Hacking Just discovered USB Loader GX can load channels installed to the Wii

[Delirious17]

Since the Wii itself has so little storage on itself I have a number of games stored on the SD card (e.g. WiiWare, Virtual Console)

Is there a way to load these games as well with USB Loader GX?

Thank you guys!

 

[Delirious17]

...anyone?

I was too stupid early on with my USB hard drive and made the format WBFS and It'd be hell to back it all up and reformat it to something more proper

 

[Maverick Lunar X]

Not that i'm aware of, no.

 

[Cyan]

using a USB Loader you can't load the officially moved games located on SD card, as they are in a single file encrypted binary format.

Loaders can run Channel titles in their extracted/installed format instead.
they can either:

- Launch channels installed on the internal memory of the Wii
- Launch channels installed on an emulated NAND memory of the Wii, located either on SD or USB

The advantage or Emulated NAND is that you are not limited to 512MB, you are limited to the device free space (few TB?)


There are different type of Emulated NAND :
1) Using a "neek" (Sneek, Uneek, neek2o) you can emulate your Wii's internal memory completely as if it was the real one.
You dump your Wii NAND to your SD or USB, and when you boot your wii, it will use this dump instead of the real NAND.

2) Using a USB loader (USB Loader GX, Wiiflow, cfg, etc.)
You can launch Titles/games/channels installed in both the real and emulated NAND, while keeping the Wii in real NAND on boot.
It just use the emulated NAND for the channel you want to use, and return to real NAND when exiting that channel.



As for the games already installed (stored) on your SD card using the official SD menu from the Wii, you will have to move these games back to the Real NAND and dump that NAND to get them listed and available in Loaders' EmuNAND mode.

If you want to have all the games on the same Emulated NAND, you can use application to move them between different NAND dumps, such as ShowMiiWads.

 

[Zidapi]

...anyone?

I was too stupid early on with my USB hard drive and made the format WBFS and It'd be hell to back it all up and reformat it to something more proper

You can use PsyBlade's wbfs2fat script to convert your drive without losing any data or needing to back up your games.
He has provided a walkthrough for the whole process here

I was in the same position as you until recently. wbfs2fat is easy to use and is super fast, there's really no excuse for having a wbfs partition these days

 

[Delirious17]

...anyone?

I was too stupid early on with my USB hard drive and made the format WBFS and It'd be hell to back it all up and reformat it to something more proper

You can use PsyBlade's wbfs2fat script to convert your drive without losing any data or needing to back up your games.
He has provided a walkthrough for the whole process here

I was in the same position as you until recently. wbfs2fat is easy to use and is super fast, there's really no excuse for having a wbfs partition these days

THANK YOU!

 

[maharito]

Thank you for the help with this, Cyan! I wish the info about what to do with SD-stored WADs was in a USB Loader GX or EmuNand guide somewhere. This will take a while but is very important to someone who doesn't have the WADs anymore. I have some really rare VC injects and a few I made myself (namely some of the Sailor Moon SNES games and Super Puyo Puyo 2).

So, this is the procedure that I will follow:
1) Transfer everything possible to the SD card using the Wii System Menu to free up NAND space
2) Transfer SD-installed channels back to the Wii NAND, as many as can fit at a time
3) Go to USB Loader GX or whatever and assign a folder for dumping NAND to USB, then do so (using a different folder each time)
4) Repeat 2 and 3 until all channels are transferred to some dumped NAND
5) Use ShowMiiWads to 'unite' all the channels into one EmuNAND
6) Assign loader to use that EmuNAND (others can be deleted at that point)
7) Put regular saves/channels back on Wii NAND via System Menu

Is that about right?

 

[miihackwii]

you can convert a wbfs partition to fat32 with this program. No need to back anything up its very good.

wbfs2fat

 

[maharito]

you can convert a wbfs partition to fat32 with this program. No need to back anything up its very good.

wbfs2fat

Er, my problem isn't one of hard drive format--it's of games being installed in the Wii's encrypted 'stored in SD' format. I have way more channels installed than would fit on the Wii alone, I don't have the WADs anymore, and some of them are irreplaceable. So I have to make a bunch of EmuNANDs with different loaded-up Wii NANDs and combine them, unless there is some other way to crack the content.bin...

 

[Cyan]

yes, the steps are right.
Just do not forget about the savegames, you need to backup and restore them to the NAND folder you will use.

ShowMiiWads let you backup/restore savegame individually.
You can also do a global savegame backup, but maybe it's better to individually restore (to prevent overwriting files)

 

[maharito]

Took me the whole darn day to get the SD contents in NAND form (across 12 backups). Didn't really know what to do with ShowMiiWads only being able to load up one NAND at a time. But then it became crystal clear--I had no idea making WADs from the NAND was this easy! Will edit this post with final results. (Looks like I'll have to re-download a couple due to ShowMiiWads insisting on using the exact Channel Name in the WAD name--colons and all.)

EDIT: Oh bother...now nothing at all will run from the EmuNand! Even the original unedited ones! All the banners loaded up just fine, but nothing actually runs (punt to HBC). I am going to do one more NAND dump and install the WADs to it the old-fashioned way...

 

[maharito]

Alright, after extensive testing and poking every variable (including which device my EmuNand is stored on and going to default settings), I have determined that USB Loader GX (r1208) may display EmuNand titles just fine, but it will then attempt to load the title off of the Wii Nand anyway. Thus, I can install any title on the Wii Nand and even a 'ghost' title of the same name on the EmuNand can play it (confirmed--with regular Nand title display turned off in the loader settings). Delete the Wii game (regardless of whether I save the title via having a savegame), and even a correctly installed EmuNand title of the same name won't run.

So either I am doing something horribly wrong, or there is something horribly wrong with this version of USB Loader GX. Man, I really don't wanna go back to a version of USB Loader GX/DIOS MIOS that can't run Twin Snakes...

EDIT: While the nature of this problem is now officially over my head, I can still test whether it's the unofficial release of USB Loader GX that's causing my problem. I will try 3.0 and other intermediate revisions I can find, as well as making a "clean plus one" Nand and EmuNand to test the loading source again in case the newer-revision loader's Nand dumping is somehow to blame. I'm a scientist at heart but I know jack about the Wii file systems...

LAST EDIT: I made a "clean plus one" emulated NAND using USB Loader 3.0, played the game successfully, went to delete it from the regular Wii NAND via System Menu, and broke the EmuNAND version--just like every other time. There doesn't seem to be anything unusual in my titles when I look at them using ShowMiiNand and AnyTitleDeleter. I guess the next thing would be to start deleting those hidden channels and see if anything changes (shouldn't hurt anything on an EmuNAND, anyway). Otherwise...I AM 100% STUCK. How do I load games off of EmuNAND instead of just seeing what amounts to regular NAND forwarders???

Note: I have been using genuine and injected NES and SNES games to test correct NAND loading, if that makes any difference. Also, everything is set up on IOS 249, which I believe is using the latest version of d2x.

I LIED, THIS IS THE LAST EDIT: Oh, I decided right before hitting the hay to double-check that I had the latest version of d2x installed. I didn't! Now, when I run an EmuNand game, the disc light blinks twice then happily launches the game exactly as intended!! I think all the VCs work now--only need to test the WiiWare! Thanks all!!

 

[Cyan]

If the config is wrong, it's not enabling the Emulation.
So, you probably had a wrong cIOS version, so it skipped the emulation initialisation.

r1208 should prompts you that you need to use d2x for emuNAND, except if you are using a specific settings (NAND on the root instead of subfolder).
So, if you didn't see any prompt telling you to use d2x, you probably had a d2x cIOS. Could you tell me which cIOS version you had?


I changed the way emulation is enabled in r1208.
If you could test with r1207 with your old settings, it would help me.

 

[maharito]

I previously had d2x v6 installed; now I have d2x v10 beta 52 installed. Again, IOS 249.

What is it you'd like me to check out with r1207? As I'd said, my particular problem was unaffected between 3.0 and r1208. But I'm always glad to help with debugging

Mega Man: The Wily Wars (a VC game with an odd save system) doesn't seem to work in EmuNand on r1208; lemme see if it behaves any differently in an older version.

 

[Cyan]

what I understood in your post above was that displaying EmuNAND games in r1208 and launching a game was in fact still trying to load it from RealNAND instead of emuNAND.
That's right?
Then you said "I updated my cIOS and now it's working fine".

So I asked which cIOS did you have that made the loader launch from RealNAND instead of emuNAND.
You clearly said that 1208 had the problem.

So my question was:
If you install d2x v6 back, emuNAND is not working with r1208?
if it's not working, can you test with d2x v6 and r1207?
Maybe I broke something in r1208 with d2x v6.

 

[maharito]

what I understood in your post above was that displaying EmuNAND games in r1208 and launching a game was in fact still trying to load it from RealNAND instead of emuNAND.
That's right?
Then you said "I updated my cIOS and now it's working fine".

So I asked which cIOS did you have that made the loader launch from RealNAND instead of emuNAND.
You clearly said that 1208 had the problem.

So my question was:
If you install d2x v6 back, emuNAND is not working with r1208?
if it's not working, can you test with d2x v6 and r1207?
Maybe I broke something in r1208 with d2x v6.

Quelques problèmes de langue, monsieur ? (Well, I'm pretty terrible at French so I shouldn't bother)

Sorry, my deliberative process was considering every angle possible, but I didn't consider the cIOS until the very end. I foolishly assumed that Pimp My Wii gave me the latest version, but I guess that service must be taking a nap. So, I have no reason to think anything is broke in r1208 that wasn't in 3.0--but I will keep 3.0 installed and let you know if I find anything that does fit that case.

EDIT: Oh, now I'm the one misreading--you want to see this case ever occurs when d2x v6 is installed... I'm guessing that that cIOS version still has its uses? Well, I'll keep that in mind when doing my second or third pass of error investigation. For now, I have no reason to suspect it was anything but the cIOS' fault.

 

[Cyan]

yes, I have understanding problem sometime

Thanks for the report, and I'm glad it works fine (for both of us!)