Thanks for your help, at least as much as I understand. I really don’t want to patch my system menu or do any serious hacks. The photo thing is not that important and sounds more complicated and like more work than I really care to do, but thanks for the info.
I don’t think what I’m using is Savegame Extractor/Installer, the description and directions on the wiki don’t match. Like I said, the boot.dol file was just given to me, along with instructions to launch it using Bannerbomb, so I don’t even know what it is. I wonder if anyone can identify it. I don’t know the rules around here too well, would it be bad if I created another thread to see if anyone recognizes it by description?
In any case, it’s very simple: You don’t need the disc, like you would with Savegame Extractor/Installer( in fact I was told to keep the drive empty), you just launch it using Bannerbomb( or any other exploit presumably), and basically the Wii resets. Aside from occasional freezing( only on the main Wii Menu Screen), everything is exactly the same as normal, except that when you go into Wii Options>Data Management>Save Data>Wii, you are able to copy or move the protected files from your Wii to the SD card and vice-versa just as if they were unprotected. The Copy and Move buttons are still greyed out visually, but they work like normal... when you look at the save data on the SD card, unlike Savegame Extractor/Installer, it is normal data.bin files under private\wii\title\[XXXX]\data.bin. Any idea what program I am talking about? Now that you said it, I realized what should have been obvious to me all along: I need to find out what program I am using before I can determine whether it will still work after upgrading!
The weird thing is you said “none of the other programs capable of copying protected save files will work on 3.4 or higher without a patched/downgraded IOS” but I’m using 4.2 and I don’t think it’s altering the IOS, because that would be permanent right? This does nothing permanent, as soon as you reboot the Wii after using this program, everything is back the way it was, the protected files are uncopyable again and everything. That’s why I like it, no trace of it left afterwards.
Anyway, so, since I dunno what will happen with 4.3, I guess you’re right that my best bet for now is to manually update the Shop Channel, it’s just that the wikipage for WiiSCU has the warning “Warning! This homebrew makes permanent changes to your Wii's flash memory (NAND) and should be used with caution.”. But if you’re sure it is not risky I guess I will do that for now and figure out what to do about games later( I DON’T want to patch my system menu, and going through Gecko OS every time would be a pain). So manually updating Shop with WiiSCU is safe for sure?
Hey, I just had a thought, does anyone know how I could contact whoever is testing out 4.3 to see what does and does not work? Maybe if I could talk to someone doing that they would be nice enough to check my mystery program for me and see if it is compatible with 4.3!
Again, thanks for all the help so far and yet to come!