Help debugging vWii - USB not working probably, some legit injects not working

Narrgel · Feb 3, 2026

Short background: Premium Wiiu, originally Japanese, failing NAND.
Set up with ISFSHax, region changed, WiiU working without a problem, for WiiU games. vWii reion changed wih decaffeinator.

Installing games to USB and running games form USB works fine except for some Wii-games. these are WiiU games from the WiiU eshop, not homemade injects. Some of them, Like Pikmin 1&2, fails in the same way: Wiimote disconnects. Gamepad shows The Wii logo before going to a black screen, TV only goes to black screen. In vWii mode, no usb loaders can find any games on USB drive. WiiXplorer sees the files on the FAT32 usb (o r usb parition) but *only* if I reload after opening.

I have tried both with a separate drive with only a FAT32 partition and wbfs files on it that works on my Wii, a thumbdrive, and the drive that runs in my WiiU, iwth a separate FAT32 partition for Wii and the 5usbpart.ipx plugin, all with the same result. Or rather, with some usb drives, I get the same result when booting into Wii mode with the drive attached, as when launcing Pikmin, black screen and total freeze.

I've not had a WiiU long, and I''m not too knowledgeable about the vWii part of it. does it have saparate physical Wii-parts that could be going bad? Is there something I should try software-wise? Could it be connected to rednand, does it have known compaitibility issues with vWii? I don't think I've seen such issues mentioned.

I'm thinking about soldering in an SD card as an MLC replacement, but would like to sort this issue out before I go to that trouble.

Edit:I have tried with two different external disks (with y cable) as well as a usb pen without being able to launch anything with an usb loader in vWii mode. I have also tried to install one of the problematic games to NAND instead of USB with no luck.

neverendsDull · Feb 4, 2026

To make USB loader recognize your roms on USB drive:
1. You need a dedicate FAT32 USB partition (there is isfshax plugin allowing you have both wii and wiiu games on one drive with 2 partitions but it's another advanced story)
2. Copy roms onto it using Wii backup manager on PC, as the USB loader only recognize them in special named game ID folders.
3. Plug the USB drive to the upper rear USB port (console horizontally placed), as by default the Loader only reads from this one.

Narrgel · Feb 6, 2026

1: Both of these tried, as mentioned
2: This is fine, also, it works on the Wii
3: Tried both, doesn't seem to make a differene

It's mostly the total black screen crash with entering Wii mode with some drives, and the fact that Pikmin 1 and 2 crashes on black screen when entering Wii mode, even though they are official WiiU Wii games (what's the correct name for these from the shop channel bt?) and not homemade injects, that has me worried there's something actually wrong with the vWii part of the console.

neverendsDull · Feb 7, 2026

then try the rom version of these games with usb loader.

Narrgel · Feb 7, 2026

That does not help debugging the vWii. What I'm wondering is:
1: Is there a possibility of a hardware error on the wii-related parts of the console? If so, how to debug?
2: Are there possible/reasonable software issues for the behaviour that could be fixed?

Narrgel · Feb 23, 2026

Sometimes it's the dumb stuff. Replacing the USB Y-cable to the external drive, that worked perfectly on the WiiU side of things with the old Y cable, suddenly made it work in vWii as well. It was seemingly faulty enough to not quite make the vWii side able to read it properly, to the point WiiXplorer would see it only after a refresh, and no USB loader would.

I have still been unable to make Pikmin or Pikmin 2 from the Wii U eshop run on three different region converted JAP->EUR consoles. However, the EIR version fails to load on consoles also prior to region changing, even with Aroma making things region free. Almost as if there's something wrong with the EUR version in the eShop? IDK. But at least getting other stuff up and running perfectly on the vWii side, makes me confident enough this is not due to a regionc change mishap or (for one of the consoles) the redNAND setup.

N7Kopper · Feb 24, 2026

Wait, you're trying to run games from Wii U format memory? That means you're worried about Wii VC, not vWii. Wii VC involves more emulation than vWii, and only uses a single IOS. It was only designed to work with the officially released set of Wii VC games, rather than the whole library.

Narrgel · Feb 25, 2026

N7Kopper said:
Wait, you're trying to run games from Wii U format memory? That means you're worried about Wii VC, not vWii. Wii VC involves more emulation than vWii, and only uses a single IOS. It was only designed to work with the officially released set of Wii VC games, rather than the whole library.

I had problems with both Wii VC and vWii. Both Pikmin and Pikmin 2 Wii VC would black screen crash after the Wii-logo. And as the vWii was not detecting the usb drive in any usb loader, I was unable to test if those games (or any other game) worked there. I was worried that this could be a sign of a vWii-related hardware issue on the console and also for Wii VC an issue with the consoles originally being JAP consoles region changed to EUR.

As i have not found any other Wii VC title that fails to run (not tried THAT many, though), both Pikmin and Pikmin 2 works fine in usb loader in vWii mode, and the console(s) also run Wii disc games fine, I think I can rule out Wii hardware related issues. While I can't rule out software issues from region changing yet, this almost seem to be a specific issue with the Pikmin and Pikmin 2 EUR version from the eShop. The japanese versions runs (with Aroma for region free functionality). If the US version does run too, I'm guessing it's not an isse with the consoles being region changed from JAP to EUR either. I am going to test that.

I am not sure what would cause some Wii VC eshop titles not running, though. If it was a custom made inject I'd get it, but the officially released ones I was kind of expecting to just work.

snsclziklost · Mar 20, 2026

I know it's almost been a month, but I think the issue is just anything that switches to wii mode, relies on your IOS interacting with your USB, and if they don't like it (I think it's a timing issue, like its just not quite able to respond to the data requests in time with certain drives) it does exactly what you described. I suspect, if you did what I did, which is to move those wii (or gc, or whatever) titles to the internal memory, they immediately start working.

Help debugging vWii - USB not working probably, some legit injects not working

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