Topic: WARNING! DO NOT UPDATE YOUR WII TO V 4.2!!!

[Wario Bros]

Tuesday, Nintendo made an update for ALL countries which was made to delete and block homebrew off your Wii (example: the Homebrew Channel). However, the update did back fire badly. There now has been mulitiple reports that people's Wiis after the update won't start up or read discs at all (aka: a Bricked Wii) EVEN IF THEIR WII HAS NEVER BEEN MODDED.

SO IF YOU WANT TO KEEP YOUR WII SAFE, I STRONGLY RECOMMEND YOU TO NOT UPDATE YOUR Wii TO VERSION 4.2. THIS IMPLIES TO ALL COUNTRIES AND TO ALL WII OWNERS!

Hopefully there will be a solution to this.

[Maxim]

Yes, people are asking the HackMii people to write a boot2 updater that doesn't use Nintendo's bad code...

(I think I'm on 3.1 myself.)

[Peardian]

I don't do homebrew, so... eh.

[TerraEsperZ]

A few cases of unmodded Wii becoming "bricked" after the 4.2 update have been reported. Apparently, the official Wii Bootloader code, the first thing the Wii reads and uses to load everything else, is badly written and very susceptible to causing big problems (Wii becoming unusable) if *anything* goes wrong while it's being tempered with.

I also haven't used my Wii since updating...

*cue suspenseful music*

[Revned]

The Wii can revert to the original software with some sort of special hardware command, so these "bricks" are not permanently broken. I don't know what would happen with downloaded games, though.

My Wii has been packed up for months. There just haven't been any games that interest me lately.

[Maxim]

Quite how Nintendo can unbrick them is unclear. Regardless, choosing to risk this amount of bricking (I saw somewhere something like 1 in 1000 chance of it; I guess there's tens of millions of Wiis that actually get updated) is rather foolish if it's just to block homebrew. The existence of an unbrick ability is news to me; if your Wii does get bricked, I imagine they'll just send you a new one. If it's out of warranty, it might take some work unless a MS RROD style special warranty announcement is made.

Homebrew does enable some of the lamer versions of piracy, but the homebrew channel authors are fairly anti-piracy. It is harder to homebrew if you pirate as it gets in the way of the installer and the usage of the homebrew channel (they render the screen upside down if you have some IOSes hacked for piracy).

Mostly I use the homebrew channel for MPlayer (it can play videos from Windows shares) and SMS Plus (I like to choose from a wider list of games). I highly recommend trying it...

[Revned]

I'm not positive about the restore capability, but I remember back when people started hacking it reading that Nintendo's firmware updates could not permanently block homebrew, because you could simply restore the original firmware. I think it was some button combination that resets everything to factory defaults.

[The Ultimate Koopa]

So... I have version 4.2 which I updated today. I went on the SHop Channel just to check what's new.... as usual, nothing... interesting. So, I just turn the Wii off. Then my sister turns it back on and starts playing SM64 and attempts to get a star (Hot-Foot-It Into the Volcano) ..... but guess what happened? Something awful.....  It was seriously god damned awful! My sister then asked me to get the star for her! Can you believe it?

So what I'm saying is.... er.... my Wii isn't bricked? <_< >_> Yet.