Hacking Installing WADs on SD Card in vWii

[Waifu4Life]

Hi there,

I got my first Wii on lunch back in 2006 and bought a dozen N64 Virtual Console games on it over the years. I eventually got a Red Wii Super Mario Bros edition for Christmas 2010 and wouldn't you know it, Nintendo didn't want to transfer my purchases and copy-protected saves, even if I offered to pay them.

So I did what any sane person with time to spare would do, I learned how to and hacked both my old Wii and new Wii. So I was able to transfer my copy-protected data and install WADs on my SD Card so that I could load my N64 games from there.

Obviously, with the transfer I did with my Wii U last night, none of these VC games followed, so I went headed to installed WADs again. Only this time, 4 games refuse to work if I move them to the SD Card nor can they be copied back to the local storage.

TLDR: Nintendo are retards when it comes to digital distribution and I have issues when trying to run VC games installed from WAD after transferring them to the SD card, I get a "Failed to launch" error (it's unable to copy the data locally).

 

[SonicMC]

Not sure if you want help or just want to be heard. Anyways you are heard and I agree nintendo's digital distribution methods are kind of lame.

If you want options, these are my thoughts; some you may have already tried... and some of which you rather not do... up to you on what to try!

I would try a different wad or a different wad manager, making sure that the wad manager is indeed vwii compatible...
You could also try a virtual nand or a emunand https://gbatemp.net/threads/vwii-emunand-uses.390491/

Since you are now on a wii u, you now have more options like loadiine or wii u vc brazilian with cfw haxchi/mocha and etc; this requires some new learning and readup though.

These will let you run a wii u version of the VC Game or you could even try a VC injection if that wii VC was never re-released.

There is also homebrew that can run emulators on both wiiu or vwii to run a game that ins't working via wad install method.

NOTE: sd cards can go bad, maybe run an sd card tester program on it to make sure it's not part of the problem.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Hi there,

I got my first Wii on lunch back in 2006 and bought a dozen N64 Virtual Console games on it over the years. I eventually got a Red Wii Super Mario Bros edition for Christmas 2010 and wouldn't you know it, Nintendo didn't want to transfer my purchases and copy-protected saves, even if I offered to pay them.

So I did what any sane person with time to spare would do, I learned how to and hacked both my old Wii and new Wii. So I was able to transfer my copy-protected data and install WADs on my SD Card so that I could load my N64 games from there.

Obviously, with the transfer I did with my Wii U last night, none of these VC games followed, so I went headed to installed WADs again. Only this time, 4 games refuse to work if I move them to the SD Card nor can they be copied back to the local storage.

TLDR: Nintendo are retards when it comes to digital distribution and I have issues when trying to run VC games installed from WAD after transferring them to the SD card, I get a "Failed to launch" error (it's unable to copy the data locally).

You need to trucha patch the system menu IOS to be able to launch installed WADs from the SD card menu. This comes with a slight risk to it as a bad/corrupted system menu IOS will effectively brick vWii (although it is recoverable now by using wupserver or ftpiiu everywhere)

 

[Waifu4Life]

Not sure if you want help or just want to be heard. Anyways you are heard and I agree nintendo's digital distribution methods are kind of lame.

If you want options, these are my thoughts; some you may have already tried... and some of which you rather not do... up to you on what to try!

I would try a different wad or a different wad manager, making sure that the wad manager is indeed vwii compatible...
You could also try a virtual nand or a emunand https://gbatemp.net/threads/vwii-emunand-uses.390491/

Since you are now on a wii u, you now have more options like loadiine or wii u vc brazilian with cfw haxchi/mocha and etc; this requires some new learning and readup though.

These will let you run a wii u version of the VC Game or you could even try a VC injection if that wii VC was never re-released.

There is also homebrew that can run emulators on both wiiu or vwii to run a game that ins't working via wad install method.

NOTE: sd cards can go bad, maybe run an sd card tester program on it to make sure it's not part of the problem.

The WADs themselves being defective is probably more likely since my SD Card for this system is brand new and that only 4/12 WADs have the issue. Although why they work locally and not on the SD card, that's another thing.

As for the other methods, I want to avoid Wii U VC because of how dark it looks compared to Wii VC. I thought about Emunand, but I can't find enough information about the compatibility of N64 games. If you have a link for this, I think it would be the best bet.

For injections, well most of them don't work or work well for N64 games. Hell, all of the one I would want are listed as not working, freezing or buggy.

For emulators, well let me put it this way, I'd rather deal the end results of my RGB modded N64 on my Framemeister than to deal with the shitty interface and input lag of RetroArch. The only positive that I can give VC games is that they give you near authentic experience (as long as your HDTV doesn't add any input lag itself).

You need to trucha patch the system menu IOS to be able to launch installed WADs from the SD card menu. This comes with a slight risk to it as a bad/corrupted system menu IOS will effectively brick vWii (although it is recoverable now by using wupserver or ftpiiu everywhere)

If a trucha patch is required, then why do 8/12 games work properly on my SD card?

 

[SonicMC]

Well N64 on any kind of emunand is kind of lousy. Here is the old link for usbloadergx emunand https://wiki.gbatemp.net/wiki/Wii_cIOS_EmuNAND_Compatibility_List#Nintendo_64_Virtual_Console , but I've tried loading a few on my vwii via usbloadergx emunand and they didn't load for me... was going to try sneek or neek or whatever they are; but didn't find much information on installing them on vwii when I last looked and doubt there any new developments. Sorry to not be very optimistic; nevertheless Best of luck!

 

[Waifu4Life]

Well N64 on any kind of emunand is kind of lousy. Here is the old link for usbloadergx emunand https://wiki.gbatemp.net/wiki/Wii_cIOS_EmuNAND_Compatibility_List#Nintendo_64_Virtual_Console , but I've tried loading a few on my vwii via usbloadergx emunand and they didn't load for me... was going to try sneek or neek or whatever they are; but didn't find much information on installing them on vwii when I last looked and doubt there any new developments. Sorry to not be very optimistic; nevertheless Best of luck!

It's not as bad as the injection compatibility list, but there's still a lot of red in that one. I guess I'll stick with the solution I found. The issue with the launching error is that it's unable to create a temp copy of the VC game channel back to the vWii's internal storage, I get an error while trying to copy or move it back myself in the settings. That being said, if I install the 4 WADs in the local storage and simply copy them to the SD Card, then I can load them form the SD Card (pretty sure they just act as shortcuts for the channels in the internal storage). Sure it's kind of pointless, but if I hide those 4 game in the last page of the vMii menu and see them on the SD card, it's sort of feels better (got a bit of an OCD issue).

 

[SonicMC]

Looked into what The Real Jdbye said. looks like a few others have reported the same thing. Here are those interesting threads. Why it only matters on some games seems weird to me.

https://gbatemp.net/threads/how-to-run-vc-wiiware-wads-off-an-sd-card-in-vwii-mode.340143/

https://gbatemp.net/threads/patched-ios80-installer-for-vwii-allows-sd-menu-custom-channels.344882/

 

[Waifu4Life]

Looked into what The Real Jdbye said. looks like a few others have reported the same thing. Here are those interesting threads. Why it only matters on some games seems weird to me.

https://gbatemp.net/threads/how-to-run-vc-wiiware-wads-off-an-sd-card-in-vwii-mode.340143/

https://gbatemp.net/threads/patched-ios80-installer-for-vwii-allows-sd-menu-custom-channels.344882/

Been reading about neek running on vWii, way to complicated for an amateur like me. What I find strange, as an IT who works with virtual machines on a daily basis, is that if the Wii Mode is simply being emulated, then it should mean, by simple logic, that it's 512MB flash memory (NAND) is being create from the Wii U's full storage (8GB White model, 32GB Black model), no? If yes, then why is it not possible to increase the capacity of the vWii's virtual NAND?