As you can see in the latestWiimpersonator log, Nintendo has released an update for the Wii software — “Wii Menu 4.2”.

Nintendo’srelease notes state, rather blandly,

September 28, 2009
Wii Menu 4.2
Unauthorized Modifications
Because unauthorized channels or firmware may impair game play or the Wii console, updating to Wii Menu version 4.2 will check for and automatically remove such unauthorized files.In addition, there are some behind the scenes enhancements that do not affect any prominently-used features or menus but will improve system performance.

That’s the best they could come up with? Seriously? This is almost as bad as the first update (3.3) they did to (try to) kill the Twilight Hack, which theyjustified with “an enhanced Mii channel”. Don’t update. Seriously.

For those of you that have already done so, or have pets, friends or siblings that updated your Wii behind your back, or just don’t like listening to good advice, you have the following to look forward to:

• Enhanced system menu — now with a new iplESMisc.cpp::DeleteTicketsForce function that runs after verifySavedataZD, upon every boot of the system. In addition to looking for the Twilight Hack and deleting it if found, it will now look for title-IDs DVDX and HAXX (the latter being the Homebrew Channel) and delete them if found.
• Updated boot2 — All Wiis that shipped with boot2v2 or boot2v3 (the first 30 million or so) will have boot2v4 installed. There’s no behavioral difference, here, but it will wipe out BootMii if it is installed as boot2.
• Updated IOSes — updated versions of IOS9, IOS12, IOS13, IOS14, IOS15, IOS17, IOS21, IOS22, IOS28, IOS31, IOS33, IOS34, IOS35, IOS36, IOS37, IOS38, IOS53, IOS55, IOS56, IOS57, IOS60, and IOS61. A new IOS70 is installed for the new System Menu to use. I haven’t looked at the changes in any depth, but they seemed to have fixed the IOS exploit we were using in the most recent HackMii Installer.
• Updated BC, MIOS and IOS254– I’m not really sure what the point of this was, but they probably just rebuilt everything to be safe. They could have used the opportunity to try to overwrite BootMii/IOS, but they didn’t (the version number is lower than that used by BootMii, so it won’t install).
• New stub IOSes installed as IOS222, IOS223, IOS249, and IOS250. This seems to be the only effort made to remove “unauthorized firmware” from the Wii. This may or may not actually work, depending on the version number used in the TMD of the already-installed version of IOS.
• Updated shop channel — this was probably just a routine update of the shop channel, and they probably stopped allowing the older (4.1) version of the shop channel to connect. This is the only actual “carrot” to entice you to update.

I’m surprised that they took the bold move of pushing an updated boot2 — I guessall of the cool kids are doing it these days. 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. If you had BootMii/boot2 installed, it will be overwritten with the normal, stock boot2, but there should be no other harmful effects.

I’d advise everyone against updating; no good can come of it. I also do not suggest you use any “updaters”. We are currently testing an updated version of the HackMii Installer, which will be able to reinstall the Homebrew Channel, DVDX and BootMii (just as before).Indiana Pwns should still work; I’d imagine a new version ofSmash Stack will still work. Bannerbomb does not seem to work in its current form, but it remains to be seen how it was blocked and whether it can be made to work again.

58 responses so far ↓

• 1Alex_Finlay// Oct 1, 2009 at 3:45 pm

  Just to add i think this update is a idiotic one.
  Seen as i bought 2 Internet channels 1 for a mate and 1 for my own console, Basicly they are forcing me to update to get my 1k of credits.

• 2juju798// Oct 2, 2009 at 2:40 am

  Is there a way to store photos, messages and game times of the Wii Menu on SD Card or something to reinject them later ? Cause I need to backup my nand and i’ll lose all of them :/

• 3teaguecl// Oct 2, 2009 at 11:07 am

  Since N’s boot2 update code is buggy and dangerous to use, is there any chance we could use bootmii’s safer boot2 flashing code to upgrade from boot2v2 to boot2v4?
  I’d like to update, but I don’t want to risk a bad flash.

• 4me.yahoo.com/a/v0GiNkUsu…// Oct 2, 2009 at 11:34 am

  There’s no advantage in having boot2v4. If you want to access the Wii shop there are workarounds, look on wiibrew.

• 5teaguecl// Oct 2, 2009 at 1:44 pm

  There are advantages to having boot2v4 installed. Namely, once it’s in there safely then the console is not at risk of bricking when it updates boot2 itself – which will happen when one of my roommates updates the software to play a new game. The way I see it my console is going to get boot2v4 one way or another unless I go through extreme effort to keep it off. Since I don’t lose any functionality by upgrading, I’d like to just get it over with. However, I’d prefer to do it safely rather than play roulette with N’s bootcode updater.

• 6ultimatechaoslen// Oct 12, 2009 at 10:48 pm

  Lol they can’t stop you no matter what they do. Right?

• 7teethkicker// Oct 16, 2009 at 7:13 pm

  im sure someone already thought of this but would it be possible/helpful to randomize the Title IDs (maybe off a timestamp) in the install process or is there a reason they need to be all the same/have a meaningful name.

• 8Dudeman Kabot// Jul 6, 2010 at 5:31 am

  (I know that 4.3 is out, but what I say started in 4.2. Also, sorry for the CAPS, it was for emphasis.)

  Wait… Nintendo bricks consoles that have been region-changed.
  Okay, but then they CAN’T go BUY any more games and GIVE NINTENDO MORE MONEY!
  Yet, the error 003 was because they hacked the console, but that didn’t STOP BOUGHT GAMES FROM WORKING!
  Basically, Nintendo lost income!

You mustlog in to post a comment.