrew.

 

[CheatFreak47]

Your title and your description seem to be kinda confusingly worded.
Does your Wii U instantly fully shut off? Or are you getting the typical Wii "dsi exception error" screen, as in, your homebrew is crashing?

 

[nyoumfly]

Your title and your description seem to be kinda confusingly worded.
Does your Wii U instantly fully shut off? Or are you getting the typical Wii "dsi exception error" screen, as in, your homebrew is crashing?

No error message, just completely shutting down after a bit.

 

[CheatFreak47]

No error message, just completely shutting down after a bit.

Oh wow, yeah in that case, I'm pretty dumbfounded.
It only does this in vWii Homebrew? Never Wii games or the Wii Menu or whatever? If it's only in homebrew there's only a few culprits I can think of.

I first guess would be to verify your SD Card and/or USB Drive (if you have a USB being used for vWii stuff, not Wii U stuff) isn't having issues with file corruption or something. All Homebrew reads from the SD card, and sometimes from USB, so I guess that could be a potential culprit.

Random question, but, if you remember, when you installed Homebrew Channel on your Wii U's vWii, what method did you use to install it?

 

[nyoumfly]

Oh wow, yeah in that case, I'm pretty dumbfounded.
It only does this in vWii Homebrew? Never Wii games or the Wii Menu or whatever? If it's only in homebrew there's only a few culprits I can think of.

I first guess would be to verify your SD Card and/or USB Drive (if you have a USB being used for vWii stuff, not Wii U stuff) isn't having issues with file corruption or something. All Homebrew reads from the SD card, and sometimes from USB, so I guess that could be a potential culprit.

Random question, but, if you remember, when you installed Homebrew Channel on your Wii U's vWii, what method did you use to install it?

Seems like it. I played my disc of brawl for like 30 minutes and concludes that it was fine, but homebrew seems to go off almost immediately.

Currently I have one hard drive for both Wii u and vWii since I've been injecting Wii and GameCube isos using uwuvci-aio. That same hard drive has some Wii u games in it too that work perfectly fine from what I can tell.

Unfortunately I don't fully remember, my Wii U is using Tiramisu and from what I remember doing my process involved using a Wii u Homebrew app to mess with vWii Mii channel and then restoring it after? Not sure if that's helpful.

 

[Noander]

Try to update your homebrew. Or if that's not working use another SD card

 

[Cyan]

My Wii has NAND issues, but it doesn't shutdown, instead if displays system error message.
Fully shutting down is strange, like a hardware failure, or the AC adapter going into some warning mode ? but it's strange it never happens with WiiU mode nor vWii with retail disc.
You say it happens with vWii homebrew, and you only use SD card (your USB is in WiiU format with WiiVC channels on it), so it feels the issue is related to SD. Maybe the SD reader hardware has a problem ? more than the SD card itself (try another one).


When you don't know the cause, you have to narrow the issue by trying different things.

see with/without USB:
you can try to launch homebrew without the USB connected. It shouldn't be the problem, but just try it and you'll be sure that it's not the USB if it still happen.
Your USB is only for WiiU and installed WiiVC, so you don't need it when you are in vWii mode.

Check if it's the SD :
Try another SD card. See if it happens again.

Check if it's the SD reader/hardware :
Launch vWii, go to HBC listing your homebrew from SD and wait here few seconds/mins, see if it happens again.
You could also try with official retail game disc accessing the SD card. For instance, Smash bros DOES have SD access ! you can backup things on it (picture? stage? I forgot, but there's an option for SD). try accessing the backup menu and loading/saving from SD card.

Smash WiiU Also has SD access ! you could try the same in WiiU mode if you have that game. There are other WiiU games with SD card access, the ones Loadiine could use to boot WiiU games.
But you could try some WiiU homebrew with SD access too.

Be careful, if your SD card hardware is at fault, you can lose data. make a backup of your card's content first.


so far that's the only things I can think of.

 

[nyoumfly]

Try to update your homebrew. Or if that's not working use another SD card

What's the process for updating the homebrew channel? I'm able to find how to do it on the original Wii online, I'm just very wary of the fact I'm using a vWii

Post automatically merged: Oct 26, 2022

My Wii has NAND issues, but it doesn't shutdown, instead if displays system error message.
Fully shutting down is strange, like a hardware failure, or the AC adapter going into some warning mode ? but it's strange it never happens with WiiU mode nor vWii with retail disc.
You say it happens with vWii homebrew, and you only use SD card (your USB is in WiiU format with WiiVC channels on it), so it feels the issue is related to SD. Maybe the SD reader hardware has a problem ? more than the SD card itself (try another one).


When you don't know the cause, you have to narrow the issue by trying different things.

see with/without USB:
you can try to launch homebrew without the USB connected. It shouldn't be the problem, but just try it and you'll be sure that it's not the USB if it still happen.
Your USB is only for WiiU and installed WiiVC, so you don't need it when you are in vWii mode.

Check if it's the SD :
Try another SD card. See if it happens again.

Check if it's the SD reader/hardware :
Launch vWii, go to HBC listing your homebrew from SD and wait here few seconds/mins, see if it happens again.
You could also try with official retail game disc accessing the SD card. For instance, Smash bros DOES have SD access ! you can backup things on it (picture? stage? I forgot, but there's an option for SD). try accessing the backup menu and loading/saving from SD card.

Smash WiiU Also has SD access ! you could try the same in WiiU mode if you have that game. There are other WiiU games with SD card access, the ones Loadiine could use to boot WiiU games.
But you could try some WiiU homebrew with SD access too.

Be careful, if your SD card hardware is at fault, you can lose data. make a backup of your card's content first.


so far that's the only things I can think of.

I'll try these when I get home

edit: if it's an SD card fault how come it hasn't caused issues on the Wii U side of things?

 

[Cyan]

What's the process for updating the homebrew channel? I'm able to find how to do it on the original Wii online, I'm just very wary of the fact I'm using a vWii

You shouldn't have to update.
on vWii, there were very few updates of HBC.
First, check which version you have (in the HBC settings) before attempting anything.
There are 2 or maybe 3 versions of the official HBC closed sources version, and then it went open source, and a new version was released with TitleID OHBC. But you don't "need" it.
I would change the HBC only on last resort.
While you are in a homebrew, HBC is not in memory anymore ! it has nothing to do with your issue if it doesn't happen inside HBC. only one IOS and one app can be in memory at the same time.

Speaking of IOS, it could be IOS58 related ? IOS are hardware bridges. IOS58 should be the official one, you don't need to touch, or patch it.

edit: if it's an SD card fault how come it hasn't caused issues on the Wii U side of things?

Do you use your SD often on WiiU side ?
like emulator homebrew with constant SD access, or maybe big WUP file installation ?

If the SD card is used a lot on WiiU too, then I don't know why it happens only on vWii mode.
That's also why I thought about disconnecting USB first. just to narrow and excluse the possibility that the USB is at fault.
But, I suppose it would also be a problem on WiiU mode if it was the USB hardware. That's why I thought about the SD, which is less often accessed on WiiU than when using vWii homebrew like nintendont with constant read access to the ISO.

Maybe it's only a SD card issue, not hardware, but I think you'd get nintendont error, or a crash, of dsi exception message if it was software.


I once had the Wii shutdown itself, and didn't boot anymore. I thought the Wii died while using a CPU intensive homebrew (DS emulator).
It was in fact just the AC adapter who went into some safe mode, I had to unplug it from both side (wall AND console) for an hour or two to "reset" it. (actually, I left if unplug a full day, while I was at work).
It worked again. My Wii didn't even have a power LED at all, nor red nor orange. just no power.
But yours don't have any issue to power ON again. maybe they changed how the power adapter safe mode works, it's now the console which enters safe mode maybe?
Well, you can also try to unplug it few min/hours, nothing wrong trying that.But seeing you don't have power ON issue you won't know if it helped or if you left it unplugged long enough until you trigger the issue again.

 

[nyoumfly]

Do you use your SD often on WiiU side ?
like emulator homebrew with constant SD access, or maybe big WUP file installation ?

If the SD card is used a lot on WiiU too, then I don't know why it happens only on vWii mode.
That's also why I thought about disconnecting USB first. just to narrow and excluse the possibility that the USB is at fault.
But, I suppose it would also be a problem on WiiU mode if it was the USB hardware. That's why I thought about the SD, which is less often accessed on WiiU than when using vWii homebrew like nintendont with constant read access to the ISO.

Maybe it's only a SD card issue, not hardware, but I think you'd get nintendont error, or a crash, of dsi exception message if it was software.

Ive used Wup Installer GX with some pretty big files that would have been pretty active with the SD card I imagine and it worked fine.

Speaking of IOS, it could be IOS58 related ? IOS are hardware bridges. IOS58 should be the official one, you don't need to touch, or patch it.

If it is to do with IOS58 is there anyway to repair or restore it or is it just beaned without a backup. Is there any tools I could try to use for diagnostics or anything I could send to get a better understanding of what's happening

 

[Cyan]

I think if you had a bad IOS58, HBC would not work at all.
but if you are curious, you can try syscheck https://gbatemp.net/threads/posting-a-system-check.300279/
It'll list all your current IOS and tells if they are patched.

 

[nyoumfly]

see with/without USB:
you can try to launch homebrew without the USB connected. It shouldn't be the problem, but just try it and you'll be sure that it's not the USB if it still happen.
Your USB is only for WiiU and installed WiiVC, so you don't need it when you are in vWii mode.

Just got home and started testing some of your theories and for some reason, yep, unplugging the wii u hdd solved it, ive left the system idling on usb loader gx for about 10 minutes where before it would have crashed by now. Thats super confusing imo. Should I reset my drive and try from scratch reinstalling everything in case there were bad files or should i give up on the mono hard drive dream?

 

[CheatFreak47]

Just got home and started testing some of your theories and for some reason, yep, unplugging the wii u hdd solved it, ive left the system idling on usb loader gx for about 10 minutes where before it would have crashed by now. Thats super confusing imo. Should I reset my drive and try from scratch reinstalling everything in case there were bad files or should i give up on the mono hard drive dream?

How exactly are you using only one HDD anyway? Did you do some partitioning stuff or...?
Personally I usually just recommend a Dual HDD setup- though with portable drives that can get a bit messy with Y-cables.

 

[Cyan]

I guess no partitioning (not possible with WiiU, unless very complicated HDD firmware edition to edit the max seen size by plugged devices). It's in WiiU format, and Wii games are just WiiVC channels in WiiU mode.

So, the USB is creating this issue ?
homebrew don't try to access the device all the time, it's done at homebrew launch, initializing the drive, then if it's not compatible (no partition table found on WiiU HDD) then it's unmount and should not even tried to access it again, unless you refresh/reload the homebrew.
but your issue seems to be hardware related, no error message, just shutdown. So, I don't know why the USB device would do that.

another thing you can try : plus any other USB device (instead of that WiiU HDD), and see if it happens too.
a FAT32 HDD, a flashdrive, USB to Sd adapter, another WiiU HDD, etc. or even non data devices (microphones, drum, webcam, anything USB)
This is just to determine if it happens with any USB, or your specific WiiU formatted HDD.

If it's only that device, maybe it's software (format it and put your games back on it), or maybe it's hardware (use another drive).

But I still don't understand why it happens only while in vWii Mode, and in homebrew.

 

[nyoumfly]

Okay so late update but I got around to trying some troubleshooting and have seemed to find the problem, being the cable I'm using for my hard drive. I guess even with using an extra USB slot for power it still wasn't getting enough? But funnily enough getting power from my TV's USB slot actually works perfectly, which is kinda annoying for when I want to leave my stuff updating or installing overnight I have to make sure my tv stays on too, but at least it works until I can find a better cable or hard drive.