Aussie girl needs help statring from scratch w/ modding Wii

Hi All,

I know ppl are going to say "Do a search""Read the Tuturial" but the problem is I have and they are saying conflicting things. Somes say upgrade some say dont, some say you need certain programs and other say different ones.

Firstly, once I soft mod my wii, what will I be able to do?

What I have
Australian Pal Wii with Serial starting with LAH1009XXXXX System menu 3.1E (I am guessing thats early - I have had a hacked psp since before pandora so I am very hesitant to ever upgrade firmware). I have not really done anything with my wii except play proper disc games. I have not used the shop or browser ect.
I do have the Zelda Twighlight Princess Game it is RVL-RZDP-AUS
and i have access to a SD card and Reader and internet access (obviously)

Do I need anything else?

Ok so where do I start? Obviously I want to be able to do the most things with the least drawbacks/risks or problems. One of the first things I would like to do is play the downloaded (WAD) version of Pokemon Ranch that I dl'd.

Please help
Thanks

I would personally go find Crash's Wii Mod Kit V6 Full from somewhere like Pirate Bay or IsoHunt, it has nearly everything you will need and a great step by step tutorial. The only thing you would need that is not provided would maybe be cIOS rev-10 Installer for using a USB Loader, he does provide rev-7, but if you want to install a USB Loader it requires rev-10 I have modded 3 Wii's with it and never had a problem, except when I tried using a "Wii Sandisk 2gb" SD card last night, for some reason I kept getting a load error when trying to load the Twilight hack, so I just used my "normal" Sandisk 2gb card. No clue what the difference was.

i was reading somewhere that people thought that cIOS rev-9 or something was better than 10. can anyone tell me the difference. are there any other up to date guides on this site that deal with the firmware/system that I have set up? most I have seen are for if you are on FW 4 or another slightly lower than mine. I dont want to update if it is better to start the process at the loer Firmware I have. I'm guessing these guides are because I lot of people have updated and not because it is better to start at that point if there is an option.

I use rev-10 because I have a 500gb HD attached to my Wii and USB loader requires it. I haven't run across a problem yet

Version 3.1 is just fine to hack with, if you go download that pack I recommended it has detailed instructions for 3.1 - 3.4

The only thing you have to do if you have 3.1 is install the TH, be connected to the net, and run the downgrader included in the pack, it will upgrade or downgrade your system menu to the menu of your choice. I would highly recommend going to 3.2 with the application as you cannot run the Starfall app with any other version.

Hope that helps.