Guide: How to Unbrick Your Nintendo Wii Console

[cfwprophet]

Attention:
One of my Team members got a bricked Wii during editing our CFW 4.0 (he forgot to delate the second ticket and tmd) and we noticed that with 3-Party Controllers the rescue menu doesnt start.Dont know if this will be for every 3-Party Controller but we only got the Rescue Menu to Boot with a Original GC Controller.



This is a TUT to unbrick your Wii with the internal Rescue Menu. You can do this with and without Starfall.

Without Starfall you have to MOD a GC Controller to press all 4 ways of the digi pad to same time and you need a Original Game Disc with a update on it, higher as your installed FW. If you have a Modchip set to autoboot disc´s than you can use a backup instead of a Original disc. For Starfall you dono need to MOD your GC Pad.

And you could use Backups if the disc size will match the 4,37GB. I self have testet the semi unbrick disc but it does not work without a modchip. There for I made the "Universal Unbrick Disc" becouse the disc will match the 4,37GB and it hase the FW 3.3 update + the WAD Manager as main.dol in the game partition.I will show you how to start both rescue menu´s, with an without starfall and i will use the universal unbrick disc with starfall to upgrade (unbrick) my Wii to FW3.3.

When you could use it?

If you run into a brick and your Wii does not start the menu any more but will boot (green led and spinning drive) you have a good chance to be able to start the Wii internal rescue menu to install a FW update or the system menu.wad + IOS via WAD Manager what will unbrick your Wii if you lucky. If your Wii does not boot any more than your only chance will be Nintendo or a pre-dumped NAND image of your consoles flash chip.

Lets start with the normal Recue Menu Methode:

Open up your GC pad useing a triwing scruew driver.Before you open the pad turn around than open it.




Take the digi pad part of and in the center cut of the nipple.On my picture it will be allready cuted of.




Put all back together and connect it to port 4. The next step will be a little bit tricky. You need the correct timing to boot into
the Rescue Menu. Under FW 3.2 you will see nothing more than a blank black screen. On FW 3.2 and higher you will see a FW x.x down in the
right corner. Here a Vid of booting the Rescue Menu with normall method:

The Starfall Rescue Menu Methode:

To use this you must have installed the Starfall rescue menu hacks.Than just connect the GC pad to port 1 and press "Y" duoring bootup. Hier a Vid of it in action:

Unbrick your Wii:

Now we know both methodes i will go on and upgrade my CFW 3.2 Wii with my Universal Unbrick Disc to a FW 3.3 Wii.
Hier the Vid:

As you can see it hase not installed the update but started the WAD Manager.Even better becouse you could choose the wad you want to install!

My Universal Unbrick Disc will be set to autoboot and i forgot that this will disable the update and directly load the main.dol from the second partition.

This works on my Softmodded Wii with CFW and Starfall installed.It should also work with a Modchip (even with no autoboot seted) and no Starfall installed.

Anyway with the WAD Manager you will be secured but i want to find a IOS to set the partition to load what will be present on every Wii. Becouse last time i haved a wii without the IOS35 what the second partition of the uud will be load and i cant start the WAD Manager even the app reload the IOS249.

Before reloading IOS the IOS from the game partition must be present to be load into the ram.I will try it with IOS4 what will be the
update driver and present on every wii. If it works i will reupload the uud.

-Good Luck in Unbricking your Wii- :)


More PlayStation 3 News...

[PS3 News]

Very detailed and quite a handy guide for Wii owners cfwprophet, and +Rep to you too!

[tvdbz431]

Very nice guide, should be a real help to those who have this problem.

[hycraig]

Great guide, thanks cfwprophet

[Platocygnus]

Very helpful guide. Do you know if they are ever going to let the Opera browser use Adobe Flash??

[cfwprophet]

No dont know. I dono really use my wii. Only for HB and testing

But what will be more interesting is that rumors says nintendo plan to release a external hdd for the Wii.

[TuRDMaN]

Put all back together and connect it to port 4. The next step will be a little bit tricky. You need the correct timing to boot into
the Rescue Menu.

What is correct timing to press down all directions on the d-pad? I have tried holding it down before the wii is even turned on, and I've tried it just after pressing power. I have also tried with the controller in port 4 and 1. Nothing I do will make the firmware version show up on the screen (I am running 3.3U).

I think I'm screwed here. Is there any way to get my wii working again now? Even if it involves taking the wii apart and doing surgery on it, I'm willing to try.

[CHRISRYAN]

Turdman you are in the same situation as me ive been reading all over the net how to fix this and u may still be able to fix it but and it is a big BUT i think it all depends on your chip. i have the d2ckey installed on mine which wont boot the autorun games You need to try and get someone with a wiikey as these chips support it.i myself donot know anyone with this chip so i gave up trying and just bought a new console and swapped the drives over in them.

I hope you have more luck than me and if you do get sorted please post how you did it here as im sure there will be more of us out there looking for that bit of help.

[TuRDMaN]

You need to try and get someone with a wiikey as these chips support it.

My wii has never been opened, so it doesn't have any mod chip installed. So you think I might be able to fix it if I install a wiikey? I'll have to look into that. The main thing I'm concerned with is getting all my saved data off the wii!

[CHRISRYAN]

First off i would install a chip (wiikey) if your console is a launch model for £10 and an hour of your time its worth a try.

It all depends on the f/w and what wads you installed as you need the tp game save on your system i cant remember the website that i found but it says that if your system is at 3.3 fw it wont show anything on your screen but if you do the gc controller trick then put a disc in it should boot up and restore your system.

also your wii needs (green led and spinning drive) to be able to have any chance of fixing it.

hope all this makes sense and good luck.