Wii Startup Disc
 The Startup Disc as depicted in System Menu 0. | |
| Disc Internal Name | Wii Startup Disc |
|---|---|
| Disc ID | RAAE01 |
| Disc IOS | IOS9 |
| Disc Release Date | Original: October-November 2006
v1: Unknown Starlight: Unknown Ver.0501: 2009.05.07 Ver.0508 for NoK: 2009.05.08 Ver.0508 for iQue: 2009.05.11 |
| Disc Build Date | October 7, 2006 (main binary SDK build date - also the build date of Wii Menu 1.0) |
| Disc Apploader Date | October 7, 2006 |
The Wii Startup Disc is a disc which was used to install Wii Menu 1.0 on early-run Wii consoles (often referred to by the community as Startup Disc Wiis) which were produced before the menu was ready.
Most of these consoles were distributed as kiosk units in North America, where the disc would be loaded by a NoA representative who visited each store. However, a few Startup Disc Wiis were shipped in launch-day Wii retail boxes, with no accompanying disc - affected customers were required to send their units back to Nintendo.
Startup Disc Wiis came with a stub system menu (often referred to as the Startup Disc Menu, internally known as System Menu 0) designed only to load the Startup Disc, leaving these consoles unusable unless a Startup Disc can be inserted (or spoofed using a drivechip).
Public awareness of the Startup Disc dates back to mid-September 2006[1], when rumors began circulating about the disc, initially seen as something which would be included in all launch-day retail Wii boxes. Indeed, the initial revision of NA Wii boxes listed the Startup Disc in its contents section, in the slot which was later changed to 'Wii Sports Disc' (sometimes by pasting a sticker over the original label) - however, there are no reports of any of these boxes actually containing a Startup Disc.
After a flurry of forum posts surrounding the Wii's launch of customers reporting their Wiis were asking for an absent Startup Disc, the topic fell into obscurity until 2010, when Ben "bushing" Byer wrote a blog post on HackMii which extensively documented a Startup Disc Wii.[2]
In the years since, a handful more examples of Startup Disc Wiis have surfaced, as well as additional information from the Gigaleak and other sources. Most notably, a 2020 Gigaleak release included a copy of the Startup Disc's partition data taken from Nintendo's mastering servers - this has revealed the contents of the original Startup Disc, but several questions remain surrounding its history and distribution.
The Gigaleak also revealed the existence of several later discs using the Startup Disc's ID and installer binary, with different contents. These discs were used internally for setting up various special-purpose systems. The reason for reusing the Startup Disc when software such as Wii Menu Changer already existed is unclear.
As of 2026, no physical Startup Disc has ever been found or seen by the community. However, it is known for certain that the disc physically existed.
The Startup Disc is considered to be of special importance to the RGD community due to its role in the community's creation, as well as the initial and enduring mystique surrounding it.
Background
The Wii's development was unusually rushed compared to that of other Nintendo consoles - while planning for the Wii Menu and bundled applications started in late 2005, the lack of any real hardware to develop on until March 2006 created a compressed development schedule where EAD only had a few months to prepare the Wii's system software. Notably, the Wii Menu and channels (other than an early, mockup-style demo of Virtual Console) were not publicly shown until an event in September, just 2 months before launch.
The need to produce Wii consoles in time for the November release required that production be started in mid-2006, at which point the Wii Menu was not close to being ready, with builds as late as late September still being full of showstopper bugs.
In the final step of the Wii's factory setup procedure, an SD card is inserted which installs the initial set of software, including the Wii Menu, onto the console. While it would be possible to produce consoles and simply defer this last step until the Wii Menu was available, it would not permit enough lead time for packaging & distribution. Since the factory software could not be used in the field, a special solution had to be created to allow the consoles to be finalized and packaged right away, with the Wii Menu being installed externally. This led to the creation of the Startup Disc and its associated stub system menu.
System Menu 0
System Menu 0, or the "Startup Disc Menu", is the system menu program which shipped on Startup Disc Wiis. It is a thin graphical layer over BS2 which exists solely to boot the Startup Disc, and will reject any other regular Wii disc. However, autoboot discs (discs with '0' as the first character of their disc ID, typically used for internal applications) can be booted.
Notably, System Menu 0 also has some (presumably unused, as the original Startup Disc does not take advantage of it) code to install WADs directly off an update partition. The UI for this is buggy, as it will simply loop the 'checking disc' screen while the WADs are being installed, and abruptly reload the Wii Menu title afterwards to start the newly installed menu. This was probably a remnant of an earlier idea where the disc would just be an update partition containing WADs, however the Startup Disc instead ended up using its own installer binary.
System Menu 0 normally goes through a cycle of prompting the user for the disc, checking the disc, and launching it if its ID is accepted or displaying an 'incorrect disc' screen if it is not. It is also capable of displaying a red error screen for drive errors. System Menu 0's OS library version is old enough to have the OSFatal message with "Nintendo Revolution" text, but it's unknown if it's possible to trigger it.
This menu also contains the graphical assets used by the disc installer itself (such as the 'installation in progress' screen), which is a variant of System Menu 0. It is unknown if there is any way to get these assets to display on System Menu 0.
Notably, System Menu 0 (as well as the Startup Disc itself) uses the 'data transfer' and 'data transfer complete' sound effects from the Wii Menu. It also has a unique error sound effect which is not known to be used anywhere else.
The use of assets from the Wii Menu, as well as Nintendo's internal references to it indicate that System Menu 0 was most likely created by EAD, Nintendo's main game development division at the time which also created the Wii Menu itself. As with most EAD products, source code for System Menu 0 was not included in the Gigaleak. However, copies of BS2 from the boot-IRD source tree have remnants of code used for System Menu 0, including the check for the RAAE title ID, which is defined as BS2_UPDATE_GAMENAME and is inverted in release versions of the System Menu to instead be blocked.
For unknown reasons, System Menu 0 links the PAD (GameCube controller) SDK library, while the disc installer binary links the WPAD (Wii Remote) library. Both programs accept no controller input, so this is likely a remnant, possibly from boot-IRD.
This video shows the unused update partition code path.
Distribution of the disc
The exact nature of the Startup Disc's distribution remains unclear. What is known is that the first batch of Wiis (likely up to 100,000 or so) produced for the North American market were produced as Startup Disc Wiis, many of which were allocated to in-store demo kiosks while others were shipped directly to consumers. However, it is unclear if any of these consoles actually shipped with a Startup Disc, or if the Startup Disc was only handled by Nintendo themselves.
While it was initially believed that some retail consoles may have shipped with a Startup Disc in the box due to the presence of RAAE in uid.sys, the enduring lack of any publicly known physical copies of the Startup Disc means that alternative explanations are more likely, such as these units being former kiosk units, returned consoles which needed the Startup Disc at launch, or consoles which Nintendo pre-prepared with the Startup Disc before shipping (although this practice is speculative).
Due to a GameStop memo found on Flickr, it is known that Nintendo sent representatives to stores which were allocated Startup Disc Wii-based demo kiosks, who would then run the disc on the unit to 'enable' it. However, it is very unlikely that any of these discs were left in possession of the stores - retail store items leak very easily, and if this was the practice at the time it is almost certain that a disc would have surfaced by now.
A photo of an original Wii kiosk seen on eBay in 2025 shows an 'installation & setup guide' which clearly depicts System Menu 0 on the front cover. It's very likely that this manual contains instructions for the Startup Disc, possibly including photos - unfortunately, it was unable to be purchased & scanned by the community.
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GameStop memo about the Startup Disc. -
Kiosk with the Startup Disc manual
Startup Disc Wiis
Wiis running System Menu 0 are colloquially known by the community as Startup Disc Wiis. In effect, these are bricked Wiis which cannot be used unless they are drivechipped to run a burnt Startup Disc or equivalent, as was done by bushing in the Insert Startup Disc HackMii post.
Multiple Startup Disc Wiis have been found by the community, all posessing low LU100-series serial numbers as well as a distinctive adhesive residue on the bottom of their shell, indicating that they were placed within a kiosk setup. While the provenance of these consoles is unknown, the fact that they remain Startup Disc Wiis suggests that Nintendo did not complete the program of installing the disc on kiosks which required it, leaving some units to be abandoned and eventually resurface second-hand.
Startup Disc Wiis posess a barebones NAND structure, with the only titles installed being System Menu 0 itself, IOS4v3 (used by System Menu 0 - an early IOS otherwise unused by regular Wii software), IOS9v1 (a prototype revision), and (unused) BC/MIOS v0. boot2v1 is also installed, a version which has not been seen on other consoles but is functionally identical to the common v2.
Notably, IOS9 and boot2 are not upgraded to their regular launch-day versions by the Startup Disc, but upgraded versions of these titles are present in the update partitions of launch-day Wii games.
Startup Disc contents
The Startup Disc contains a single partition with the installer binary (a variant of System Menu 0) as well as several WADs. These WADs include Wii Menu 1.0 as well as the base set of channels that it was shipped with on later launch-day consoles - Mii Channel, Photo Channel, and the stub Forecast/News/Shop channels.
The installer will display an installation screen, followed by an installation message prompting the user to remove the disc, at which point the console will reboot into the newly installed Wii Menu and its OOBE.
There is also a message declaring that 'Wii Startup installation' has already been completed. This is effectively unused, as all versions of the Wii Menu blacklist the Startup Disc's title ID, making it unlaunchable after the disc has been used.
Later revisions
The Gigaleak revealed the existence of several more revisions of the Startup Disc, some of which were used years after its original deployment.
'v1'
The Wii lotcheck sheet found on the CIS-004 hard drive dump shows a 'v1' revision of the Startup Disc in addition to the original v0. Additionally, a file from teru-sama mail mentions a second version of the Startup Disc being distributed around the same time as the original.
Starlight
A Startup Disc was used as part of the initial setup of Starlight Fun Center Wii units, and remnants of it can be found in places such as cdb.vff.
iQue/NoK/Mario Club
Startup Discs (or rather, Startup Disc disc images burnt to RVT-R Discs) were used to set up RVT-R Readers at iQue and Nintendo of Korea circa 2009, installing the retal system menu and channels of their respective region in the vein of the Wii Menu Changer. It's unclear why the Startup Disc was used instead of the Wii Menu Changer for this purpose.
At least 8 such disc images are known to exist, with the existence of more being implied. Each release of the Startup Disc for iQue/NoK includes an iQue image, a NoK image, and respective versions of each for Mario Club (Nintendo's internal debug team), with the only difference between Mario Club and non-Mario Club images apparently being the TMD version number of the System Menu WAD.
