Stage Select Screen no longer loading

[Bad Box Art Mega Man]

i can no longer get to stage selection in my Brawl Minus.

after i select the characters and press 'start', it remains in the "Loading Stage Select Screen" phase. worst of all, it isn't freezing! that may sound better, but now i can't pinpoint the problem. i've tried changing remote batteries, changing remote types, getting my disk cleaned; nothing's working!
it all started after i changed a few character portraits for one of Ike's alts. i went back to double check their size and format, and they all check out.

[windhunter7]

Replace them with some generic Brawl Minus Ike portraits, and see if it still doesn't work. Because I had an issue with a specific version of Project M(don't remember which version, but it was only with one specific version; the others worked fine) where it was extremely picky about the actual amount of KB of the portrait, and it would not load stage selection if the portrait was under and/or over a specific amount of KB, so I had to accomodate by deleting parts of the portrait or adding dots to it in order to make it the same amount of KB in filesize. But first, test if it is the portraits causing the problem, and if it is, this is likely the case.

[Unit]

Have you tried running just normal Brawl? If you're able to enter the Stage Selection screen through normal Brawl, then it has to be something within your SD card. Also, if you downloaded any alternate costumes over Ike besides changing his portraits, be sure to check with that as well.