Wii firmware casualties "small" - Nintendo

By Robert Purchese Published 2 October, 2009

UK consoles will be repaired for free.

Nintendo has told Eurogamer that UK Wii consoles broken by firmware update 4.2 will also be repaired free of charge, as in the US.

"We are aware of a very small number of reported problems with Wii consoles after updating to the Wii System Menu 4.2," said the platform holder in a statement.

"The symptoms described usually occur when a Wii console has been modified. However, there are a very small number of people reporting problems when a system has never been modified.

"If anyone is experiencing problems with their Wii console after downloading Wii System Menu 4.2, and believe their system has not been modified, please contact our customer service centre. If we find that you have a normal system and the update has caused your system to not work, we will repair it at no charge," added the statement. "Please do not return anything to our customer service department without contacting them first for advice." The problem occurs during installation of firmware version 4.2, which reportedly crashes part-way through and therefore upsets the digital innards of the machine.

The firmware was designed by Nintendo to clamp down on modders and the Homebrew movement, but has spread to innocent bystanders.

Obviously, Nintendo will not repair modded consoles free of charge.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (30) 2 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Darren #1 2 years ago

    How sure are we that this isn't a case of people with modded Wii's undoing the mod and claiming that firmware 4.2 broke their Wiis? ;)

    I really should check my Wii... I updated it to firmware 4.2E some weeks ago but I've had very little reason to use the console so I've no idea whether it is working or not.

  • wizlon #2 2 years ago

    I was about to say the same thing Darren.

    Wii Support Line: Have you modded your Wii.
    Nervous Customer: erm.... no?

  • CallousB #3 2 years ago

    I think most of this has been hyped by the homebrew community...to promote their software/encourage people to not update.

    A quick look on twitter shows a massive 4 people complaining about their Wii being bricked in the last 2 days..all 4 were modded.
    Edited by 1 at 02/10/09 @ 16:34

  • BritishBlue1 #4 2 years ago

    Firmware updates, the bane of modern console gaming. Similar screwups happened with NXE and PS3 firmware too.

  • richorchard #5 2 years ago

    So, right.

    Nintendo release this update to kill all homebrew, and as per usual, the modders and homebrew scene have a full workaround by the next day, to install the homebrew channel on the new firmware.

    It's obviously a good idea for Nintendo to fight piracy, but fighting the homebrew scene is a losing battle - they're always one step ahead, and the only people that are getting hurt here are the people with now bricked consoles who know nothing about homebrew. The people who do know their way around the homebrew scene can easily fix a bricked console, using software to re-flash the Boot2.

    The reason the consoles are getting bricked is because Nintendo's firmware update is flashing the Boot2, which is used by homebrew in certain software. Re-writing the Boot2 is a significantly risky move, as even one slight error during the process can brick the console. That could be as little as a power cut, electricity surge or even a slightly corrupted/unfinished download of the firmware.
    Edited by 2 at 02/10/09 @ 16:42

  • Darren #6 2 years ago

    @richorchard - Does the 4.2 firmware rewrite this Boot2 thing everytime you switch on your Wii? If so then it would perhaps explain why people with unmodded Wiis are having problems.

  • richorchard #7 2 years ago

    No, just once during the install.

    The Boot2 is the flash that controls and loads the system menu. Remember when the NXE install caused the same problems in a number of X360 consoles? Same thing.
    Edited by 2 at 02/10/09 @ 16:57

  • Shakey_Jake33 #8 2 years ago

    There was actually quite a lot of controversy among the homebrew crowd when certain legitimate homebrew tools and applications were modified to allow execution of pirated games, to the extent that the developer of GeckoOS ceased development for a period of time, and you just have to read blogs like Hackmii to see how staunchly against piracy the vast majority of the homebrew crowd is.

    However, it is just unfortunate that the ability to run your own code will always mean that, eventually, someone will create an application to run pirated games. It is an unfortunate side effect. The Homebrew Channel etc. do not themselves allow you to run pirated games.

  • JonFE #9 2 years ago

    Is it even possible to mod/un-mod your wii and not leave traces that the console has been tempered with?

    Funny thing, I just got a call from my son. He wanted to check out the 'Everybody votes' channel (don't ask) when the screen turned black, the remote went off and the console could not be powered down. Asked him about the update and he responded that he was prompt to install it and chose not to until I return (wise kid). Had my wife cut off the power and seems normal again. Got me scared there for a moment. Not modded, by the way, in case anybody wonders...

    EDIT: Thanks KDR; had a feeling it would be like this and not like the chips of yesteryear, but didn't know for sure...
    Edited by 1 at 02/10/09 @ 18:10

  • KDR_11k #10 2 years ago

    I will not use the word "homebrew" as i would bet my life that 95% of the people that mod the consoles and use the word "homebrew" are not running homebrew stuff, but instead using it to pirate

    The homebrew also enables breaking the region lock so you can import games, I think we all know how shitty PAL release schedules tend to be. Apparently enabling piracy requires some additional steps beyond enabling homebrew (some IOS stuff according to wiibrew) that Nintendo broke too and unlike the HBC they haven't been updated so someone running homebrew with 4.2 does not pirate.

    Is it even possible to mod/un-mod your wii and not leave traces that the console has been tempered with?

    Sure, it's just software and the stuff can be deleted/replaced with the original code.

  • JohnnyWashnGo #11 2 years ago

    I will not use the word "homebrew" as i would bet my life that 95% of the people that mod the consoles and use the word "homebrew" are not running homebrew stuff, but instead using it to pirate

    Perhaps in your experience this is true, however in my experience of a sample of 2 dozen or more people who I know directly and have modded their Wii consoles, the reasons are anything but piracy. Most of them have children and have experienced scratched game discs... which nobody wants to replace. So they have resorted to using homebrew to backup their games to hard disk and keep the original copy safe. Kids and easily damaged media are a deadly combination.

    Personally, I use it for gecko os as my other half is japanese and would love to play japanese games on my Wii, which is a PAL machine. She doesn't have this problem with the PS3 (thank you Sony) but Nintendo seem to be shitty about making their machine region free. I wish I didn't have to resort to hacking the Wii just to make it work the way it should, but I have to because of Nintendo.

    Plus, homebrew software rocks. Have you seen some of the games that talented backroom devs are coming up with? The homebrew physics app for the Wii is bloody great. And that it homebrew, written at home, using libraries cobbled together by hackers.

    All in all, Nintendos crappy firmware update did absolutely nothing to stop people using homebrew and only aggrevated people who now find their Wii bricked.

  • smelly #12 2 years ago

    >only aggrevated people who now find their Wii bricked.

    .. who had modded consoles... So therefor it worked.

  • joe90 #13 2 years ago

    @Darren - nope. when they wrote the bootmii code, they actually found a number of real bugs in nintendos FW update code, that under some rare conditions would knacker the wii (kill the boot flash), so they re-wrote the loader from scratch.. Nintendo did not, hence you get the bricks. :)

    Also, you can hack it again now At (4.2).. so that lasted all of 5 minutes..
    Edited by 1 at 02/10/09 @ 20:00

  • malexous #14 2 years ago

    @Darren 4.2 was released less than a week ago. You must be on 4.1

    Continuing on from joe90, a quote from a bushing post on hackmii.com:

    "Their boot2-updating code (ES_ImportBoot) is not well-tested; they’ve never updated boot2 on retail consoles before, and in our testing we discovered that it often fails to write out ECC data for the new version of boot2 that it writes. We should expect to see some number of bricked Wiis from this; the code is so buggy that we decided to write our own for the HackMii installer."

  • smelly #15 2 years ago

    So, do we have anyone who's got a bricked wii which wasnt modded?

  • malexous #16 2 years ago

    @MilkybKid1985

    There is no onus on homebrewers to stop piracy (edit: I realise you never stated this). Nevertheless, this might interest you:

    "Dear Nintendo,

    As part of our efforts to understand how the Wii works, we believe we
    have found a security issue that could allow pirated Wii games to be
    played on an unmodified Wii console.

    I would like to speak to an engineer about this — please have one contact me.

    Sincerely,
    bushing"

    [link url=htt p://hackmii.com/2008/07/dear-nintendo/#more-63
    ]http://ha ckmii.com/2008/07/dear-nintendo...[/link]
    http://ha ckmii.com/2008/07/dvd-access-li...

    If only Nintendo had listened...
    Edited by 3 at 03/10/09 @ 01:03

  • davisorle #17 2 years ago

    Yet, even if designed for antimodding they dont follow the Sony tactics? wow whats up with that? Firmware CANT break your console. Was announced by Sony. They know it so Nintendo cant be coming out of the blue and not only not gong along their story and also offer free repairs when they only fight modders and pirating their games. Also making the deffenders look even dumber? Such a shame ;)

  • Dan234 #18 2 years ago

    I rather doubt that Nintendo can tell if a bricked console has been softmodded or not because they themselves can't do anything with the system either, there's no debug or recovery mode (well, there is, but you have to be able to get to the system menu first and it doesn't do much apart from hide the Miis and the message board so the techies don't go rummaging through personal info).

    Their check for if it's a "normal system" or not is probably looking to see if there's a modchip stuck on top of the DVD drive.

    And finally their programmers haven't got much of an idea, they should realise that systems with boot1v1 will forever be compromisable, they need to work around that instead of fixing bugs in boot2 which won't do anything in the long term because it can be compromised again, until they sort out bugs in the rest of the system.

    They should have buried a check somewhere in the system which checks if it's OK or if things have been modified or patched, and if so remove the mods/patches (properly instead of doing a hatchet job), and not do that immediately but after a week or two after people have updated. Coupling that with disabling online gaming for consoles with out-of-date system software and they'd pretty much have most of the consoles sorted out again.

  • Skurmedel #19 2 years ago

    I wish they would allow homebrew, at least on the DS. There are other uses besides piracy.

  • kipper #20 2 years ago

    I wonder if Nintendo have read the UK Computer Misuse Act.

    [link url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Misuse_Act_1990 ]http://en .wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Mi...[/link]

    quote:

    "3(1) A person is guilty of an offence if...
    b) at the time when he does so the act he has the requisite intent and the requisite knowledge.

    3(2) for the purposes of subsection 3(1)b above the requisite intent is an intent to cause a modification of the contents of any computer and by so doing
    a) to impair the operation of any computer; "

    So if a Wii falls under the definition of computer, and I suspect it does, Nintendo may be committing a criminal offence by deliberately bricking (modded) Wii's.
    Edited by 1 at 04/10/09 @ 07:07

  • huxathon #21 2 years ago

    I've got homebrew on my Wii and really only use for the media player and ScummVM (which is kinda piracy I guess). There are a few good homebrew games on there aswell. If Nintendo feel they need to stop people from using homebrew that's up to them, but in my case it'll just stop me buying new releases that require an unmodified Wii - the risk of bricking and losing the ability to watch dvds/divx etc... through the wii VS playing wi sports resort is no competition.

  • malexous #22 2 years ago

    kipper Nintendo aren't deliberately bricking Wiis.

  • Dan234 #23 2 years ago

    They do actually deliberately brick the console if it's a Korean one which has been softmodded to a non-Korean region.

    Otherwise they just try and delete the offending programs, often unsuccessfully.

    And then a percentage of consoles get bricked because boot2 isn't updated properly. At least Sony pull firmware updates when they go wrong... Nintendo's still going full steam ahead with an ineffective anti-piracy update which is costing them money and annoys their customers.

  • malexous #24 2 years ago

    I saw a post on wiibrew mentioning Nintendo bricking Korean Wiis after I posted that. I haven't been able to find anything else on it though.

  • CallousB #25 2 years ago

    "Nintendo may be committing a criminal offence by deliberately bricking (modded) Wii's"

    @Dan234 Nintendo don't brick Wiis.

    They warn before each update - " if your wii has an unauthorized technical modification, this update may render in inoperable."

    If the user chooses to ignore the warning..then they are bricking their own Wii.

  • Dan234 #26 2 years ago

    @CallousB:

    I refer the honourable gentleman to exhibit A.

    @MilkybKid1985:

    I'm fairly sure it's not an offence to softmod your Wii with the aim of getting past region blocking if you've got the original disc and I'm certain it's not an offence to run homebrew software.

    And finally, the Wii is above all your property. Removing homebrew software during an update is possibly fair game and all part of the cat and mouse game, bricking it either by accident (boot2v4) or malice (Korean Wii) certainly isn't.

  • CallousB #27 2 years ago

    @Dan234

    Again..it's not Nintendo bricking the Korean wiis...it's the user. The user modified their Wii to play games from a different region...Nintendo warns that the update may kill modified Wiis. Nintendo might have loaded the gun with bullets..but it's the user who pulls the trigger.

  • Dan234 #28 2 years ago

    That message is the same message you get before updates since time began. Up until now they've tried to delete exploits in game files. What legitimate reason would Nintendo have to brick Korean Wiis?

    They can recover the difference in price paid by the user in Korea and the price they would have paid in the West from the 'repair' charge but that doesn't strike me as legitimate. I thought this was a globalised world and I could choose wherever in the world I want to buy whatever product I want and it becomes my property.

    If they wanted to stop Korean Wiis being usable in the west then they could simply set the region to Korea again, delete the western IOSes and re-download the Korean ones. But brick the console and extort money from the user to have a working console? That's not legal whatever the EULA says.

  • ewa_marcin #29 2 years ago

    Please HELP ME UNBRICK MY Wii !!!!!!!
    Hello, I got the same problem, E003, I bought my Wii in shop in Beijing - China, the shop was normal high standart shop, with recites and everything like in Europe. I have used my Wii for few days in hotel in China, than I came back to Poland, when I switched on, it was working perfectly for one night...
    than it shows me a message - cannot read the disc.... i check out for trouble shooting and found that I have to update the soft.
    Which I did - and it show me the 003 Error !!!! madness I tell you !!!! this is Korean production without any chip or anything like that , brand new from the shop,- prices over there are so bargain compare to UE... so whats the problem? with this all Nintendo blocking Korean Wii's ??? why they dont tell to people do not buy korean we will brick them...!!!! my email : ewa_marcin@interia.eu
    Edited by 1 at 28/11/09 @ 12:14

  • elanzstudio #30 2 years ago

    We repair and upgrade your wii problems.
    Here are the list of services we offer:
    - Upgrade to latest firmware version 4.2U version
    - Menu Change to English (100% with all channels working)
    - JAPAN to ENGLISH System Conversion
    - ERROR 003 Repair
    - Homebrew Enabler including latest Wii Versions 4.2U
    - Softmod (no modchip installed)
    - Hardmod (modifiy using latest Modchip while you wait, DMS upto D2E board)
    - PAL to NTSC System Conversion
    - USB Flash Drive Setup
    - Hard Disk Drive Setup
    - Defective Wii DVD Repair
    - CDs not spinning or ejecting problem Repair
    - Lens replacement
    - Change Full Housing/Casing
    - Wii Unbricking (black screen, wii freeze, etc...)
    - 110v Power Supply Repair &/or Convert to 220v
    We now have complete line of Wii spare parts.
    Don't let them experiment with your Wiis, bring it to us directly.
    We will fix it in-house.


    These for an affordable price only.
    Email us: elanzstudio@gmail.com