Hacking SaveMii can't "see" games on main system NAND

[Advrk]

Hello,

Thanks to @Scarecrow B I am learning about how to download save games and import them into the games on my Wii U. However, I've encountered a problem:

My Wii U with firmware 5.5.1 is currently set up via wiiu.guide's instructions with Haxchi that boots into Mocha CFW residing on my SD card. On my SD card I've installed SaveMii which appears OK at first glance.

I was able to back up saves for my games on the SD card with SaveMii. However, the titles of games on my Wii U's main system NAND (not the SD) show up as series of numbers and characters (rather than the actual titles) in SaveMii, and when I ask SaveMii to back up those saves it fails...

Before I import saves I downloaded from gbatemp, I'd like to back up my existing saves. So why is SaveMii having trouble seeing my games on system NAND? And how do I make this work? P.S. I've tried SaveMii 1.2.0 and SaveMii 1.2.0.mod5, none of them worked...

Thank you in advance for your help.

 

[Kafluke]

Try saviine instead. And why does wiiu.guide tell you to use HaxChi to boot to Mocha? This makes no sense. Try HaxChi firmware instead with savemii. I don't use savemii tho I use saviine since it has always worked for me

 

[Advrk]

Try saviine instead. And why does wiiu.guide tell you to use HaxChi to boot to Mocha? This makes no sense. Try HaxChi firmware instead with savemii. I don't use savemii tho I use saviine since it has always worked for me

Thanks @Kafluke for your quick response!

1. Yes I later learned that wiiu.guide's instructions to boot Haxchi *then* Mocha is strange, but it is how it's set up on my Wii U now.
2. If I try Savemii, I understand that I would then have to start my game in order to backup/restore saves. However, once I boot into Mocha (or other custom firmware) I can only see the games on my SD card. How do I use Savemii with games that are on my main system NAND?

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Thanks @Kafluke for your quick response!

1. Yes I later learned that wiiu.guide's instructions to boot Haxchi *then* Mocha is strange, but it is how it's set up on my Wii U now.
2. If I try Savemii, I understand that I would then have to start my game in order to backup/restore saves. However, once I boot into Mocha (or other custom firmware) I can only see the games on my SD card. How do I use Savemii with games that are on my main system NAND?

Huh? Wii U doesn't load games from the SD card...

 

[Advrk]

Huh? Wii U doesn't load games from the SD card...

Sorry if I wasn't clear. I meant all the homebrew apps and Mocha are on my SD card and it boots into patched NAND. In any case, once I boot into custom firmware I no longer see games that are on un-patched, stock system NAND...

 

[Kafluke]

Sorry if I wasn't clear. I meant all the homebrew apps and Mocha are on my SD card and it boots into patched NAND. In any case, once I boot into custom firmware I no longer see games that are on un-patched, stock system NAND...

This makes no sense. Regular games on your sysnand should work perfectly with or without Mocha. Are you sure you're not using redNAND?

 

[Advrk]

This makes no sense. Regular games on your sysnand should work perfectly with or without Mocha. Are you sure you're not using redNAND?

I followed wiiu.guide's instructions to the letter, and the guide didn't explicitly mention anything called redNAND. What is redNAND? I just found this page but am unsure if wiiu.guide's instructions actually implied that I would be running redNAND...

 

[Cyan]

WiiU.Guide is bad.
3DS one is good, but the WiiU guide is not, telling users wrong things, not telling users important things, making people do unnecessary things, etc.

a lot of users following Wiiu.Guide website come here to fix their console and get proper help.


The intention is nice, but it's not complete nor maintained correctly.

 

[Advrk]

a lot of users following Wiiu.Guide website come here to fix their console and get proper help.

The intention is nice, but it's not complete nor maintained correctly.

Oh well, I'm definitely one of them!!! How do I fix things??? Do I have to revert to factory defaults and restart from scratch??? How do I salvage the situation? And what's a good laternative to wiiu.guide?

 

[Cyan]

Kafluke guide is good (always updated based on user's report), and he will help you fix your problem.

 

[Advrk]

This makes no sense. Regular games on your sysnand should work perfectly with or without Mocha. Are you sure you're not using redNAND?

OK, I just checked wiiu.guide and saw this page which says that older version of the guide includes installing redNAND (which is the one I followed). So I think I do have redNAND and that explains why I only see some of my games (and not all) after booting into Mocha. What is the implication of this? How can I get SaveMii or Saviine to put a savegame into games on my unpatched system NAND?

 

[Kafluke]

First things first. Let's get your saves and then we'll help you get redNAND off.

All you need to do is get to a spot where you are able to launch the game you want to back up. If you can launch the game and play it then you can back up the save.

I'll walk you through one game and you can just do the same with other games. Pick a game you want to back up and then report back after you have figured out how to launch it

 

[Kafluke]

Step 1. Press the home button on the gamepad when you see CBHC autobooting.

2. Make a note of what the default boot is set to. We'll come back to this later

3. Change the default boot to system menu

4. Choose the option above to boot to system menu.

5. See if you can launch your game that you want to grab the save file from

 

[Cyan]

a lot of people think redirected NAND is a progress and a mandatory process, but it's only complicate to setup and unneeded.

it started on Wii, having redirected NAND access allowed installation of more games at the same time, benefiting on the SD or USB's partition size to lift the 512MB limit of the Wii.
On 3DS, the redirected NAND was used as main updated NAND copy to launch latest games, while keeping the untouched official NAND at a lower firmware version which could be exploited to launch the copy.

a lot of users started to get used to NAND redirection as being something they had to do in any console system and guides started telling users to do it on WiiU, while the WiiU don't really benefit from it :
1. latest firmware can be hacked, no need to keep an older NAND with the exploit and an updated redirected NAND copy
2. You can't update the NAND copy without affecting the real NAND, so it can't really be done even if latest firmware wasn't hackable. (it's now possible but too much work needed, not for newbies)
3. WiiU doesn't have a size limit to install games, you can use USB natively
4. NAND redirection is not sandbox proof, Things done on the copy affects the official data, Using the same USB mess with your data, etc.

there are restrictions and things the users should know when using that (beta! it wasn't developed initially for the end users but for developers to test their hacks) features, but the bad guides NEVER help the user, they only tell them to press button to setup and install, but never provide proper warning nor proper usage instruction.

 

[Kafluke]

a lot of people think redirected NAND is a progress and a mandatory process, but it's only complicate to setup and unneeded.

it started on Wii, having redirected NAND access allowed installation of more games at the same time, benefiting on the SD or USB's partition size to lift the 512MB limit of the Wii.
On 3DS, the redirected NAND was used as main updated NAND copy to launch latest games, while keeping the untouched official NAND at a lower firmware version which could be exploited to launch the copy.

a lot of users started to get used to NAND redirection as being something they had to do in any console system and guides started telling users to do it on WiiU, while the WiiU don't really benefit from it :
1. latest firmware can be hacked, no need to keep an older NAND with the exploit and an updated redirected NAND copy
2. You can't update the NAND copy without affecting the real NAND, so it can't really be done even if latest firmware wasn't hackable. (it's now possible but too much work needed, not for newbies)
3. WiiU doesn't have a size limit to install games, you can use USB natively
4. NAND redirection is not sandbox proof, Things done on the copy affects the official data, Using the same USB mess with your data, etc.

there are restrictions and things the users should know when using that (beta! it wasn't developed initially for the end users but for developers to test their hacks) features, but the bad guides NEVER help the user, they only tell them to press button to setup and install, but never provide proper warning nor proper usage instruction.

Very well put. I'm so tired of typing that out over and over. I don't know why people ever used wiiu.guide

 

[Advrk]

a lot of people think redirected NAND is a progress and a mandatory process, but it's only complicate to setup and unneeded.

it started on Wii, having redirected NAND access allowed installation of more games at the same time, benefiting on the SD or USB's partition size to lift the 512MB limit of the Wii.
On 3DS, the redirected NAND was used as main updated NAND copy to launch latest games, while keeping the untouched official NAND at a lower firmware version which could be exploited to launch the copy.

a lot of users started to get used to NAND redirection as being something they had to do in any console system and guides started telling users to do it on WiiU, while the WiiU don't really benefit from it :
1. latest firmware can be hacked, no need to keep an older NAND with the exploit and an updated redirected NAND copy
2. You can't update the NAND copy without affecting the real NAND, so it can't really be done even if latest firmware wasn't hackable. (it's now possible but too much work needed, not for newbies)
3. WiiU doesn't have a size limit to install games, you can use USB natively
4. NAND redirection is not sandbox proof, Things done on the copy affects the official data, Using the same USB mess with your data, etc.

there are restrictions and things the users should know when using that (beta! it wasn't developed initially for the end users but for developers to test their hacks) features, but the bad guides NEVER help the user, they only tell them to press button to setup and install, but never provide proper warning nor proper usage instruction.

Very well put. I'm so tired of typing that out over and over. I don't know why people ever used wiiu.guide

Thank you both for your help and responses!

I don't know why people ever used wiiu.guide

The only reason why I used wiiu.guide was because I was completely new to Wii U hacking, I didn't even know what any of the terms or acronyms are (e.g. NAND, CFW, etc.). wiiu.guide was the first tutorial I found that looked complete so I went with it... (an no, I didn't know about gbatemp.net until much, much later).

@Kafluke:

Step 1. Press the home button on the gamepad when you see CBHC autobooting.

By CBHC you mean cold-boot, right? If so, AFAIK I don't have CBHB. Let me try to explain my current setup as best as I can:

1. When I power on my Wii U, it boots directly into the stock/vanilla home screen with no hacks/custom firmware loaded. On this homescreen are four games, the usual system apps, and the Haxchi app icon. I'm calling this homescreen the "step 1. homescreen".
   
2. When I tap the Haxchi icon, the Wii U appears to reboot.
3. I see the splash screen for Mocha CFW. (yes I know this is "not right" for Haxchi, but it goes into Mocha because of what wiiu.guide told me to do)
4. The Wii U gets to a homescreen with a different set of games, plus the Homebrew Launcher app icon. I'm calling this the "step 4. homescreen".

From these steps 1.-4., looks like my Wii U isn't set to cold-boot directly into custom firmware because I have to manually tap the Haxchi app icon after step 1.. Is this correct? BTW, when I am at the step 1. homescreen, I tried lauching SaveMii from the loadiine.ovh Homebrew Launcher but it failed saying that something along the lines of isohaux (spelling might be wrong) not loaded.

To be clear, I can start games from "step 1. homescreen" and "step 4. homescreen", but like I said they are a different set of games. This is what made me suspect that "step 4. homescreen" is actually redNAND residing on my SD card? And when I launch SaveMii from the Homebrew Launcher in "step 4. homescreen", it only shows the titles of games from "step 4. homescreen". I can see what are probably entires for "step. 1 homescreen" games, but they appear as a series of numbers for their names and SaveMii fails to back them up...

So, going back to your:

Step 1. Press the home button on the gamepad when you see CBHC autobooting.

Should I try to press and hold the home button at the step 2. I listed here?

BTW, I also have vWii save games backed up with SaveMii to my SD card, not sure if that matters?

Sorry about the confusion. I'm pretty confused, too!

 

[Kafluke]

Okay that clears things up. Here's what is happening

You are correct that when you boot you are looking at vanilla system menu with no hacks. You have HaxChi setup to boot to redNAND. redNAND is a copy of your system nand except it runs on your SD card. So when you install a game to "nand" while in redNAND it actually is installing to a emulated nand running on your SD card. No problem. We can fix all this. Before we do however, lets get all your saves off of redNAND. Follow these steps.

1. Download saviine on your PC. Here
2. Create a folder called "saviine" on the root of your C: drive. Put everything from "server" folder inside the download in there. So it should look like this:
c:\saviine\dump.bat
c:\saviine\inject.bat
c:\saviine\saviine_server.exe
3. Copy the "wiiu" folder from inside the download to the root of your SD card. This will add Saviine to the HBL menu
4. Click the windows start button in the bottom left of your screen and type "cmd" and then press enter. This will open a command prompt
5. type "ipconfig" and hit enter. This will display all the network info for your PC. If you are using wifi then look in the wireless adapter section and write down the IPv4 address. It should be something like 192.168.something.something
6. Go back to the saviine folder on C drive and double click "dump.bat". You may get a prompt to allow it through your firewall. Say yes or allow
7. Put your SD card back into your Wii U and boot up your Wii U
8. Tap the HaxChi icon so you're in redNAND.
9. Tap the HBL channel.
10. Find and launch Saviine
11. change the IP address to match what you wrote down in step 5 above. Press the correct button to load the client and return to system menu (not the option to immediately launch the game)
12. Once you are back at the system menu (redNAND system menu) find your game and launch it.
13. You should get a prompt on your computer to choose what to save. I usually just click all the boxes to get all the data
14. The computer should now start to backup your save.

When you are done dumping the save the game will finally start up. You can now repeat the steps above for all your games. After you're done report back and I'll help you correctly setup your Wii U CFW using HaxChi CFW instead of redNAND.

 

[Advrk]

When you are done dumping the save the game will finally start up. You can now repeat the steps above for all your games. After you're done report back and I'll help you correctly setup your Wii U CFW using HaxChi CFW instead of redNAND.

Thank you so much for your very detailed instructions. I have backed up my redNAND-based games and their save files are now in C:\saviine\saviine_root\dump\

BTW, I took a screenshot of my SD card's contents:

I suspect there are some vWii-related folders/files, e.g.: apps, usb-loader, wbfs, wiiflow, *.log, wii.dat
Does this matter? (oh and I know there's a "cbhc" folder, but I never used it so no cold-boot)

What's the next step? Thanks!

 

[Kafluke]

Thank you so much for your very detailed instructions. I have backed up my redNAND-based games and their save files are now in C:\saviine\saviine_root\dump\

BTW, I took a screenshot of my SD card's contents:

I suspect there are some vWii-related folders/files, e.g.: apps, usb-loader, wbfs, wiiflow, *.log, wii.dat
Does this matter? (oh and I know there's a "cbhc" folder, but I never used it so no cold-boot)

What's the next step? Thanks!

Ok, now make a folder on your pc called "sd card" and copy everything off your SD card into that folder. We need to reformat it.

Also just delete the CBHC folder. It's in the wrong place anyway

 

[Kafluke]

If you want my help you better be super responsive lol. New Mario game is out. Season 2 of stranger things is out. Plus Gold Rush (my favorite reality show) is on tonight. I might just go into hybernation this weekend