Hacking WiiFlow - an open source GUI USB-Loader

[Maxternal]

Where would one get 875? I cant seem to get Lego Pirates of the Caribbean working, Tried stable release and up to r873. Game works on GX and CFG loaders. I tried changing the IOS reload to yes in the game config ini , (which is what cfg says it does when it loads ios reload=yes)but still did not work. Using dx2 v10beta 53 I will change to see if it helps.
Thanks

Maybe it's a bad rip. You could have Wii Backup Manager check the SHA-1 on it to be sure and then try ripping it again or if it was because you ripped it from a scratched disk try downloading another copy without getting caught.

 

[rgjr77]

Thanks for the input will try again. The disc was pretty scratched (garage sale $2). I will acquire another one. But why would it work in the other loaders?

 

[MassiveRican]

Try 874. Let me know if it works.

Edit: 875 patches correctly. sorry. By the way since you have so many Fanart you think you could pass them my way so i can put them on the wiiflowiki?

yea no problem, I'd love too. Credit goes to Gaiaknight, most if not all are his creations. He just so happened to share them with me a long time ago. I'll up em' 2night and get u the link.

Gaiaknight might have even more of them by now. If he pops up on the IRC every now and then ask him his full count. I'll get u my count 2night.

 

[mike1]

@etheboss sorry man I confirm none of my emusaves are loading right now. I don't know which rev it happened but emusave is definitely broken right now. At least for me.

The following changes in wiiflow.ini fixed my problem

force_cios_load=yes
force_cios_rev=249

Changes can be done right from the GUI with no need for text file editing. It's a beautiful thing.

thanks tried this and it made loading covers way faster and boot up times seem shorter also

 

[Wanderlei777]

I just updated to latest stable but now it takes 45 to 60 seconds to load.

Which config files should I delete of my SD card and let it rebuild?

 

[MassiveRican]

I would delete the cache lists folder although its supposed to do so automatically which is why your boot time might have gone up on first launch as it rebuilds the lists files. It should launch quicker afterwards. I would also delete your settings folder. Make a backup first if u wish or rename folder old_settings and let wiiflow recreate new ones. You can keep wiitdb.xml or re-d/load it through wiiflow.

 

[Wanderlei777]

I would delete the cache lists folder although its supposed to do so automatically which is why your boot time might have gone up on first launch as it rebuilds the lists files. It should launch quicker afterwards. I would also delete your settings folder. Make a backup first if u wish or rename folder old_settings and let wiiflow recreate new ones. You can keep wiitdb.xml or re-d/load it through wiiflow.

Cheers, unfortunately it is still really slow loading after deleting those and a couple of reboots.

 

[MassiveRican]

Cheers, unfortunately it is still really slow loading after deleting those and a couple of reboots.

Have u tried the force cIOS option? Which build did u update from?

 

[Wanderlei777]

Have u tried the force cIOS option? Which build did u update from?

From 4.0.2 to 4.1

I deleted the wiiflow.ini file from the apps/wiiflow folder and it doesn't recreate it.

Also covers stopped loading.

I removed the entire wiiflow folder the SD card and there is still a 60 second delay.

 

[MassiveRican]

All my files including config files are on USB only so I can't help u much there. Make sure there isn't a wiiflow folder on the root of your USB or in the apps folder on USB. Also did u try force cIOS? Which D2X version are u on? Either way D2X isn't the culprit if the update caused your wiiflow setup to break. Keep me posted. I have no issues here, have u tried r873?

 

[MassiveRican]

Being on mobile really blows sometimes. Sorry for DP

 

[Wanderlei777]

It was creating wiiflow.ini on usb.

I tried force cios and it didnt load at all.

Its after you start the screen stays black for 60 seconds before even the wiiflow loading logo appears.

 

[Maxternal]

It was creating wiiflow.ini on usb.

I tried force cios and it didnt load at all.

Its after you start the screen stays black for 60 seconds before even the wiiflow loading logo appears.

Is your USB and/or SD card full? I started having HORRIBLE load times like that a couple weeks ago and it ended up that my hard drive had NO room left at all.

 

[Wanderlei777]

Is your USB and/or SD card full? I started having HORRIBLE load times like that a couple weeks ago and it ended up that my hard drive had NO room left at all.

No but I did switch to larger SD card recently.

Problem is now it keeps using hdd instead of SD card, so covers etc wont display.

Edit

Went back to old SD card and the same, I suppose hdd is full-ish around 80%.

 

[Maxternal]

No but I did switch to larger SD card recently.

Problem is now it keeps using hdd instead of SD card, so covers etc wont display.

I've also had a random glitch every once in a while where it couldn't read the place where I had my wiiflow.ini file so it created it in a place that it DID have access to. The problem is that it's the wiiflow.ini file that tells it where to look to find all the OTHER files so it always created empty folders for settings and covers all that and ignored the ones I already had elsewhere. Something like that might have happened to you. I'd suggest deleting the /wiiflow folder off of your HDD and the wiiflow.ini file as well. Maybe that way it will see the /Wiiflow folder on SD first. You could also try putting a blank file named wiiflow.ini on your SD card to make sure there's something there for it to find.

EDIT : I hope it's not that your SD card has just suddenly become semi-unreadable and only compatible with certain apps or something... but that sounds too far fetched to be right.

 

[Wanderlei777]

Luckily I had a not too old backup of SD card. I did ditch the new one and went back to the old, I think there is something a little suspected with it. There was folder on it that became undelete-able.

I got covers, wiiflow.ini back with old card and backup.

But load times are still quite high, 4.0.2 is slower than I remember and 4.2 is slower still.

I guess I will try and give the hdd a bit of a cull and clear up some space and maybe defrag it.

EDIT

There is not a preferred partition type and bit size for SD cards? I just did default format?

 

[Maxternal]

There is not a preferred partition type and bit size for SD cards? I just did default format?

The default is usually okay.

If you're ever gonna use the card with DML or NEEK you would want it to have 64k clusters for most efficiency as far as speed (and that might need FAT16 or FAT32 depending on the size off the SD card.) but the default size will probably end up doing the smallest available cluster size because that's the most efficient as far as saving space if you have a whole bunch of small files on it. FAT32 is probably more efficient than FAT16 in that regard, generally speaking but a lot of other devices (cameras, MP3 players, etc) might assume that it's FAT16 if it's smaller than 2gb.

Other than that, just don't do exFAT.

 

[bostonBC]

Luckily I had a not too old backup of SD card. I did ditch the new one and went back to the old, I think there is something a little suspected with it. There was folder on it that became undelete-able.

I got covers, wiiflow.ini back with old card and backup.

But load times are still quite high, 4.0.2 is slower than I remember and 4.2 is slower still.

I guess I will try and give the hdd a bit of a cull and clear up some space and maybe defrag it.

EDIT

There is not a preferred partition type and bit size for SD cards? I just did default format?

Check the wiiflow/cache/lists folder and I bet you have a 0 byte .db file.

I've seen that when you have directory corruption on the HD or SD. Run a scandisk and let it fix any problems and I'll bet it comes back with invalid entries in the cache/lists folder.

 

[MassiveRican]

Luckily I had a not too old backup of SD card. I did ditch the new one and went back to the old, I think there is something a little suspected with it. There was folder on it that became undelete-able.

I got covers, wiiflow.ini back with old card and backup.

But load times are still quite high, 4.0.2 is slower than I remember and 4.2 is slower still.

I guess I will try and give the hdd a bit of a cull and clear up some space and maybe defrag it.

EDIT

There is not a preferred partition type and bit size for SD cards? I just did default format?

By all means clean up and defrag the HDD but being full at 80%-ish is far from the problem, I've maxed out my HDD to 2% or 3% left and it's still kicking. I don't do this anymore for obvious reasons but that shouldn't be your problem. Ensure that you have no WiiFlow files whatsoever on your USB and attempt a clean install if necessary. If your older SD card is currently working then it might not be necessary but just in case you'd like to use your new SD card.

Also retry force cIOS load and see how it performs with your currently working setup, hopefully it'll speed things up a bit besides the HDD clean up.

 

[bostonBC]

Has anyone else seen this problem lately?

I started noticing a while back and I'm not sure what rev - that when I add a new game outside of WiiFlow by using Wii Backup Manager or copying the WBFS folder in and reloading the cache that the cache list gets rebuilt with a 0 byte size and an all upper case name like: USB1_WII.DB.

Then each time you reload Wiiflow it takes forever as it looks like it is trying to rebuild the cache but fails and always leaves it with a 0 byte length.

Then if I manualy delete the USB1_WII.DB file in Windows and run a disk scan and fix any errors the next time it builds the list it works correctly.

I am using a 2TB drive with a single FAT32 partition and am wondering if the file delete code which deletes the existing cache file before recreating it is causing some sort of directory corruption.

It it showing 'Removing nonvalid long folder entery from \wiiflow\cache\lists...

Edit - I have checked for directory corruption before putting it back on the Wii and there is none and I am properly ejecting the drive from the PC so I think the corruption is happening on the Wii.

Edit2: Forgot to mention when it is successfully builds the cache the filename is in lower case: usb1_wii.db

Just copied a few new games to my 3TB drive so I could setup the categories/ratings on them. I ran a scandisk first and had no errors.

Ran Wiiflow r873 and reloaded the cache and it chugged away for a couple of minutes and displayed all 1291 games w/o a problem. Exited Wiiflow and re-ran, chugged away again for a couple of minutes and finally showed the games. Plugged drive back into PC - USB1_WII.DB = 0 bytes.

Ran a chkdisk and fix and got this:

[Window Title]
Checking Disk WII_3TB (L
[Main Instruction]
Some problems were found and fixed
[Content]
Any files that were affected by these problems were moved to a folder named "Found" on the device or disk. Your device or disk is now ready to use.
If you removed the device or disk before all files were fully written to it, parts of some files might still be missing. If so, go back to the source and recopy those files to your device or disk.
[^] Hide details [Close]
[Expanded Information]
Volume WII_3TB created 2/1/2013 8:42 AM
Volume Serial Number is 1006-310E
Windows is verifying files and folders...
Removing nonvalid long folder entry from \wiiflow\cache\lists...
Removing nonvalid long folder entry from \wiiflow\cache\lists...
File and folder verification is complete.
1408 KB in 2 recovered files.
Windows has made corrections to the file system.
2,929,538,464 KB total disk space.
160 KB in 4 hidden files.
43,712 KB in 1,354 folders.
2,333,243,744 KB in 10,433 files.
596,250,816 KB are available.
32,768 bytes in each allocation unit.
91,548,077 total allocation units on disk.
18,632,838 allocation units available on disk.
In the Found.000 folder were 2 files - FILE0000.CHK and FILE0001.CHK. Both 704KB (720,896 bytes)

I deleted the 0 byte USB1_WII.DB file, ejected, plugged back into the Wii and ran Wiiflow and it worked, exited and went back in and it only took a few seconds to load.

Plugged into PC and the usb1_wii.db was created (in lower case this time) and it was 694,558 bytes in size and 720,896 bytes on disk.

I did the exact same on my 2TB system (3 and 2TB are formatted as a single FAT32 partition) and it did exactly the same.

Looks like something updating the cache/lists is corrupting the file system but if you delete the file, fix the file system errors and redo it works.