Need Help Solving Rock Band 3 DLC Freeze on Startup

Hey all,

I'm running into trouble when trying to set up my Rock Band 3 DLC via emuNAND (to avoid dealing with SD card size limits) on my vWii. Here's what happens...

Whenever I load Rock Band 3, there is some delay just prior to the "enable SD card" prompt at game startup. It appears frozen, but it eventually loads and I can select a player and access the main menu. Video on the main menu immediately starts to stutter, but after a minute or so, a "Loading New Downloaded Content" bar appears in the upper left corner. Progress starts, then quickly stops as the system freezes/hangs completely.​

My emuNAND is stored on a WD HDD plugged into 2 USB ports (1 front, 1 back) on the Wii U via Y adapter. It was recently checked for disk errors and re-partitioned, just in case, with FAT32 (active, primary) as the first partition and NTFS (active) as a second partition.

I am running d2x v52 beta cIOS on the vWii and loading the game via CFG USB Loader Mod v70 r65, using partial NAND emulation. I've also tried WiiFlow 4.2.1 and the results were the same as CFG.

I've created a fresh emuNAND and copied over relevant files, such as DLC tickets and save games. I've also used a extracted copy of my vWii's actual NAND. I've tried running both types in partial and full NAND emulation and both exhibit the same problem.

I have no issues when loading the game from the actual NAND (with no DLC) and I've had some luck when loading only a few DLC songs from emuNAND (less than 10), but not the 100 or so I wish to load. I've also successfully loaded my Guitar Hero DLC and Beatles Rock Band DLC via emuNAND and both work perfectly via the same setup. It's only Rock Band 3 that's had me stumped for days now.

Please help me if you can. I'm quickly running out of ideas.

 

Thanks for the help, duffmmann! I'm only loading about 100-200 songs, so later today I'll try what you suggest to see if I can get it to work, then report back here with my success/failure.

FWIW - I actually am working with vWii, so I don't think I can use loaders like Uniiloader to register DLC (maybe I'm wrong?). Does anyone know if there are different steps to getting RB3 DLC to work via emuNAND on vWii vs standard Wii?

 

Well, good and bad on my end. I was able to successfully get past that "Loading New Downloaded Content" screen by running the game via Uniiloader on a standard Wii and now that all the DLC content has been loaded, it plays properly on CFG USB Loader on both the standard Wii and the Wii U's Wii Mode (vWii). However, I still have a couple questions about this setup:

1. The "Loading List of Add-on Content" screen that appears prior to the SD card prompt takes forever to load, as does the main menu screen where the "Loading New Download Content" progress bar used to appear. By forever, I mean it takes about 4-5 minutes to load a few hundred songs of DLC content on each and every startup. Is this normal? More importantly, is there any way to speed this up?

A bit OT: Would copying all the content to a 16GB SDHC card improve things speed-wise?

2. Now anytime I decide to remove/reinstall songs on RB3, I'll have to keep a standard Wii around to do it (loading the DLC content to the emuNAND via Uniiloader) before I can use it on the vWii (even though it supposedly supports full emuNAND). That's an extra step I'd like to remove from the process, if possible. Is there any way to get RB3 DLC to load properly via emuNAND using just a vWii setup?

I'd appreciate anyone's answers/opinions on these questions. Thanks!

 

Without emuNAND, load times are fantastic, but then there's no DLC to load...

So for kicks I decided to test the load times on a standard Wii using emuNANDto see if I was exaggerating. Turns out I wasn't. It took 2:24 to load the SD card portion and 2:26 to load the main menu portion, for 4 min., 50 sec. total load time with ~550 DLC songs already installed (no loading bar shows on the menu). I've tried the same load on vWii, a couple different USB loaders, and a NAND emulator, all with similar results. And yet there's no delays at all when running Guitar Hero 6 DLC from emuNAND. I may just have to invest in a 16-32GB SDHC card and take the couple days to convert from emuNAND .APP files to SD .BIN files to improve my load times.

I do find it odd that nobody using emuNAND is really complaining that much about load times (especially of 5 minutes), so perhaps I'm just not as patient as others, or maybe I've done something wrong? It'd be great to have this up and running from emuNAND without such a long wait.

 

That's a bummer, but good to know, so thanks! Unfortunately, my wife and I tried to play RB3 and GH6 tonight on the Wii U (via partial emuNAND) and watched it freeze up after playing just a song or two on both titles. EmuNAND would be great for us, as it'd allow us to switch between using the vWii and standard Wii in different rooms while maintaining our songs and progress, but I haven't had much success using it so far.

I'm going to try out an AC-powered external HDD in place of the USB-powered HDD and see if load speeds/freezing improves, maybe give USB Loader GX a shot as well, but I really wouldn't be surprised if it's just the vWii having issues. I've considered switching to a DLC SD card setup, but it'd mean sacrificing some of my content due to disk space as well as the convenience of emuNAND that I already mentioned.

Is anyone using a partial emuNAND setup successfully (for RB3/GH DLC) on a vWii? I'd be interested in hearing about your setup.

Update #1: I noticed no difference when using AC-powered vs. USB-powered external HDDs, nor was there improved compatibility with other USB loaders. I also discovered that NAND emulation on a standard Wii really hates it if you try to use a vWii-based emuNAND -- shocker. FWIW, loading speeds dramatically improved when running full NAND emulation vs. partial (took less than half the previous time) and did help prevent some crashes. Unfortunately, both GH6 & RB3 still crashed quite frequently on the Wii U system (using Party Shuffle mode, browsing song titles, managing DLC, after finishing songs, etc.).

Update #2: Although it won't be as convenient, I've decided that vWii doesn't play nicely with emuNAND, so I've purchased an SDHC card and will just run the game from the vWii's real NAND to (hopefully) prevent crashes when playing. However, I'd still be interested to hear from anyone who did get an emuNAND setup working succcessfully for RB3/GH DLC on their vWii.