(an unpublished post from May 2024)
a couple days ago, i was on ebay looking at Wii U systems. i find this one for just under £17 that claims to be broken. specifically, it’s showing the error code 160-0103. as of today, this can be a really easy error code to fix thanks to the fact that udpih exists, so i decide to buy it. fast-forward to today, and it’s here. i connect it to power and my capture card, boot up OBS so i have a display, and…
…it boots normally to the Wii U menu. there are 2 users on it, neither are linked to an NNID and there’s no parental control lock. i check the system version. it’s on 5.5.4 (E). i then put in my mario kart 8 disc to see if it will play a game, it plays fine. next, i connect it to the internet to prepare for exploiting it. i go back to the wii u menu. turns out the past owner had automatic updates enabled. the update completes and the system reboots. i go to the web browser after preparing my SD card, send it to wiiuexploit.xyz and run the exploit. it’s failed to mount the sd card. i reboot and open mii maker to try exporting a mii, just to double check. yeah it’s not mounted.
so i end up thinking the SD card slot is gone, because all the buttons and slots on the front panel feel looser than my main system and other SD card adapters don’t work. i try reformatting the SD card anyway just in case, thankfully it worked this time. i exploit it again, now the NAND (minus the MLC) is dumped and I have isfshax on the thing. i dump the logs. there seems to be nothing there until i get to log number 11 of 13. that one shows a media error. there’s the issue, the MLC is probably on its way out. it’s a Hynix so i’m not surprised.
i now prepare the SD card for a redNAND setup. resizing goes fine, now i need to download the MLC titles. i decide to try something different this time and download the Japanese MLC titles and attempt a region switch. i install them on the redNAND and it boots to the first-time setup after a ~5 minute install.