Updating the Nintendo Wii Firmware? Beware of Error 003
This isn’t so much a guide to updating the Nintendo Wii firmware as a warning for anyone about to update it from the official server.
A Wii ended up in my hands (this continues the topic of resetting the Wii parental PIN, in Russian). It was bought abroad and, supposedly, hadn’t been modified.
What happened
As a long-time network admin, before setting up any network device (a router, an ADSL modem, a Wi-Fi access point) I always update the firmware from the official site and reset the settings first.
Same here: suspecting nothing, I connected the console to the internet over Wi-Fi and ran the system update. After a successful download and install, I restarted the console — and there it was: a black screen on the TV with the message “Error: 003 unauthorized device has been detected”.
What Error 003 means
The culprit is System Menu 4.2, which Nintendo released on September 28, 2009. It was aimed at hacking and piracy:
- it deletes most unofficial (homebrew) software;
- it updates the system protection and the boot loader so you can no longer downgrade;
- consoles that had been converted from the Korean region to another one stop booting after it — with exactly this error 003.
It looks like the “clean” console from abroad had in fact been modified by someone before me.
What to do if your Wii shows Error 003
Searching suggested these options:
- Throw the console away (the last resort).
- Take it to a service center, if there’s one nearby.
- Hand it to specialists for reflashing — that’s what we did.
- Dig in yourself: a modchip, a special controller, working with the memory to find keys. Without experience it’s easy to ruin the console for good.
We even called the official Nintendo service in Russia, but they didn’t understand the question and couldn’t help.
Readers in the comments pointed out that firmware 4.2–4.3 can also be modified — in software, without a chip — but that’s for people who know what they’re doing.
Tip: if the console was bought second-hand or abroad, don’t rush to update it to the latest official firmware.