WiiU freezing during any exploit

[Mark_G]

Hi, I've been reading lots of guides and threads, trying to install a CFW on my US Retail WiiU 5.5.6 U. I bought it used, but there was no sign of it being modded previously or region swapped or anything.

Every time I try to run an exploit, it freezes immediately after the exploit. When I run the browser (.xyz) exploit, it freezes at a white screen after clicking the button on the page and holding B. DNSPresso freezes at the black screen with the coffee cup text. Bluubomb freezes when I try to launch an app (like a game disc), after successfully running the bluubomb exploit from my computer.

Are these all happening when it's trying to relaunch IOS? I've been hanging out on the discord, but I haven't gotten specific help for the symptoms I'm seeing.

After reading everything I could find and trying more and more drastic configurations, the WiiU is currently running isfshax + minute + rednand, which I was able to install using udpih. None of the other exploits (browser, dnspresso) were successful. I'm ultimately trying to install aroma. I've attached the SD's current layout.

Please let me know if there's any other info that would be useful and thanks in advance for your help!

Mark

 

[SDIO]

You don't need any of these exploits, if you have ISFShax. Just use the plugin for loading aroma.
Also does leaving the settings work?
Why do you have redNAND were there any signs of corruption?

 

[Mark_G]

I wound up installing rednand because I was worried I soft bricked it at one point. At some point it stopped booting normally, both with and without the SD card installed, choosing "Patch (sd) and boot IOS (slc)" from the minute menu.

I've tried using the 5payldr.ipx file, but it won't boot past the white WiiU logo splash screen if I have that in the ios_plugins folder with the other two files.

 

[SDIO]

Then likely your aroma files are just corrupted. Replace them with fresh ones

 

[Mark_G]

Just downloaded fresh Payload and Base Aroma zips from the aroma foryour cafe site (edit to remove the hyperlink) and merged them onto the SD and it's the same behavior.

 

[Mark_G]

Somewhere in the past few days I caused harm to my slccmpt configuration and had to modify my minute config and reformat my MLC partition to NTFS to get it to boot properly. I recreated my MLC again, booted in and completed the initial setup.

I then powered down, added the 5payldr plugin, and it now gets stuck at the big WiiU logo screen.

 

[SDIO]

Somewhere in the past few days I caused harm to my slccmpt configuration and had to modify my minute config and reformat my MLC partition to NTFS to get it to boot properly.

What? These 3 things have nothing to do with each other.
For the Aroma Problem maybe ask in the Aroma Discord.
Can you do a system update?

 

[Mark_G]

Hm. Now I'm even more confused. I reformatted because I was receiving warning messages in the rednand loading screen about the wrong partition type. Reading through the minute_minute page on GitHub, I found that it should be NTFS when scfm is disabled (it was EXT2). This is my current minute.ini. Any changes to these settings cause it to freeze when booting into IOS:

[partitions]
slccmpt=true
slc=true
mlc=true

[scfm]
disable=true
allow_sys=false

[disable_encryption]
mlc=false

[sys_mount]
mlc=false

I just tried doing a System Update from inside the WiiU Settings and it says "Your console is up to date." Quitting out of the settings looks to cause the WiiU to reboot and the gamepad temporarily displays "Welcome to RedNAND SALT edition".

 

[SDIO]

Why do you even have slccmpt and slc redirected? I don't think you need redNAND at all.

Can you try with a clean SD card again? Put only fresh ISFShax files on it with the payldr and the Aroma files including the environment loader

 

[Mark_G]

I built a new SD card with the files you mentioned and I attached a screenshot of the file structure. When I try to boot without rednand it freezes at the black screen in the other image

 

[Mark_G]

Bumping this one up. I bought a second WiiU from ebay, 5.5.6U, which is working fine.

This second WiiU is having the same freezing issues, failing to load aroma from the browser exploit or dnspresso. I have tried three different SD cards, following these steps to format the card.

I'm open to any suggestions on what else could be common between these two or what to try next.

 

[Mark_G]

I've been working with the original WiiU with isfshax and rednand. It will very occasionally boot to the environmentloader menu and aroma.

After trying lots of different things, including buying a new card reader and sd card from Best Buy, I added some more debugging to the PayloadFromRPX files.

It's consistently failing at line 240 in gx2sploit.cpp, while calling OSJoinThread(thread, 0);.

I don't know understand enough about the WiiU architecture and the exploit to modify more of the code for debugging, but I'm putting it here in case someone more knowledgeable sees this.

 

[Lanman]

Bumping this one up. I bought a second WiiU from ebay, 5.5.6U, which is working fine.

This second WiiU is having the same freezing issues, failing to load aroma from the browser exploit or dnspresso. I have tried three different SD cards, following these steps to format the card.

I'm open to any suggestions on what else could be common between these two or what to try next.

For the browser exploit- are you trying from an "open network" like the access point on your cell phone? I found that my IPS and firewall did not like the traffic and blocked. I got notifications immediately that my WiiU was trying to exploit the site IP.. As soon as I ran it via my cell phone access point... worked like a charm on 6 devices so far. I followed a few youtube guides from Pence Family Gaming, Below average gaming (I used a partitioned 5TB drive for wii/wiiU for my main WiiU from that channel) and found my way over to Tzirf's channel when the repairs got deeper than just swapping parts-- its a great way to diag the biggest issues.

Like SDIO said previously, you should not have to mess with anything NAND related if you have a working device without having memory codes/weird boot issues. I cant link to those youtube channels (newb to the forums)- but they are what I first used and the technique I used to sucessfully complete the browser exploit.

 

[Mark_G]

Hey, thanks for the suggestion. I created a mobile hotspot on my phone, double checked all of the aroma files on my SD card and tried it a few times, clearing the save data each time. Unfortunately it's the same behavior.

Also, I can view the exploit page and the page source successfully when I visit via a computer, so it doesn't look like my IPS or firewalls are blocking the content from what I can tell.

And as far as the rednand, I have two WiiU's at this point. The one I had first has isfshax and rednand, and it won't boot IOS from SLC, only redNAND. I must had done some damage or partially bricked it while I was trying different things in the past couple of months. The newer one boots fine, and I've only tried the browser exploit or DNSpresso. But both old and new weirdly have the same symtoms when I try both of those exploits.

 

[Mark_G]

Another update. I was able to get the PayloadLoader installed into H&S today. When I try to launch H&S it freezes in the same ways as any of the other exploits, freezing during the gx2sploit after loading PayloadFromRPX. I dumped some logs, and 82.log and 84.log should have the H&S freezes if anyone feels like taking a look.