Hacking Wii with an unusual brick problem

[nutzo]

I have a Wii with an unusual brick problem.
Unit had been upgraded to 3.4 through nintendo long before this problem started. Homebrew was never installed.

The Wii will start, video works, and I get the startup screen, but I never get the "Press A" message. Pressing "A" on the controller does nothing. The DVD continues to run until the unit is turned off.

The unit has a WiiKey 2 installed, and I was able to use the Game Cube controller trick (recovery mode) to verify that 3.4 was loaded. I also used recovery mode with an autoboot game and was able to load and run the game.

Since the unit was running 3.4, none of the Trucha Signed repair disk will work.

I did try the "Backup Disc" and was able to backup everything (one file at a time) to the SD card, except for 1 VC file that fails (Everyone Votes Channel). Restoring this VC file hangs the Wii, even when I tried a good copy of the VC from a working Wii.
Delete All, Full Backup, and Full Restore also hang.

I managed to use the Zelda Hack to load both "Any Title Deleter" and "Wad Manager" even though I was never able to boot to the menu. However I have still not been able to unbrick this Wii.

The system hangs when I try to delete any the following with "Any Title Deleter" or replace the IOS's with "Wad Manager 1.3"

Everyone Votes Channel
System Menu
IOS 30

I can delete every other file I've tried, and can install other Wad/system files with the WAD manager no problem.

My Guess is that I have a physically bad flash chip, or a chip has corruption that can't be repaired using available tools

Any thoughts other than remove the mod chip & send it back to Nintendo?

 

[Hells Guardian]

Use the zelda hack to load all the tools for the oct 23rd fix by a_running_Pir8. It should downgrade the system IOS's and enable you to use wad manager to install a wad file of the system menu and recover from the brick.

 

[nutzo]

Wad Manager runs fine since I can replace all the other files except for the few defective ones.

I can't use the downgrader disk, since I don't have access to the menu to reconfigure the network (don't know what the settings are) so I manually downgraded it to 3.2 by extracting the IOS's from a game image and installing each of the WADs with the WAD manager 1.3

I was able to replace all the IOS files except for the system menu and ISO 30. It hangs half way through the install of the WAD.
Tried mutiple times and it always hangs at the same spot.

Of course this didn't fix the problem since it appears the problem is due to a corrupt menu IOS.

 

[FenrirWolf]

You are installing IOS30 first and System Menu second, right?

 

[vettacossx]

try the new mod wiipower released that uses any IOS you select would that help? maybe then you could get that wad to install?

http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=149502

 

[nutzo]

You are installing IOS30 first and System Menu second, right?

Yes. Tried more than once.

 

[nutzo]

try the new mod wiipower released that uses any IOS you select would that help? maybe then you could get that wad to install?

http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=149502

Not a conflict with the IOS I'm using since even the even the system menu can't be replaced.
I even used the IOS16 wad manager, same results.

 

[nutzo]

try the new mod wiipower released that uses any IOS you select would that help? maybe then you could get that wad to install?

http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=149502

Thanks for pointing me to this Wad manager, after digging alot deeper, I was able to unbrick this Wii

I installed ISO249 (cios rev 9) and was able to use it to install the menu for 3.2 and ISO30.
However, this still didn't fix the problem.

The solution was tracking down a WAD installation file for the corrupt "Every one votes channel"
Using ISO249, with this WAD manager, I was able to install the "Every one votes channel"
from the WAD, and then uninstall it.
I then had to do the same for another corrupt VC.

I'm now in the menu & installed the homebrew channel, reconfigured the network, etc.

 

[nutzo]

Spoke too soon. Looks like there is a hardware flash problem after all.

After downgrading to 3.2 and installing homebrew everything was working. I even copied back all the game save files and upgraded to 4.0

Since I had to delete the downloaded games, tried to redownload them again, but the shopping channel hung. I manually reinstalled it from the WAD file, but the install failed. 2nd install worked & everything was fine again.

I then redownloaded several games from the shopping channel (no cost because they had already been downloaded before). The Wii hung when I exited the shopping channel.

Now I have no video out, not even a black screen (I've trippled checked the cables) and the Remote doesn't talk to the Wii anymore (no Sync). Wii doesn't reboot into recovery mode either.

It appears that the Flash occasionally becomes corrupts when writting. The more I write, the bigger chance for corruption.
Explains several strange problem I had seen while working on it, where files that worked when installed, would error after other files where installed.

Looks like it's back to Nintendo......... after all