While ago I tried to install custom firmware on my PAL Wii, but didn't quite work out and all I managed to do was, turn it to a rather nice looking paper weight. Have looked online for unbricking, does anyone know if they work or any ideas on how to unbrick Cheers
Unbricking is very easy if you have installed BootMii as boot2. Every Wii manufactured until about 2008 are compatible having bootmii as boot2. If that's not the case, unbricking is still possible if you have a back up of your original nand. It depends how screwed up your Wii is, unbricking can be easy or it can be very difficult or impossible.
As already mentioned, having BootMii as boot 2 is the easiest way to recover a brick as long as you have a back up of your NAND. You can still recover a brick with BootMii IOS if you have priiloader installed.
You can brick a Wii in a large number of different ways, and some are a lot easier to recover from than others. First of all, exactly what state is the unit in? Black screen? Hangs on the health warning? Will actually boot discs, but won't display the system menu? Have you got a backup of your NAND and/or the console specific keys?
No don't have a backup and can't remember where it hangs. Shall hook it up tonight and have a look. But I seem to recall just black screen. So what would my options be?
Honestly, that doesn't sound good - can you remember what the last thing you did before it died was? Did you install the Homebrew channel on it? Do you still have the SD card you used? Has it got a keys.bin on it?
Sorry to hijack this thread but I have a similar problem. I have a Korean Wii which displays error code 003 on startup. I received it in this state so I obviously don't have the NAND and don't know if anything else has been installed, I'm thinking it probably can't be saved. I would have liked to have returned it to its original Korean functionality, but it isn't a big deal really.
Then it's probably best considered as a spare parts machine - about the only thing you could do would be to use a hardware flash reader and dump the NAND and then see what looks damaged in it. One thing that's worth trying if you have a Gamecube controller (and a Wii that has the sockets for it) is to take the controller apart and plug it into controller socket 4 and then hold all 4 directions on the D-Pad down together when you boot the Wii up - if it works, you should get a single line of text on the screen showing your current system menu version - in this case, you can update it from a game disc as long as it has a newer update than your system currently has (I.E. if you are already on 4.3, it won't help).
While this might not be the case with the OP's wii, that also works if the wii has a bricked bluetooth module . The broadcom chip on the module will fail booting if code is corrupted on it's non volatile memory. Unfortunately it's a little weak against power glitches and has this tendency to corrupt the flash when the user uses a bad quality power supply.
If the wii has a vulnerable boot1 (trucha bug) you can flash bootmii at the boot2 spot. Then you can proceed from there. I've done that myself. If the wii is using a board which has a updated boot1 bootloader (no trucha bug) you can't use a fakesigned boot2 then it's not really unbrickable. Unfortunately without knowing the hashing key for the NAND you can't touch it. It's the egg/chicken dilemma. If you have a backup of the NAND or if you have the Hollywood keys saved somewhere recovering from a brick is pretty trivial work. Only need a NAND flash programmer. For Nintendo it's another matter as they can sign a bootloader and have it load anything they want. Repairing a unit is pie when you have all the tools and cryptography on your side.
