I have a softmodded Wii without SD card. What should I do now??

Ocir · Jan 25, 2023

I have a Wii that was soft modded by the previous owner.
I bought it from him years ago, but never used it. Homebrew Channel and USB Loader GX are already installed on the Wii. Now I want to use it for my kids (and for myself of course

) but Homebrew Channel and USB Loader GX didn't work. Homebrew Channel remained on the screen where the bubbles passed, and when USB Loader GX started up, it jumped back to the Wii's home screen. Turns out, there was no SD card in the Wii. Now I read everywhere that an SD card is required for the USB loader to work.
Is there a way to mount an SD card with the correct files so that the Wii sees the USB hard drive with the games? And can this be done without any problems at all?

r1vver · Jan 26, 2023

If there is no SD card, what does the USB Loader GX live on? Is it on USB flash drive?

Ocir said:
Homebrew Channel remained on the screen where the bubbles passed

Try to Press button (1). There will be a selection.

And start looking for an SD card. You might need it for a lot of different things. It doesn't have to be big. Even 1GB will be enough.
Next sysCheck, NAND backup (kids) and other brick-safety measures (if the previous owner did not make them), cIOSes updates (there are fairly recent versions), USB Loader GX update (there are fairly recent versions).

So SD card first and then sysCheck.
Applications are usually placed in the 'apps' folder. Kinda like 'E:\apps\SysCheckHDE\boot.dol'
SD card should be FAT (not exFAT, NTFS or anything more exotic). Format the SD card with the SD Memory Card Formatter.

there is also a very good thing ModMii
You can simply drag and drop your syscheck.csv (generated by sysCheck) onto the ModMii icon, and it will tell you what's missing and download it (and put it in the right folders).

and a good troubleshooting guide for USB Loader GX.

PewnyPL · Jan 26, 2023

r1vver said:
If there is no SD card, what does the USB Loader GX live on? Is it on USB flash drive?

It was on an SD card. The home menu banner is just a forwarder that launches it. So, without SD card with it, it has nothing to launch and just returns to home menu.

r1vver · Jan 26, 2023

PewnyPL said:
It was on an SD card. The home menu banner is just a forwarder that launches it. So, without SD card with it, it has nothing to launch and just returns to home menu.

Yes, this is most likely the case.
(I asked because in the past I once had a USB Loader GX binary (and game covers, etc.) on a USB-HDD for a while. Configs were probably on SD (or may be also on USB-HDD), I don't remember anymore.
Tho I had forgotten about the forwarder, I do not use it.)

jeannotte · Jan 26, 2023

Ocir said:
I have a Wii that was soft modded by the previous owner.
I bought it from him years ago, but never used it. Homebrew Channel and USB Loader GX are already installed on the Wii. Now I want to use it for my kids (and for myself of course ) but Homebrew Channel and USB Loader GX didn't work. Homebrew Channel remained on the screen where the bubbles passed, and when USB Loader GX started up, it jumped back to the Wii's home screen. Turns out, there was no SD card in the Wii. Now I read everywhere that an SD card is required for the USB loader to work.
Is there a way to mount an SD card with the correct files so that the Wii sees the USB hard drive with the games? And can this be done without any problems at all?

hello,

you can do without an SD card and put everything on USB (FAT32 recommend), games, applications, homebrew ......, then go to HBC and press 1 and choose USB or SD.

But to use Syscheck, you absolutely need an SD card, as recommended by some members on previous posts.

recommend ==> post a syscheck report, this will guide us further to tell you what to do next and that your wii is working properly.

Sincerely Jeannotte.

CoolMe · Jan 26, 2023

Ocir said:
Is there a way to mount an SD card with the correct files

You need to get usbloadergx and HBC files (Hackmii installer), and put them in sd:/apps folder. Once you're in the Wii's home menu, launch the forwarder HBC or usbloadergx, and run Hackmii to install the hbc.

After that I'd suggest doing a syscheck as others have mentioned, to make sure your softmods are up to date, post it here so we take a look at it.

Ocir said:
so that the Wii sees the USB hard drive with the games? And can this be done without any problems at all?

Hmm.. Have you transferred Wii games with WiiBackupmanager? If not, how did you copy your games to the usb hdd?

Ocir · Jan 26, 2023

Thanks everyone for the quick responses. First of all, I received a USB hard disk from a colleague that contains a lot of games that he uses for his own Wii. The harddisk is properly formatted (he also uses it on his own Wii after all) and I checked with WBFS Manager.

So I'm going to get started like this;
I format an sd card to FAT32 and I make a folder "apps" here.
In this folder I put the following programs:
- usloadergx
- Hackmii installer
- syscheck

Then I can insert the SD card into the Wii and run through the programs in the same order as stated above.
Finally I get a report. I will take a screenshot of this and share it here.
Are those the steps I need to go through?

CoolMe · Jan 26, 2023

Ocir said:
Finally I get a report. I will take a screenshot of this and share it here.
Are those the steps I need to go through?

Run usbloadergx, click on "sd apps" icon (close to the bottom right) and run "HackMii installer" to install the HBC. After doing that, exit to the hbc and run syscheck. Post the generated syscheck file here after doing that.

jeannotte · Jan 26, 2023

Ocir said:
) and I checked with WBFS Manager

hello,

is that you are using "wbfs manager" and not ""wii backup manager" ??

is that your hard drive is in WBFS format (format that has become obsolete) prefer FAT32 <<<===== Recommend .

you can convert WBFS external hard drive to FAT32 without losing data on it ==>https://gbatemp.net/threads/wbfs2fat-py.291320/

and then use ==> wii backup manager

Ocir · Jan 27, 2023

I will copy his games to my computer and then set up my own hard drive with wii backup manager.
But as far as FAT32 is concerned, this can only be assigned a maximum disk size of 4GB, right?

r1vver · Jan 27, 2023

Ocir said:
But as far as FAT32 is concerned, this can only be assigned a maximum disk size of 4GB, right?

FAT32 maximum file size - 4GB
FAT32 max partition size - 2TB (this is without some crafty tricks)

Edit:
There is also a utility to convert the WBFS file system to FAT32 without losing content. Called wbfs2fat.
But it's (probably) will be better to backup content with help of Wii Backup Manager.

CoolMe · Jan 27, 2023

Ocir said:
I will copy his games to my computer and then set up my own hard drive with wii backup manager.

Note that you will not see a wbfs formatted drive (if yours is formatted that way), so you'd need to use WiiBackupmanager to copy games to your pc.

Ocir said:
But as far as FAT32 is concerned, this can only be assigned a maximum disk size of 4GB, right?

Fat32 has a max file size of ~4gb, but don't worry WiiBackupmanager will split games that exceed that limit.
Also with a fat32 formatted drive you'll be able to play GC games, as opposed to with a wbfs formatted one (not possible).
As for max hard drive size, depends, if it's 1tb it'll work without any tinkering, 2tb to 4tb you'd need to do some things for it to work..

Ocir · Jan 27, 2023

Correct, when I connect the hard drive to the PC, I get a message: 'You need to format the disk in drive E: before you can use it'.
But with WBFS Manager I can read the disk. This allows me to transfer the games to my computer and create a fresh hard disk of my own.
I don't want to change his hard drive to FAT32 since he still uses it himself. And for him this was still workable. I only have it to copy the games.

CoolMe · Jan 27, 2023

Ocir said:
Correct, when I connect the hard drive to the PC, I get a message: 'You need to format the disk in drive E: before you can use it'.

Yes, i hope you didn't format it otherwise everything will be wiped..

Ocir said:
But with WBFS Manager I can read the disk. This allows me to transfer the games to my computer and create a fresh hard disk of my own.

Use WiiBackupmanager not wbfs manager.

Ocir said:
I don't want to change his hard drive to FAT32 since he still uses it himself. And for him this was still workable. I only have it to copy the games.

Suit yourself. But for your hdd, it has to be formatted as fat32 if you want to play GC games..

jeannotte · Jan 27, 2023

Ocir said:
I don't want to change his hard drive to FAT32 since he still uses it himself. And for him this was still workable. I only have it to copy the games.

read my previous message

I myself have converted external hard drives in WBFS format to FAT32 and everything is fine.

CoolMe · Jan 27, 2023

jeannotte said:
read my previous message

I myself have converted external hard drives in WBFS format to FAT32 and everything is fine.

Indeed. But what he's saying is basically the hdd is not his, so he doesn't want to mess with it or format it to fat32, since it works fine for it's owner. He just wants to copy games off of it to his own hdd. Hope that makes sense.

jeannotte · Jan 27, 2023

CoolMe said:
Indeed. But what he's saying is basically the hdd is not his, so he doesn't want to mess with it or format it to fat32, since it works fine for it's owner. He just wants to copy games off of it to his own hdd. Hope that makes sense.

he does what he pleases (he can very well leave it in WBFS format, but we are here to make his life easier).

I understand well

these are just suggestions.

Ocir · Jan 27, 2023

Thanks so much for all the help guys.
I will use WiiBackupmanager for my own HDD.
I understand that it can also be beneficial for my colleague if he converts his HDD as indicated by you, but I prefer to leave that to him. I don't want to decide that for him.

When I open the Hackmii installer link, I don't see a download, but an image of a cat. Any idea where I can safely download this installer?

EDIT: Found it

Post automatically merged: Jan 27, 2023

Okay, I formatted my SD card as FAT32. And I have the following folders in my apps location of my SD card. But still the USBLoaderGX won't do anything.
When I click on the SD card in the home menu of the Wii, I get a message that the SD card cannot be read.
Did I format the SD card incorrectly?

CoolMe · Jan 27, 2023

Ocir said:
Okay, I formatted my SD card as FAT32.

You formatted it with 32kb cluster size right?

Ocir said:
But still the USBLoaderGX won't do anything.
When I click on the SD card in the home menu of the Wii, I get a message that the SD card cannot be read.

Make sure the lock slider is set to "unlocked", or use a different sd card adapter if you have one.
But unfortunately it sounds like you need to re-softmod the system. Use either ModMii or follow the guide here.
If you have any further questions just ask.

Ocir · Jan 27, 2023

OK, I'm on. I formatted the sd card with another tool and now the wii takes it.
I have gone through the steps as stated above.
The results of the syscheck are shown below. No idea how else to share it, so I took screenshots of it.