Wii U stuck on loading screen

Started by jmgatti, Jun 13, 2024, 05:42 AM

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jmgatti

I have purchased an "untested" Wii U on eBay to try and fix, and this is how it´s going:

Video output is OK, but the console is stuck on the initial loading screen with the Wii U logo.
I left it on for a couple hours to see if an error pops up, but nothing happened.
As this was not my console, I don´t know anything about the history of this WiiU or what made it fail.
I read in forums that this problem is usually caused by a failing nand.

My next move was to try to get the recovery menu.
I flashed a Pico with UDPIH v2
I formatted a 64GB SD card to Fat32, and put the latest recovery_menu on it´s root.
I tried Gary's v0.5 and v0.5.0-3 mlctools

So here´s my first problem:
I have tried both menus plugging in the Pico at different timings; right after disc drive initialization, one or more seconds later, immediatly after I see the Wii U logo, and even a few seconds after it.
This produced only 2 different scenarios:
- Before Wii U logo: No display, purple LED
- After Logo: Display stuck in logo, purple LED.

I know in all scenarios, both versions of the recovery menu were working, because of the purple light, and because I managed to blindly navigate the menu and dump otp, seeprom, logs, mlc_checker and slc_checker.

I found a few of this errors in the logs, which I believe confirm a bad nand:
FSA: ### DATA CORRUPTION ERROR ###, dev:mlc01, err:-1245211, cmd:11, path:(null)
So my next step was to try and dump the SLC and MLC, but it doesn´t seem to be working well.
The process starts ok, the LED indicator turns solid orange during SLC dump.
It takes a really long time to complete, but finally, the LED starts blinking blue/orange indicating it started dumping the MLC.
The MLC dump is expected to be much slower (Tzirf´s video says up to 6 hours!) so I left it dumping overnight, went to work, and checked again after dinner. After over 30 hours, the LED was still blinking blue/orange.
I decided to check what was going on, so I shut down the console and went to check the card on my PC. In those 30 hours, it only dumped 3 out of the 13 parts of the MLC.

Now I don´t know how to proceed. I have a NAND-AID available, but will I be able to use it without an MLC? I might leave the console dumping for the whole weekend, but I´m not sure if it´s worth it, as I don´t care to wipe all the data from the console, but I also don´t know if it´s possible to fix the Wii U without it.
And more: I don't know if I'll be able to see any video output during the process... so should I even try?

I would absolutely love to read some opinions/suggestions from you guys, as this is the first Wii U I ever touched and I´m very likely to be missing something.

tzirf

Have you tried installing ISFShax? I had a couple consoles that wouldn't display the recovery menu, but upon installing ISFShax they displayed just fine. There is no harm installing this, and I would recommend it because it basically gives you a way to fix 90% of the problems you can run into. Additionally you are going to use it anyhow with the NAND-AID. The guide for this can be found here

Additionally to answer some of your questions, no you do not need an MLC dump to use a NAND-AID. In fact most of the time its not used during the rebuilding process. I have fixed over 20 of these consoles and I believe 14 of them even though I did dump the MLC I didn't use when rebuilding. The reason for this is the data on the console just didn't matter and much of the time due to corruption you will spend hours rebuilding/fixing the corrupt data just to get the console to work. It is much easier to start with a fresh installation with no corrupt data and it is my recommendation that you go this route instead, especially since you purchased the console on eBay.

jmgatti

Thanks a lot Tzirf!
I just read the post and it even has a blind guide for when there's no display. I completely missed that tool during research.
I will try this next week and post updates.

Cheers!

tzirf

Quote from: jmgatti on Jun 13, 2024, 03:50 PMThanks a lot Tzirf!
I just read the post and it even has a blind guide for when there's no display. I completely missed that tool during research.
I will try this next week and post updates.

Cheers!

You are welcome. Good luck with your repair!

SDIO

A reason why you could be interested in the Data on the console would be eShop purchases form the previous owner. So it might be worth to use wupserver to at least save the old account.
With ISRFShax you could also setup a redNAND and use that to access original MLC.

jmgatti

So I might get some unexpected goodies from this account?
That´s awesome because: Quick Update: I left the extraction running for the whole weekend, and it actually finished extracting all 13 parts!

tzirf

That is progress. The more corrupt the NAND is the longer is will take to copy the MLC. Did you end up getting ISFShax installed?

jmgatti

It was a really busy week. Tonight I managed to blindly install ISFShax and now, with the SD card in the front, it always boots to Minute with (finally) video output!
The process was a bit different than the guides, as the encrypted fw.img was not working for me, but I just used the non encrypted one for the installation and all went well.
For the sake of simplicity, I decided to do a clean install and NOT to restore the old MLC. This is the first time I ever touch one of this systems and I just want to see it running now... maybe for a next one!
Now I will disassemble the console and hopefully tomorrow I´ll be soldering the NAND-AID.
Posting an update soon!!

tzirf

Quote from: jmgatti on Jun 21, 2024, 05:59 PMIt was a really busy week. Tonight I managed to blindly install ISFShax and now, with the SD card in the front, it always boots to Minute with (finally) video output!
The process was a bit different than the guides, as the encrypted fw.img was not working for me, but I just used the non encrypted one for the installation and all went well.
For the sake of simplicity, I decided to do a clean install and NOT to restore the old MLC. This is the first time I ever touch one of this systems and I just want to see it running now... maybe for a next one!
Now I will disassemble the console and hopefully tomorrow I´ll be soldering the NAND-AID.
Posting an update soon!!

Excellent job! You can adjust it so instead of booting into Minute it goes directly into the Wii U menu. Of course you can simple remove it after rebuilding the MLC. Keep us posted on your progress.

jmgatti

Weekend update:
It was NOT easy, but I soldered the NAND-AID. I used the big pads to test continuity and diode readings and some measurements with an SD card inserted to make sure I get a reading from every pin of the SD card.
I´m not sure what the readings should be, but I´m getting something out of every test point and there are no shorts between them.
My NAND-AID version is a bit different than yours. It takes ground connection from a nearby capacitor (C13) but everything else is the same.
Then I put the console back together just enough to test and nothing blew up :)
So then I put a 64GB SD card, formatted in NTFS on the NAND-AID and tried to 'Erase MLC' and 'Delete scfm.img'. Both failed.
Just for the sake of it, I tried 'Patch (sd) and boot IOS (slc)' but it also fails.

I´m again 100% certain that I missed a step somewhere or did something wrong. I believe it´s fine, but is there a list of measurements I can test to see if the NAND-AID is correctly soldered?

I´ll leave screenshots of the 3 failing steps just to see if anyone here can identify the problem from them.

tzirf

#10
Sounds like you are using V10lator version of the NAND-AID. Any of the 3 that I have seen will work. The only difference between them is the ground soldering location and I may be wrong about this but I believe SDIO created one that moved the 3V connector to avoid shorting on the metal shield.

You need to rebuild the MLC. Are you following the guide for that? You have to start by downloading the MLC system titles for your region from NUS by using the MLCRestorerdownloader and then you copy the 52 titles to the SD card THAT GETS PLUGGED INTO THE FRONT OF THE CONSOLE.

The full guide for rebuilding the MLC is here 

I think the most confusing part for first timers is that during the rebuild process you DO NOT SEE ANYTHING on screen. You have to look at the LED on the console to know if its working or not.

That being said lets get back to erasing the MLC. The formatting happens during the wafel_setup part of rebuilding the MLC. So I assume you formatted the SD Card in a PC??? Since you mention NTFS and the Wii U doesn't use this file system.

It looks like if I am reading the picture correctly, that the SD Card is detected in the console. I do not see where the Erase MLC failed in a picture. Did it tell you Erase MLC failed?

I would double check to make sure the SD card you are using is setup correctly. If you are missing 1 file this won't work, if the directory tree isn't correct on the SD Card it won't work either. Also to clarify I am referring to the SD Card that you plug into the front of the console and not the one in the NAND-AID.

Edit: There are logs written to the SD Card during the MLC erase step. Grab the log file and post it. Also what make and model SD card are you using in the NAND-AID?

jmgatti

I think I´m having problems understanding what to do with each of the SD cards.
What I did:
I kept the same files I used for installing and booting into ISFShax + the 52 titles for the MLC. Also added the wafel_setup_mlc.ipx, all in it´s corresponding folders (leaving a screenshot of the SD card structure)
I used this SD card completely empty for the NAND-AID. I tried both NTFS and FAT32 formats.

And that´s it.
I´ve put the SD card in the NAND-AID, the other one with everything in the front, and booted into Minute.
Went straight to Erase MLC.
This just keeps printing "setting due to timeout". No clue what it means. After 30 minutes I shut down the console.
Then I tried Delete scfm.img, but it just prints "Delete failed: -1".
Just to try, I went ahead and ran Patch (sd) and boot IOS (slc) but it just goes to "mping to IOS" and sits there. The optical drive makes the initialization noise at this point, and eject button now ejects discs. I assume that means the wafel software just tried to boot, but failed. Also the display doesn´t go off and the front LED remains purple.
I checked both SD cards after all of this and got no logs anywhere.

I´ll keep saying this: This is the first time I ever even touch one of this consoles and I´m absolutely positive that I´m doing something wrong. There´s a LOT of info in the forums and I think I´m getting lost between the posts and the comment section.
I don´t understand if I´m supposed to do something with the internal SD card, change some files in the front SD card or both.
I feel I´m close, but not quite there yet. I´ll keep digging into the forums and see if I get any new clues.

tzirf

#12
@jmgatti No reason to dig through the forums. We can figure this out together. Its okay if you made a mistake. Trust me I made plenty of mistakes on my first console and it took me a while to figure it all out. No shame there, heck I still make mistakes and I am up to 27 repaired Wii U now.

Lets figure out where things are going wrong. So lets start at the beginning. The format of the SD Card in the NAND-AID isn't important. The reason for this is because the wafel_setup formats it correctly for the Wii U.

When you first turn the console on just before the minute menu loads you will see a wall of text that shows up for just a second. During this bootup process it shows if the SD Card is detected in the NAND-AID. I think we should first confirm that it is before we try anything else because if the SD Card is not being detected then we have to fix that problem before you can rebuild the MLC. I will get a picture of what to look for and post it . As for your SD Card (that plugs into the front of the Wii U) I have confirmed you have the directories and files setup correctly. So we are good on that front

jmgatti

Well, the thing goes SUPER fast, so I had to film it with the phone and print the exact frame.
Not sure if this is what you asked for, but I find it curious that it gives the same message from when I try to run the Patch (sd) and boot IOS (slc)

tzirf

#14
Lets check the SD Card in the NAND-AID first before we end up chasing a ghost here. I had a bad SD Card in one of the consoles I worked on and it caused me to go down a rabbit hole for a few hours before I figured out the SD Card was the problem. 

You can use h2testw, which is a free utility to test and verify SD Cards are working. I would recommend doing this first so we can rule out a problematic SD Card. Just to clarify I am talking about testing the SD Card inserted into the NAND-AID. If the tests confirm the card is good, please format to FAT32 before putting it back into the NAND-AID

Here is the picture for the SD Card Mounting when its working. As for that error interrupt, status=00400900 I don't believe this matters, although SDIO would have to comment on what that specifically means. If memory serves me correctly I saw this on all of the consoles and they all worked after the NAND-AID.

I believe the important part is "mounting SD Card... and then it shows a wall of text and goes into the minute menu.

Here are the pictures so you can reference yours. I just took these from a working console that has ISFShax installed.  SDCardMounting.JPGtextwall.JPG