Three Stegosaurus Moon

Since I’m home for the weekend, I spent about two hours yesterday hacking my family’s Wii to allow it to play media/games from a USB flash drive. I found some instructions on how to do this on a site called wiihacks.com, which has a bunch of forums for people who write and use homebrew Wii software. It was sort of hard to find the actual steps to go through, since the site is a bit convoluted, so I’ll reproduce the steps here in case you care to try this out for yourself.

I ran into a lot of warnings that doing certain steps in the wrong order could break the system and make it unusable, but managed to avoid doing this during my hacking process. These steps work for Wiis running version 4.3 of the software, and no others, according to wiihacks.com. And you also need a specific game for it – so if you own a copy of Super Smash Bros Brawl, you’re in luck. There are also a few games that you can also do it with, but I’ll just share my experience using SSBB.

DISCLAIMER: Not following these steps exactly, or trying to follow these steps on a Wii running a version other than 4.3 can easily result in your Wii being unusable. Please read these instructions before you begin, and make sure to follow them as closely as possible. Help can be found at wiihacks.com.

Things you’ll need:

• 1 or 2 GB SD card
• Internet connection
• Wii running 4.3 with at least 300 free memory blocks
• Super Smash Bros. Brawl

Part 1 – Obtaining Homebrew Channel and BootMii

1. Format SD card as FAT32
2. Download this file and extract contents to root of SD card
3. Turn off WiiConnect24 in the Wii System Menu
4. With SD card removed from Wii, launch Super Smash Bros Brawl
5. Go to the Stage Builder, delete all custom stages, and exit the stage builder
6. Exit all the way to the main SSBB menu
7. Insert SD card, return to Stage Builder
8. HackMii installer will load
9. Read the warning and wait for the “press 1″ message to appear – press 1
10. Install the HomeBrew Channel
11. Install BootMii as boot2
12. Prepare the SD card
13. Create a backup:
14. Load HBC, press ‘home’, launch BootMii
15. Make a backup (press Power, Power, Power, Reset, Reset)

Part 2

1. Download this file – password is www.wiihacks.com
2. Extract to root of SD card
3. Using the computer, run md5summer.exe
4. Click “Verify Sums”, then ModPack-AnyWii.md5
5. This should complete without errors
6. Insert SD card to powered-off Wii
7. Start HBC, press home, launch bootMii
8. Multi-Mod Manager should start
9. Select WAD manager, press A
10. Press 1 to “install all WADS”, press A
11. When installation is complete, press A
12. Return to the main MMM menu by pressing B twice

Part 3 – Protection from future destruction of your Wii

1. At the MMM main menu, select App Manager, press A
2. Select Priiloader, press A
3. Read warning, press +/A to install
4. It will probably glitch or freeze when it’s done – don’t worry, it worked
5. Remove SD card and reboot Wii while holding reset
6. Priiloader will load
7. Select System Menu Hacks, insert SD card, press A
8. Enable “Block Disk Updates” and “Block Online Updates”, save changes
9. Reboot Wii without SD card

Final Steps – Obtaining Software

1. Download this file and extract to root of SD card
2. Opening Homebrew Channel with this card inserted will give you access to a few nice apps, including a browser that allows you to download new ones to the card.
3. I recommend MPlayerCE for playing media from a USB flash drive
4. It’s now safe to turn on WiiConnect24 again

So those are the steps that I went through to hack my Wii. Note that it is incredibly easy to break your Wii after doing this if you install any system updates. The automatic updates should be disabled by Priiloader, so as long as you don’t install any manually you should be ok. Happy hacking!

And here’s an introduction to the Whitest Kids U Know - a very funny comedy group who put a lot of stuff up on the internet.