Hacking Trying to understand EmuNAND

[WraithTDK]

I'm trying to build an EmuNAND that will work properly with WiiFlow Light. I tried just dumping the real NAND in WiiFlow Light, but that's not working. I have ModMii, but the options for building one are kind of confusing. It seems like all the options want to set it up to boot directly into the EmuNAND. I'd prefer not to do that, I just want to use it to boot WiiWare games.

Do I need to install Sneek? Do I need to actually boot to and run everything from the EmuNAND?

My ultimate goal is to be able to turn on my Wii, have WFL start automatically and offer up my WiiWare, GameCube and Wii games. I've got it booting automatically, I've got it offering all the games, and it will successfully launch the GC and Wii games. I just can't get it to launch the WiiWare games loaded on the EmuNAND. Help?

 

[XFlak]

Start modmii, choose sneek, then choose the 3rd option to build sneek and an emunand. Try launching sneek once manually, so instead of installing nswitch or switch2uneek channels/wads, just rename bootmiineek to bootmii on your sd card, and launch "bootmii" from the HBC's home menu (or any other method). First boot could take 5-15 minutes (it's expanding files in the background). After it boots, you know your emunand is working, and u can just point your usbloader at it and just don't start neek manually and you should be set.

Neek can be finicky to set up, it may not lot your hardware, so be patient and be prepared to try a few different things.

 

[WraithTDK]

Start modmii, choose sneek, then choose the 3rd option to build sneek and an emunand. Try launching sneek once manually, so instead of installing nswitch or switch2uneek channels/wads, just rename bootmiineek to bootmii on your sd card, and launch "bootmii" from the HBC's home menu (or any other method). First boot could take 5-15 minutes (it's expanding files in the background). After it boots, you know your emunand is working, and u can just point your usbloader at it and just don't start neek manually and you should be set.

Neek can be finicky to set up, it may not lot your hardware, so be patient and be prepared to try a few different things.

OK, that sounds promising. So now I'm trying to figure out bootmii. I ran Modmii and it spit out an emuNAND and a some stuff to be copied to the SD card. I still don't have bootmii in HBC yet, though. Trying to figure out how to get that done.

EDIT: OK, I think I get it. I'm working on that now.

 

[XFlak]

If u haven't got a basic softmod in place, use Modmii's first /main wizard, or the syscheck updater wizard

 

[WraithTDK]

It's softmodded. I've got priiloader, HBC, WiiFlow and some others installed and I can run games from USB or SD. Just haven't messed with bootmii. But I'm building an emunand with Modmii now, so we'll see how it goes.

 

[XFlak]

If u haven't "messed with bootmii" then u used an inferior guide, and I question whether u currently have everything installed that you should

Please post a syscheck (or follow one of my previous suggestions)
https://gbatemp.net/threads/posting-a-system-check.300279/

 

[WraithTDK]

Start modmii, choose sneek, then choose the 3rd option to build sneek and an emunand. Try launching sneek once manually, so instead of installing nswitch or switch2uneek channels/wads, just rename bootmiineek to bootmii on your sd card, and launch "bootmii" from the HBC's home menu (or any other method). First boot could take 5-15 minutes (it's expanding files in the background). After it boots, you know your emunand is working, and u can just point your usbloader at it and just don't start neek manually and you should be set.

Neek can be finicky to set up, it may not lot your hardware, so be patient and be prepared to try a few different things.

First things' first, syscheck as reqeusted.

I've spent most of the day trying this. I've built and re-built the NAND, and I've tried a few different drives, but any time I try to launch Bootmii (by which I mean bootmiineek with the folder renamed bootmii; installing and and launching standard bootmii came up just fine) , it just goes to a black screen and locks, while the blue light around the optical drive flashes. Very frustrating.

 

[XFlak]

Syscheck looks fine

Blackscreens are normal the first time you're booting a fresh emunand. It could take 10-15 minutes (for 2 blackscreens combined) before reaching the emulated system menu. If it takes longer than that then something has gone wrong

 

[WraithTDK]

Syscheck looks fine

Blackscreens are normal the first time you're booting a fresh emunand. It could take 10-15 minutes (for 2 blackscreens combined) before reaching the emulated system menu. If it takes longer than that then something has gone wrong

Left it for a full hour.

But last night there was something of a break-through. I built an EmuNAND with ModMii, I left the BootMii and the BootMiineek folders alone. I still could not get my EmuNAND to boot no matter how long I waited. But, I did get one of the WiiWare from the EmuNAND to actually boot in WiiFlow light by setting the "boot with Neek2o" option!

More experimenting will be done after work tonight, but unfortunately the one point of failure that remained is after playing the WiiWare game, I couldn't get back to the menu without doing a hardboot. Pressing home on the controller brought up the "return to menu" option, but that just dropped me to a black screen. That's still a major step up, but I'd love to be able to return without powering down the console.

 

[godreborn]

Does your hdd have an activity light? See if it's still flashing.

 

[WraithTDK]

Does your hdd have an activity light? See if it's still flashing.

The hard drive(s) I'm testing with have lights. I'll take a look tonight. I'm pretty sure that once the blue light around the optical drive starts flashing, that's my queue that it's given up and needs to be rebooted. Thoughts I have for testing after work:

• Adding the WiiFlow forwarder during the EmuNAND creating in ModMii. My Wii is already set to boot into WiiFlow, maybe that will fix the problem of not getting back to the menu
• Adding more games to the EmuNAND to see if I can get them to boot as well. I only added 1 title because I wanted to be sure that it wasn't taking longer to load because it had too much on it.
• Look at options in PriiBoot?

 

[godreborn]

I don't use wii flow. I use usb loader gx, so you could test if the neek nand works per game rather than loading the whole nand from that app's features.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

I don't remember much about neek on the wii, so I'm using info from the vwii. I think there are differences.

 

[WraithTDK]

I don't use wii flow. I use usb loader gx, so you could test if the neek nand works per game rather than loading the whole nand from that app's features.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

I don't remember much about neek on the wii, so I'm using info from the vwii. I think there are differences.

But...WiiFlow is the whole point. The objective of the project is to be able to push the power button on the Wii and have it immediately boot into a clean, attractive interface that offers up every WiiWare, Gamecube and Wii game that I have interest in. If all I wanted was the ability to play the games, this would have been done two weeks ago. I could just add a handful of WiiWare titles at a time to the SysNAND, and then move them to the SD card using Wii's built-in functionality, and then use a loader for GC or Wii games. That much is easy enough. I'm already there. I've got function, now I'm trying to marry it with form. Loader GX is nice enough, and it does seem to do better under the hood once configured, but visually I don't find it as appealing as WFL.