Seems like USB Loader GX has corrupted the partition on my USB.

[Northrup]

The other day I was in a hurry and turned off my Wii in the middle of a game by long pressing the power button on the Wii Remote (normally I turn it off by going into the SysMenu first and not directly from a game). After turning it back on later, USB Loader GX could no longer find my USB stick (yes, I know... USB sticks aren't fully supported). I tried several times to unplug the stick and plug it back in and restart the Wii and USB Loader GX, but to no avail.

Then I plugged the stick in my PC, where Windows reported it as RAW and asked to format it. I then reluctantly formatted it and copied all the files on it again (luckily I had a backup).

Then I plugged it back into the Wii and ran USB Loader GX, which again failed to find it. So stick back into the PC and lo and behold, the partition was corrupted again. Consequently I formatted the stick again and copied the files to it. This time I didn't put the stick into the Wii right away, but started it without first. Then I started USB Loader GX once (still without the stick plugged in) and turned it off appropriately. Then I turned off the Wii, put the stick in, and turned it back on. Now USB Loader GX didn't corrupt the formatting of the stick, instead it froze on "Reinitializing devices".

Since then I've been using Configurable USB Loader Mod to launch games from the stick, which worked flawlessly so far, but it just doesn't compare.

I tried to continue using USB Loader GX for games on emuNand, but then I always have to pull out the stick or it won't start. I tried setting "Mount USB at boot" to "Off" so I can start USB Loader GX with the USB stick plugged in, but then as soon as I start a game I just get a black screen and nothing else.


And something else: Earlier I wanted to backup my game saves, but SaveGame Manager GX Beta froze at "Loading cIOS249". If I unplug the stick SaveGame Manager GX Beta starts without problems, with the stick plugged in it always freezes at "Loading cIOS249".



Could it be that my cIOS249 has been corrupted as well? How can I find out?
Can I just reinstall it without issues?
Would my USB stick work with USB Loader GX again after that?
USB Loader GX does not seem to store any data about the stick in its folder or configuration files, but somewhere something must have been changed that the stick is no longer recognized. Maybe in cIOS249, is that possible?

 

[blackb0x]

The other day I was in a hurry and turned off my Wii in the middle of a game by long pressing the power button on the Wii Remote (normally I turn it off by going into the SysMenu first and not directly from a game). After turning it back on later, USB Loader GX could no longer find my USB stick (yes, I know... USB sticks aren't fully supported). I tried several times to unplug the stick and plug it back in and restart the Wii and USB Loader GX, but to no avail.

The loader hands things over to the cIOS when the games started, so it's not actually the loader that's corrupted anything.

USB Loader GX does not seem to store any data about the stick in its folder or configuration files, but somewhere something must have been changed that the stick is no longer recognized. Maybe in cIOS249, is that possible?

Delete the GXGlobal.cfg file so that the loaders using it's default settings and then see if any games are listed and if you can play one without changing any settings.

I know that some USB flash drives don't like too many IOS reloads, so you could try to minimise that by modifying your meta.xml file. You'd just need to remove the two lines to enable arguments and then change bootios=58 to bootios=249

 

[Northrup]

Delete the GXGlobal.cfg file so that the loaders using it's default settings and then see if any games are listed and if you can play one without changing any settings.

I know that some USB flash drives don't like too many IOS reloads, so you could try to minimise that by modifying your meta.xml file. You'd just need to remove the two lines to enable arguments and then change bootios=58 to bootios=249.

Instead of deleting the GXGlobal.cfg I just took another SD card and copied the default USB Loader GX files from the .rar file, which is basically the same since there are no config files. But it still freezes at "Reinitializing devices".

Then I made the changes in meta.xml as you wrote, now it freezes at "Initializing USB devices".


I'm really starting to think that somehow cIOS249 is broken.

The loader hands things over to the cIOS when the games started, so it's not actually the loader that's corrupted anything.

The second time USB Loader GX froze before I could even start a game.

I forgot to mention that on the second try I had copied a homebrew app to the stick and tested it with Homebrew Browser to see if it was found and displayed there before I started USB Loader GX.
That' s how I know that the formatting was destroyed only after USB Loader GX was started.

 

[blackb0x]

The second time USB Loader GX froze before I could even start a game.

That could still be the cIOS, since that's what the USB loader loads into before you see "Initializing USB devices". And reinstalling d2x v10 beta 52 to slot 249, 250 & 251 most likely won't fix the issue but you can do that if you want.

Are you formatting your USB flash drive through Wii Backup Manager as FAT32 with the 32KB cluster size? If you're only going to play Wii backups then you could try using NTFS instead.

 

[Northrup]

Are you formatting your USB flash drive through Wii Backup Manager as FAT32 with the 32KB cluster size? If you're only going to play Wii backups then you could try using NTFS instead.

Simply with Windows. I tried with default settings and with 32kb cluster. With Wii Backup Manager I had formatted the stick once briefly as WBFS to test, but used Windows to format to FAT32.

With NTFS it works, for now.
Hopefully it stays that way!