What Am I Risking?

I've been poking around for about the last hour or so. All of the tutorials are fairly straightforward... but not very informative (which is disconcerting to someone as high-strung as myself).

I wandered over to the Bootmii page after reading the tutorial on Homebrew for ver 4.1, and Bootmii claims to give me the ability to restore my entire Wii system should something go wrong with a hack. Then, I came back over here and found a thread that discussed the potential for Bootmii "bricking" systems.

I have ver. 4.1U.

What are the risks with installing Bootmii, Hackmii, Homebrew Channel, etc?

(Sorry if this was covered in a previous thread. I didn't find one when I searched.)

risks.... well i cant say there are any, but i hacked my wii using the twilight hack. it shouldnt really cause any issues, but updating is VERY risky. dont update though. bad idea. i did, but i was lucky and nothing happened.

OK... "don't upgrade". Again, fairly straightforward, but not very informative. Let me throw this question out there:

Is it possible to install certain hacks (like Bootmii or HBC) onto 4.1... and then uninstall the hack(s) to safely upgrade to 4.2... and then reinstall the hacks?

I'm just trying to get an idea of the nature of some of these hacks and how permanent they are. I don't mind hacking/modding a system... but I don't like doing it without understanding what the hacks do, how they are installed, if they are reversible, etc, etc.

OK... "don't upgrade". Again, fairly straightforward, but not very informative. Let me throw this question out there:

Is it possible to install certain hacks (like Bootmii or HBC) onto 4.1... and then uninstall the hack(s) to safely upgrade to 4.2... and then reinstall the hacks?

I'm just trying to get an idea of the nature of some of these hacks and how permanent they are. I don't mind hacking/modding a system... but I don't like doing it without understanding what the hacks do, how they are installed, if they are reversible, etc, etc.

well, i upgraded my hacked 3.2U wii, officially, and it all still works. i also had read nintendos 4.2 update bricked NON hacked wii's at one point. but if you un-install, update, you can then run banner bomb

http://bannerbomb.qoid.us/ lame looking, but its the real one

OK... "don't upgrade". Again, fairly straightforward, but not very informative. Let me throw this question out there:

Is it possible to install certain hacks (like Bootmii or HBC) onto 4.1... and then uninstall the hack(s) to safely upgrade to 4.2... and then reinstall the hacks?

I'm just trying to get an idea of the nature of some of these hacks and how permanent they are. I don't mind hacking/modding a system... but I don't like doing it without understanding what the hacks do, how they are installed, if they are reversible, etc, etc.

if you put hacks so 4.2 easily works then like the few thousand people's wiis that broke with the 4.2 update yours does, you gona be paying alot to nintendo.

I find this guide to be helpful in understanding what's going on with Wii hacks and homebrew:

http://sites.google.com/site/completesg/

Stop offsite linking. Serious. We got stuff here to do it, don't turn people away!

Stop offsite linking. Serious. We got stuff here to do it, don't turn people away!

So far, that has been the most helpful response from any resource I received HERE.

You turn people away when you don't answer their questions and give them incomplete information (such has been the case so far in this thread). But if someone gives me another website with the answer, I'll most likely come back knowing that there are people and resources here that are willing to help.

I said, if you would read it, you little nub, that if yiu can help HERE help with stuff from HERE. We have stuff.

Read and THEN post. Pisses me off. Blatent disregaurd for me and for the site. Don't start.
I like you, but getting on my bad side will get you no where, wethere its the mods or its me. Its what I do.

I said, if you would read it, you little nub, that if yiu can help HERE help with stuff from HERE. We have stuff.

Read and THEN post. Pisses me off. Blatent disregaurd for me and for the site. Don't start.
I like you, but getting on my bad side will get you no where, wethere its the mods or its me. Its what I do.

Exactly... dont u know that hes the official(for me) ranter of the site! ur just gonna get dissed by every1...

@airplanes...
hes a newbie here, so he doesnt know the rules and stuff like that.. and nor does the guy who posted the link..

That's why I had said above, if you can, direct him to stuff here. More of a warning. And the he retaliated.

And the he retaliated.

And all I said, was that no one had yet directed me to any information HERE. You posted twice and while I do appreciate your time, you did not completely answer my questions. Furthermore, you did not direct me to any related information on this site. Then, when BlackSheep referenced a different site, you seemed to become very defensive. I'm having a hard time with that because your subsequent response:

I said, if you would read it, you little nub, that if yiu can help HERE help with stuff from HERE. We have stuff.

Read and THEN post. Pisses me off. Blatent disregaurd for me and for the site. Don't start.
I like you, but getting on my bad side will get you no where, wethere its the mods or its me. Its what I do.

...indicates that you know where the answers to my questions might be, but you didn't point me in the right direction... even after I clarified my initial question.

Also, my first post stated that I've been looking around this site and haven't found answers to some specific questions I had. In some respects, the information just doesn't seem to be available here. And when I search the forums, it is very disconcerting when I search for "wii brick fix" (in quotes) for example, and it returns 3822 posts. That seems to be a consistent theme with the forum search, by the way. And when I read through 5 pages of results, all of which have nothing to do with what I'm looking for, it's very frustrating.

I read the tutorials, I read the stickies, I also looked at other sites. I still had questions, so I posted. Maybe I missed something somewhere. I'm sorry. If you have a problem with that, then I guess there's nothing more for me to say here since I will have to assume that I simply will not get my questions answered.

Stop offsite linking. Serious. We got stuff here to do it, don't turn people away!

Airplanes this guy is only trying to help some sites are much bigger and have greater resources then us, ive personaly offsite linked many of times. he is helping this guy and its not against the rules to help.
are also bring up the rules seen as you are using them wrongly im going to have to own you on this one it does not promt a responce but as your calling this guy on the rules


" Links to referral sites are not allowed. " it isnt a referral site therfor you are wrong to talk to him about the rules.
Blacksheep has helped alot of people with there wii's and deserves respect, please if you are going to be rude to newcommers like that leave the wii section for me. im not trying to anger you but your comment about him being a noob is complete rubbish, you yourself and i am a noob just with bigger post counts them him nothing else, and his knowledge about the wii is alot more then you aswell Airplanes. Dont judge a book by its covers

[DarkPacMan77]

Stop offsite linking. Serious. We got stuff here to do it, don't turn people away!

Airplanes, we are here to help. If that link helps the original poster, it is allowed 100% even if it's a guide on another website and regardless of whether or not we may have one already. If we have a better one, you're free to suggest that instead but don't ever snap at people just trying to help. As for any arguing going on, let's cut that out fellas and help answer these questions.

-DarkPacMan77-

There is nothing on this site that compares to the guide I link to. It is well organized, well maintained and covers a wide range of topics. It has links to all the needed files, too. It would be silly to attempt to replicate all of that good work here, just to keep traffic up. I have no affiliation with the site, I just found it give a very complete picture of what can be done and how to do it. What you *can't* do at that site is ask specific questions. If someone is looking for general information about Wii hacking, that type of resource is invaluable. When they get stuck on something, they can come back here to ask for help, post ideas or just shoot the breeze.

The OP sounds like a smart cookie who just wants to know as much as he can before starting so he doesn't wind up with an expensive paperweight attached to his TV. It's true that he might find everything he needs elsewhere and never come back, or he might read that guide and come back here to help other people (like I did). What won't bring him back is self-professed Wii haters picking fights with other people and calling them noobs.

To answer the original question more fully, hackmii is just the install package for the homebrew channel, DVDx and bootmii. The HBC and DVDx are both very safe to install and relatively easy to get rid of if you need to.

Bootmii is a different animal. It comes in two flavors, boot2 and ios. The hackmii installer will tell you if it's capable of installing bootmii as boot2. There are risks to doing so, since you're basically fiddling with the software that runs before the system menu even starts. However, there is a very big benefit to doing so. Bootmii lets you dump a backup image of the internal memory of the Wii. Should anything ever go wrong with a bad app or a bad channel and you can't even start the HBC or system menu, bootmii lets you restore your backup image.

If you can't install it as boot2, bootmii can still run after the boot process and will still let you make backup images, but since you have to start it like any other application, your ability to restore your backup may be limited. I've read about a program called Preloader that will run before the system menu and can be configured to automatically boot to the HBC, system menu or an arbitrary app, so if you use that you may be able to recover from some kinds of problems, but it's definitely not the safety net that boot2 provides.

As for other types of homebrew, pretty much anything that just runs off your SD card is perfectly safe. Anything that writes to your Wii's internal memory (Wad Manager is the most common example) is more dangerous, but still pretty safe as long as you're just using wads from the Nintendo store. Customized wads can cause problems if they have a badly formatted banner picture and you don't have a way to skip the system menu.

One other thing that's been mentioned. Don't upgrade your system menu through Nintendo, whether that be through the automatic updater or from game discs. There are "safe" update packages out there that will install newer files while still preserving the exploits in older files.

If you have questions about any other specific apps or tools, ask away.