Hacking Help with neek2o emunand!

mojo-hand

Member
OP
Newcomer
Joined
May 11, 2016
Messages
15
Trophies
0
Age
39
XP
87
Country
United States
So I recently decided to upgrade to a 2TB HDD after using a small 64GB thumb/flash drive. Everything is working as it should except for the emunand. I can pop in my thumb drive and run nswitch and it boots up just fine, but when I try the same thing with the new HDD it hangs forever on "Reloading Bootmii IOS".

I've been searching all over Google for answers so this is a last resort. Can anyone knowledgeable help me out here? Thanks.
 

Corredor

Well-Known Member
Member
Joined
Sep 16, 2016
Messages
122
Trophies
0
Age
33
XP
225
Country
Brazil
I have the same problem with a 1TB HDD. It works fine with USB Loader GX (even EmuNAND) and other Homebrews.

Enviado de meu 6039J usando Tapatalk
 

mojo-hand

Member
OP
Newcomer
Joined
May 11, 2016
Messages
15
Trophies
0
Age
39
XP
87
Country
United States
Hmm, I've never been able to get USB Loader to work with emunand. It's always given me a black screen when trying to load any game. But using nswitch worked for me when using my thumb drive. But doesn't work at all with the HDD for some reason.
 

mojo-hand

Member
OP
Newcomer
Joined
May 11, 2016
Messages
15
Trophies
0
Age
39
XP
87
Country
United States
It's a 2TB WD Elements USB 3.0 drive with a primary partition Fat32 (32kb clusters) format and set as Active. It's MBR, I had to convert it using the command line diskpart tool because the drive came with an NTFS GPT partition. I just copied all the folders and files including the sneek and nand folders from my thumb drive over to the HDD. Everything worked perfectly on my thumb drive so I don't see why it would be any different with the HDD?
 
Last edited by mojo-hand,

Corredor

Well-Known Member
Member
Joined
Sep 16, 2016
Messages
122
Trophies
0
Age
33
XP
225
Country
Brazil
Hmm, I've never been able to get USB Loader to work with emunand. It's always given me a black screen when trying to load any game. But using nswitch worked for me when using my thumb drive. But doesn't work at all with the HDD for some reason.
I've always had problem with EmuNAND (USB Loader Gx) . So, I changed the nand path to a folder immediately inside the root: /mynand/ instead of /nands/mynand/. Now it works perfectly. But neek2o doesn't work at all with any directory setting using my 1TB HDD M3 Samsung (FAT32, 32K cluster, active, primary partition, MBR). Neek2o works just with my 8GB USB stick.

Enviado de meu 6039J usando Tapatalk
 

mojo-hand

Member
OP
Newcomer
Joined
May 11, 2016
Messages
15
Trophies
0
Age
39
XP
87
Country
United States
I tried moving the nand folder to directly off the root but USB loader still acts the same way for me. The wads I have installed to the emunand do show up when I use the filter for emunand in USB loader, strangely, they just don't start up. It either dumps me back to the homebrew channel or it gives me a black screen depending on the emunand settings I use for loading the wad.

I guess there are just some difference causing an incompatibility with the HDD compared to USB sticks? I've decided to just use my USB stick for emunand purposes and my external HDD for everything else. Not the ideal solution but it works for now.

Thanks for the help though!
 

Corredor

Well-Known Member
Member
Joined
Sep 16, 2016
Messages
122
Trophies
0
Age
33
XP
225
Country
Brazil
Did you try loading the channels with IOS 250 (v10 beta 53, base 57)? For me, it doesn't work with IOS 249 (v10 beta 52, base 56).

Enviado de meu 6039J usando Tapatalk
 
Last edited by Corredor,

Toter402

Well-Known Member
Newcomer
Joined
Jul 3, 2015
Messages
46
Trophies
0
Age
36
XP
118
Country
United States
There's a WD application (that should have come with the drive) you can use to turn off the auto-sleep function in the drive, regardless of how it's been formatted. That's been the trick for me before. Hope it helps.
 

Corredor

Well-Known Member
Member
Joined
Sep 16, 2016
Messages
122
Trophies
0
Age
33
XP
225
Country
Brazil
There's a WD application (that should have come with the drive) you can use to turn off the auto-sleep function in the drive, regardless of how it's been formatted. That's been the trick for me before. Hope it helps.

Samsung Drive Manager has a similar option. I have disabled the auto-sleep function, but the problem remains.

Loading neek2o channel, it shows:

nSwitch v2.2 (c) 2013 OverJoY

Switching to "realnand" mode...
Mounting USB device... done!
Checking MBR...
Found "FAT" partition
Checking for kernel.bin... found!
kernel.bin size: 220792
Loading kernel.bin into memory... done!
Loading mini mod into memory... done!
Reloading bootmii IOS!

Neek2o reads data from my external HDD: file "kernel.bin" from "/sneek/", but it can't load the nand files (generated by Modmii) from "/nands/pl_us". Why does it happen? I tried UNEEK, instead of UNEEK+DI, and nothing changes.
 

Toter402

Well-Known Member
Newcomer
Joined
Jul 3, 2015
Messages
46
Trophies
0
Age
36
XP
118
Country
United States
Try using d2x Beta 52. Beta 53 alt has issues with nand emulation. (as someone had pointed out to me before.
 

GreyWolf

Well-Known Member
Member
Joined
Mar 2, 2015
Messages
5,399
Trophies
0
Age
54
XP
1,515
Country
United States
NEEK doesn't use a cIOS so switching those around won't help.

Are you sure the patition it's on is FAT32/MBR and it's the primary partition? Have you tried it with a dump from your real NAND instead of a generated one?
 

Corredor

Well-Known Member
Member
Joined
Sep 16, 2016
Messages
122
Trophies
0
Age
33
XP
225
Country
Brazil
NEEK doesn't use a cIOS so switching those around won't help.

Are you sure the patition it's on is FAT32/MBR and it's the primary partition? Have you tried it with a dump from your real NAND instead of a generated one?
Yes. It is the primary partition, active, FAT32, MBR. tried a lot of things. I deleted the other partion (logical), I tried different NAND dumps, I tried UNEEK+DI and without DI, I tried to boot from neek2o channel and from boot2 (renaming bootmii folder). I think my HDD (Samsung M3 USB 2.0/3.0 1TB) is not compatible, because everything has worked with my USB stick (Kingston 8 GB).

Enviado de meu 6039J usando Tapatalk
 

mojo-hand

Member
OP
Newcomer
Joined
May 11, 2016
Messages
15
Trophies
0
Age
39
XP
87
Country
United States
My HDD didn't come with any software, it's an elements drive, just barebones, no apps included except for some trialware backup garbage.

Not sure how to go about switching around the IOS.. I just followed the complete softmod guide when setting things up and did whatever it suggested.

It sounds like we are having the same issues though. Everything works with my USB flash drive, nswitch works fine with it, I can see all the wads installed there, etc. But with the HDD nswitch will not finishing booting, but everything else such as ISO backups, etc, works fine.

I read that Neek is incompatible with 4k sector drives.. which could be the problem?
 

Cyan

GBATemp's lurking knight
Former Staff
Joined
Oct 27, 2002
Messages
23,749
Trophies
4
Age
45
Location
Engine room, learning
XP
15,646
Country
France
I thought neek didn't support 4k drives but Neek2o added support for these drives.
In USBLoaderGX I have a sector size check only when using neek.

If you want I can provide a version with the check for neek2o too, and you'll see if your drive is (detected as) 4k or not?

maybe 4k is not working with neek2o either, if that's so I'll add a warning in the loader.
I'll have to search neek2o changelog. Maybe 4k was added only in (leaked) vWii version, but I can't use a version detection to know if the user is using an old or recent nk2o kernel.

edit:
Neek2o r84 added multiple sector size support.
so using r96 should work, unless there's a bug.
 

mojo-hand

Member
OP
Newcomer
Joined
May 11, 2016
Messages
15
Trophies
0
Age
39
XP
87
Country
United States
That's the version I am using r96. No big deal, I can just continue to use the flash drive for booting the emunand. Thanks for all the help though!
 

portugeek

Well-Known Member
Member
Joined
Apr 6, 2013
Messages
429
Trophies
0
XP
1,066
Country
United States
There are some config files stored within the "Sneek" folder located on your USB drive. You said that you copied over all the folders from the flash drive to the harddrive. Try deleting the Sneek config files from your harddrive before trying to boot again. In the Sneek folder you may see the files "diconfig.bin" and "nandcfg.bin". Delete those. Also in your nand folder (usb1:/nands/<NAME-of-YOUR-NAND>) you'll see a folder called "sneekcache". Delete any files found in that folder as well.

Your EmuNAND should now generate a fresh set of Sneek config files on your harddrive. Also, for testing purposes, try booting into Neek2o by launching The Homebrew Channel. Press the HOME button, to access the HBC's main menu, and select "Launch BootMii."

I'm not sure if this will work, but it's always a good idea to delete any config files when cloning to a different drive.
 

GreyWolf

Well-Known Member
Member
Joined
Mar 2, 2015
Messages
5,399
Trophies
0
Age
54
XP
1,515
Country
United States
Using BootMii only works if you have the armboot.bin file in sD:/bootmii/

It's unnecessary if you're using the neek2o channel or nSwitch 2.2 or greater. They have the armboot file embedded in them.
 

mojo-hand

Member
OP
Newcomer
Joined
May 11, 2016
Messages
15
Trophies
0
Age
39
XP
87
Country
United States
I tried removing the config and cache files but nswitch still doesn't get past the "reloading bootmii IOS!" screen. It just sticks at this point forever. I tried first launching bootmii from the homebrew channel but it just takes me into the bootmii menu. There were menu options for Wii (which reboots the system) and options for the homebrew channel and the sd card and a (gear icon) options menu. No options for neek?

I checked and do have an armboot.bin in the bootmii folder on my sd card.
 
Last edited by mojo-hand,

mojo-hand

Member
OP
Newcomer
Joined
May 11, 2016
Messages
15
Trophies
0
Age
39
XP
87
Country
United States
I followed this guide when setting things up: https://sites.google.com/site/completesg/backup-launchers/installation
So I have:
  • cIOS 249 base 56 v10 beta53-alt
  • cIOS 250 base 57 v10 beta52
This setup works fine with everything on my flash drive. And as stated before everything is working for my HDD except neek (emunand). Also it may or may not be worth noting that when filtering for emunand channels with USBLoaderGX they do show up so USBLoader can see them but when trying to start any from the loader it gives me a black screen or it dumps me back to the homebrew channel. This same thing occurs when using my flash drive as well, it boots into emunand using nswitch but I have never been able to get it to load anything from USBLoader.
 
Last edited by mojo-hand,

Site & Scene News

Popular threads in this forum

General chit-chat
Help Users
    LeoTCK @ LeoTCK: hmm