Hacking Wii U will not update

[Deleted User]

You said nothing below 249, but it should be nothing below 200.

IOS58 isn't patched, it has a USB2.0 driver built in.

That's what I thought so he should check his IOS58. Weird, I was under the impression that on vWii, if anything was modified under 249, it had to be the user who did it (IOS36,236, etc...) Learn something new every day!

 

[JoostinOnline]

That's what I thought so he should check his IOS58. Weird, I was under the impression that on vWii, if anything was modified under 249, it had to be the user who did it (IOS36,236, etc...) Learn something new every day!

Well 249 is user-installed too, so I'm not sure what you mean.

On the vWii, it is particularly dangerous to install any vIOS (the vWii counterpart for a Wii IOS) that is below slot 200 (well below 81, but 200 is the standard "safe" area). If you overwrite a vIOS, then you can't get it back unless you have a NAND backup. Unlike on the Wii, you can't just download a vanilla version from NUS.

 

[Deleted User]

Got it, I guess I misunderstand what 249 [56]is when installing D2X, I always thought it meant installing into slot 249, with base 56 [featureset of IOS56]

How exactly does that work? Probably wrong thread for this, but was curious.

 

[JoostinOnline]

Got it, I guess I misunderstand what 249 [56]is when installing D2X, I always thought it meant installing into slot 249, with base 56 [featureset of IOS56]

How exactly does that work? Probably wrong thread for this, but was curious.

That's exactly what it means.

 

[Deleted User]

Oh maybe I worded it wrong? When I meant "under 249", I meant any IOS 0-248 should be stock IOS. You're right though, anything under 200 should probably be stock.

 

[Shadow#1]

First off, it's not firmware. I'm tired of people calling the System Menu on the Wii and Wii U "firmware". Second, he never even answered my question. From the look of it, he hasn't even tried updating.

then what would u call it?

 

[JoostinOnline]

then what would u call it?

Software. It's no different than running a game. When you launch a game/channel, the System Menu stops running.

 

[gurm]

Ok guys, I have a success story to report!

Thanks to airline38 for his assistance - much of this is his information, although I've made it more verbose.

Here's my conclusion:

- As an antipiracy measure, the WiiU system update, at around 30-33%, unpacks the vWii iOS'es and checks them. Don't know if it hashes, checksums, or what.
- Bad check equals 162-0002.
- MISSING iOS'es equals "reinstall".
- Good check equals "ignore".

It seems to only check titles under 200. Anything higher, such as 236, 249-251... all irrelevant.
Presence of HBC, HBF, Config Loader, etc. ... all irrelevant.

It really truly ONLY CHECKSUMS THE SYSTEM iOS'es.

Now here's the kicker. If you touched any of them yourself? The checks are screwed. I don't know the mechanism - maybe it hashes them somewhere, maybe when you poke a title there's a flag set somewhere. I don't know! What I do know is that I used AnyTitleDeleter and REMOVED every iOS I had touched. That includes:

iOS36, iOS53, iOS56-58

Why had I touched those? Who knows. Maybe I ran brick...pimp...myWii. Maybe I accidentally installed the dumped WADs instead of using them as a base for 249-251 (pretty sure that's what happened actually). All I know is that they had been touched, and I deleted them, and that did the trick.

After I did that, the update ran FLAWLESSLY, replaced every one of them, and upgraded them!

I can also confirm that the WiiU system update DID update a number of the vWii system iOS'es. iOS59 went up from v8737 to v9249, for example.

Now, the real mystery - why do people who NEVER hacked their vWii have this issue? I can only speculate that it's possible for iOS'es to get corrupted somehow. Like I said, I simply don't know how this thing stores the hash information, or what specifically it is checking.

Here's one thing I've noticed which might be unrelated - the vWii has a somewhat elastic amount of storage. On a physical Wii, trying to install HBC without sufficient space would bomb out the process. On the vWii? It'll still install! Then you'll get "this Wii is out of memory" and the channel manager will pop up. I deleted "Lost Winds" which was 258 blocks, but only ended up with 239 blocks free. Is the vWii stealing memory from somewhere else? Is something getting corrupted by the channels which are too large? These are all questions I simply cannot answer - and this might be unrelated, but in my experience (admittedly 20 years ago) as a system level programmer, there is NO SUCH THING as "extra memory". SOMETHING gets stomped. I wonder if people who have this bug but have never modded their vWii did a system transfer from their old Wii and it was too big? Or maybe they had a few things installed already? I'm wondering if the vWii isn't simply prone to corruption, especially in the "gets installed by a game" iOS'es like 53 and 58?

Ok, enough rambling. I'm happy to provide more details, answer questions regarding what I did - I'll keep an eye on this thread for a few weeks, since you were all SUPER AMAZING in helping me out, especially airline38!

 

[Deleted User]

Good to hear. There's really no reason to modify anything below 200 except for very special cases.

They're checked against known hashes. In software, it's a terrible idea to start patching when the original files can't be verified. You don't know what the user had/hasn't done and could potentially cause even more problems than before. (then you get people crying your update broke their system)

I don't know why, but there's been a rash of these IOS 36,58 deleted/gone/vWii bricks the last couple of days. Dunno if you used PimpMyWii, but there's an inherent danger in letting a program do everything for you.

 

[gurm]

Good to hear. There's really no reason to modify anything below 200 except for very special cases.

They're checked against known hashes. In software, it's a terrible idea to start patching when the original files can't be verified. You don't know what the user had/hasn't done and could potentially cause even more problems than before. (then you get people crying your update broke their system)

I don't know why, but there's been a rash of these IOS 36,58 deleted/gone/vWii bricks the last couple of days. Dunno if you used PimpMyWii, but there's an inherent danger in letting a program do everything for you.

Gunner, you're of course right. My inherent laziness overcame my coders' instincts, but once I started really digging in (and had airline38 explain to me that certain things were/weren't safe) it became easier.

I think I can say with some clarity that, regardless of the WHY (which I hope you guys figure out in here!) that anyone with problems can either fix them with ISP twiddling OR by killing off 36, 56-58, and updating again. Pretty sure 36 is the kicker, to be honest.

 

[ilikepie641]

I can't update but I get no error code, it just continues to load endlessly at the "Checking for updates..." screen
What should I do?

 

[gurm]

ilikepie641, that sounds like an ISP problem. You should try google DNS or a friend's house... or updating from the Mario Kart disc.