WTF is up with BootMii?

Hey...

I'm not a hardcore Wii hacker as in I don't keep up with what goes on every day nor have I really read many guides outside of getting HBC on my system. Last week or so I installed BootMii beta1 on my system using a 2gig PNY micro-sd in the original SD adapter (same card I'd been using in my Wii for a while) and it worked fine. the boot2 install went great and was greeted with the bootmii menu, which i didn't know how to use, so i'd just hit reset every time it came up (not realizing that power navigated over).

Ok, so, here we are at today...I, late as usual, find out beta2's been released and since that time i've gotten a couple more microsd cards to play with...another pny 2gig and a couple of Kingston 8gig microsdhc's (Class 6) i bought for a portable player (haven't yet needed the second card).

So, anyway, i bring my new 2 gig card down here, format it as FAT, put the installer on, run the installer, prepare the sd card...reboot the wii...and two flashes to system menu...so i format card again, prepare...two flashes and then system menu. So, I grab my old microsd card that I previously saw bootmii beta1 boot off of...same deal. So, i ran prepare on THAT card...still wouldn't boot. In the meantime I've switched both cards between the three adapters I've got (two kingstons and the PNY from my "original" pny 2 gig) with no success getting the bootmii menu. i even tried uninstalling bootmii, rebooting, then reinstalling bootmii.

So, out of other things to try, I copied the bootmii folder over to my hard drive...stuck my 8 gig card in and copied the folders over. I stuck it in the PNY adapter (becuase I'm really doubting the adapter could even been contributing to the problems at this point) and...boom, bootmii menu. So, I'm already wondering just WTF happened that a card it previously booted from once, it won't boot from anymore. the only thing I haven't done is uninstalled beta2 and reinstalled beta1 to see if it's a difference between beta2 and beta1.

After I got the menu booted, since I hadn't realized bootmii did the nand backup directly, i ran a backup to that 8gig microsdhc card and it verified well. Which brings me to another point...do "Factory bad block marker" errors mean that's a block of memory that was marked bad by the factory before it was even put in to use on the Wii? Cuz I'm seeing ones at 54, 307, 937, 1103, 2263 and 3593.

I attempted a backup of the NAND to the same 2gig card bootmii wouldn't boot from...and it backed it up with no problem to the card.

The only thing that made sense here was, "what do factory bad block markers mean?"

The answer is: They're normal. Every Wii comes out of the factory with a handful of them.

Ok...

Then what is up with the fact BootMii beta1 worked fine booting off a 2gig microsd card...but beta2 refuses to boot off anything but my 8gig. I understand sd card support is touch-and-go with it...but why would a card work on one version but not the other? did they make some drastic change to the code?

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dewdude
Then what is up with the fact BootMii beta1 worked fine booting off a 2gig microsd card...but beta2 refuses to boot off anything but my 8gig. I understand sd card support is touch-and-go with it...but why would a card work on one version but not the other? did they make some drastic change to the code?

Erm, you need the bootmii folder on your SD card in order for BootMii to appear. That's the only reason why it wouldn't load.

Back to why your "topic didn't make sense". I meant that it made perfect sense, but I just didn't understand what you were asking. Sorry for that.