Bricked Wii after using Ohneschwanzenegger for a fresh NAND

CrazyGadgetMods · Nov 13, 2023

In the last couple weeks, I have acquired and converted a bunch of 4.3J Wiis to 4.3U to use them in Wii portable builds, all with great success. A couple nights ago, I pulled a random Wii from my pile of untested ones and found that it would not boot to the system menu. Luckily, when I held reset while powering on, I was greeted with priiloader, so I figured I wasn't completely boned. I prepped a bootmii SD card and navigated from priiloader to the BootMii IOS (lucky it had that too I suppose), and dumped the NAND. There were a few bad blocks, but nothing that looked out of the ordinary based on my other experience.

On my PC, I followed the same exact steps I had been using to convert the Japanese Wiis to US.

Copied the old NAND to my PC and made another backup copy
In ohneschwanzenegger, Nand Dump > New Nand > Existing Nand > selected my old NAND. Everything pre-filled like with my other Wiis
Init Nand
Content > Format > Yes
Typed 4.3u in the title bar, left "v" blank > Get It!
Content > Write Meta Entries
Content > Flush

I used nandBinCheck.exe to check the new NAND, and I did not see any glaring errors (like there were on the old NAND). I copied the new NAND to my SD card, named the old NAND "oldNAND.bin" and the new NAND "nand.bin". Popped it in the Wii, navigated from Priiloader to BootMii, and restored the NAND from my SD card. The simulation went well, there were some bad blocks like with the backup, but again, nothing that jumped out to me as a major red flag. Ran the real restore, and it looked good, all successful! Exited the restore screen and then tried to navigate to the system menu from BootMii.... black screen.

Gave the system a full power cycle, and still a black screen. So it's bricked... but what's bugging me is I don't know why. If I followed all the same steps I did with converting those Japenese Wiis, what did I miss? To my understanding, when formatting the NAND, all it keeps is the keys and the list of bad blocks, correct? And then a fresh 4.3u is installed, along with the meta garbage.

I suppose the only silver linings to this situation are that I still have the original NAND backup and keys, and that this Wii is in no way special to me, so having one less on my shelf isn't the end of the world. That being said, I am a sucker for trying to save every piece of broken hardware I can get my hands on, so I will absolutely dump more time into this than it's worth (like I already have)... Maybe at some point in the future, I'll buy or borrow a NAND flasher and desolder the NAND from the Wii to reflash it, but that's only if I can figure out why it borked in the first place...

Any insight / tips / guidance on how to avoid this or go about it differently the next time would be greatly appreciated!

XFlak · Nov 13, 2023

If it were a 003 brick I'd have a possible explanation, it doesn't sound like this is the case but I'll share my line of thinking anyway as it may prove helpful in your future endeavours... or not.

If the wii were originally Korean and poorly region changed, by which I mean the Korean key was still present in the seeprom, restoring a stock system menu IOS on 4.2 or 4.3 non-korean system menu's will result in 003 brick (which is essentially what would have happened restoring an virgin ohneschwanzenegger nand)

Ohneschwanzenegger restorations are generally advised to be a last resort. Sounds like whatever the issue was u were trying to resolve could have been fixed while u still had priiloader access. Going full nuclear with ohneschwanzenegger is not without its risks. But to be fair this is the first time I've actually ever heard of it failing so hard

Edit: hmmm, another thing that I just thought of that might be a good idea to do after restoring an ohneschwanzenegger nand on wii's without bootmii boot2, although untested so I'm not sure if it would actually work if the system menu hasn't been launched at least once to set itself up. Anyway, if u keep bootmini.elf on your sd card and some apps, immediately after restoring the Virgin nand u could launch it, then install the homebrew channel, launch it, and install priiloader, all before exiting the homebrew environment and testing that the new system menu works, and if it fails u should still at least have priiloader... in theory. I'm not sure if all the apps will work properly if the system menu hasn't been booted before, it would be an interesting test, and if it works this should definitely be advised from now on in all cases anytime anyone ever restores a virgin nand on a wii without bootmiiboot2

KleinesSinchen · Nov 13, 2023

CrazyGadgetMods said:
to use them in Wii portable builds, all with great success.

Kudos. I would fail hard at cutting/trimming a board.

As somebody that knowledgeable in hardware things you should have zero trouble checking the hardware side. We have had such an issue on the forum recently. Turned out to be disconnected WiFi board.

CrazyGadgetMods said:
Any insight / tips / guidance on how to avoid this or go about it differently the next time would be greatly appreciated!

NAND restore is dangerous on all units without BootMii in boot2 (as far as I know later models are less energy hungry and more suitable for portable mods due to less layers of the board – so you will be hunting for later motherboards which have the boot1 vulnerability fixed).
Before doing extreme things like complete flashing you should rule out stupid causes of error (like System Menu not starting because some piece of hardware is disconnected) and try to get a Syscheck.

CrazyGadgetMods · Nov 13, 2023

It seems like the link you posted to another thread is busted, but I'll assume it was either a Bluetooth or Wifi issue. Funnily enough, I very recently had a board with a bad BT module, it was my first time seeing that one but hey, there's a first for everything!

I initially thought it was a NAND brick just because of the nature of the events that unfolded prior to no signs of life, plus this was a completely in-tact unit... or so I thought... Looking around, a lot of the little screw-covering stickers were missing, and there were a few screws loose. Opening it up revealed more missing screws, brackets installed in the wrong order, peeled-up stickers, misrouted wires, the whole shebang! I got it down to the bare board and check this sucker out:

It feels like there's another fuse in there, maybe the original one died and this was someone's hot fix?? In any case, the Wii was getting power so I wasn't concerned. Just to rule it out, I swapped the BT and Wifi one and a time, and only with BOTH replaced, I got this!!!

A bad BT module AND a bad Wifi module! I can't believe I was so hung up on the NAND stuff that I didn't check my basics! Thank you so much @KleinesSinchen, you saved me from banging my head against the wall even more. And @XFlak I have a couple spare Wiis that I can't use for my projects, maybe I'll try your suggestion on one of them to see if installing priiloader post-restore / pre-setup is possible. Thank you guys for the help!

cyberann · May 17, 2024

CrazyGadgetMods said:
In the last couple weeks, I have acquired and converted a bunch of 4.3J Wiis to 4.3U to use them in Wii portable builds, all with great success. A couple nights ago, I pulled a random Wii from my pile of untested ones and found that it would not boot to the system menu. Luckily, when I held reset while powering on, I was greeted with priiloader, so I figured I wasn't completely boned. I prepped a bootmii SD card and navigated from priiloader to the BootMii IOS (lucky it had that too I suppose), and dumped the NAND. There were a few bad blocks, but nothing that looked out of the ordinary based on my other experience.

On my PC, I followed the same exact steps I had been using to convert the Japanese Wiis to US.

Copied the old NAND to my PC and made another backup copy

In ohneschwanzenegger, Nand Dump > New Nand > Existing Nand > selected my old NAND. Everything pre-filled like with my other Wiis

Init Nand

Content > Format > Yes

Typed 4.3u in the title bar, left "v" blank > Get It!

Content > Write Meta Entries

Content > Flush

I used nandBinCheck.exe to check the new NAND, and I did not see any glaring errors (like there were on the old NAND). I copied the new NAND to my SD card, named the old NAND "oldNAND.bin" and the new NAND "nand.bin". Popped it in the Wii, navigated from Priiloader to BootMii, and restored the NAND from my SD card. The simulation went well, there were some bad blocks like with the backup, but again, nothing that jumped out to me as a major red flag. Ran the real restore, and it looked good, all successful! Exited the restore screen and then tried to navigate to the system menu from BootMii.... black screen.

Gave the system a full power cycle, and still a black screen. So it's bricked... but what's bugging me is I don't know why. If I followed all the same steps I did with converting those Japenese Wiis, what did I miss? To my understanding, when formatting the NAND, all it keeps is the keys and the list of bad blocks, correct? And then a fresh 4.3u is installed, along with the meta garbage.

I suppose the only silver linings to this situation are that I still have the original NAND backup and keys, and that this Wii is in no way special to me, so having one less on my shelf isn't the end of the world. That being said, I am a sucker for trying to save every piece of broken hardware I can get my hands on, so I will absolutely dump more time into this than it's worth (like I already have)... Maybe at some point in the future, I'll buy or borrow a NAND flasher and desolder the NAND from the Wii to reflash it, but that's only if I can figure out why it borked in the first place...

Any insight / tips / guidance on how to avoid this or go about it differently the next time would be greatly appreciated!

I'm trying to do a similar thing but I'm unable to find a working link to ohneschwanzenegger, do you still have a link to the download?

XFlak · May 17, 2024

Modmii download page 2

Bricked Wii after using Ohneschwanzenegger for a fresh NAND

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