Hacking Unable to detect Wii USB drive while Wii U USB drive connected

[Jman69]

I've been tearing my hair out trying to get this working with as many combinations I can think of - hoping it's something simple someone can help me with!

I followed this guide to hack vWii and get USB Loader GX working. I have 2 USB drives - they are both WD USB 3.0 drives. They both have Y-cables. One has Wii U games and is plugged into the front ports. The other has Wii games (FAT32) and is plugged into the back two ports - the data cable is plugged into Port 0. The Wii drive is hidden with UStealth.

When USB Loader GX (version 3.0 r1272) starts up, I get the message "USB Device not initialized. Switching to channel list mode". When both drives are attached, no matter what I try, I cannot get the Wii drive to initialize.

If I disconnect the Wii U drive, then the Wii drive IS detected, and I can load games without an issue!

USB Loader GX is set to use IOS58. If I change it to use IOS249 (I changed the base from IOS56 to IOS57 to see if that made a difference), then it doesn't get past "Initializing USB device" at the loading screen. I've also tried setting the arg parameters in the meta.xml to use IOS58 too just to see if it made any different but still nothing.

I have also tried this with a combination of other drives including a Toshiba HDD, and a couple of USB thumb drives (I know thumb drives don't really have great support). I've tried different combinations of which is the Wii drive plugged in the back and which is the Wii U drive in the front, and using even different apps to format the drives. I've even tried different SD cards to load USB Loader GX from and different Wiimotes

Regardless of what I do, the same symptoms always occur - if 2 drives are plugged in, the Wii drive can't be detected until I unplug the Wii U drive.

My installed IOS look like this:

Spoiler

vIOS9 (rev 1290): No Patches
vIOS12 (rev 782): No Patches
vIOS13 (rev 1288): No Patches
vIOS14 (rev 1288): No Patches
vIOS15 (rev 1288): No Patches
vIOS17 (rev 1288): No Patches
vIOS21 (rev 1295): No Patches
vIOS22 (rev 1550): No Patches
vIOS28 (rev 2063): No Patches
vIOS31 (rev 3864): No Patches
vIOS33 (rev 3864): No Patches
vIOS34 (rev 3864): No Patches
vIOS35 (rev 3864): No Patches
vIOS36 (rev 3864): No Patches
vIOS37 (rev 5919): No Patches
vIOS38 (rev 4380): No Patches
vIOS41 (rev 3863): No Patches
vIOS43 (rev 3863): No Patches
vIOS45 (rev 3863): No Patches
vIOS46 (rev 3863): No Patches
vIOS48 (rev 4380): No Patches
vIOS53 (rev 5919): No Patches
vIOS55 (rev 5919): No Patches
vIOS56 (rev 5918): No Patches
vIOS57 (rev 6175): No Patches
vIOS58 (rev 6432): USB 2.0
vIOS59 (rev 9249): No Patches
vIOS62 (rev 6942): No Patches
vIOS80 (rev 7200): No Patches
vIOS249[57] (rev 21010, Info: d2x-v10beta52-vWii): NAND Access, USB 2.0
vIOS250[56] (rev 21010, Info: d2x-v10beta52-vWii): NAND Access, USB 2.0
vIOS251[58] (rev 21010, Info: d2x-v10beta52-vWii): NAND Access, USB 2.0
vIOS512 (rev 7): No Patches
vIOS513 (rev 1): No Patches

Any other ideas what I can try?

 

[snoofly]

does this post help?

https://gbatemp.net/threads/ustealth-wii-u-format-disk-nag-workaround.352786/page-29#post-8915962

 

[Jman69]

does this post help?

https://gbatemp.net/threads/ustealth-wii-u-format-disk-nag-workaround.352786/page-29#post-8915962

Sadly not. The drive is formatted with MBR already.

If it’s the only drive plugged in, I can load Wii games from it without an issue.

 

[godreborn]

did you try a powered drive? I don't think I read that.

 

[Jman69]

did you try a powered drive? I don't think I read that.

I don’t have a powered drive but I did try connecting the power part of the Y-cables to USB wall outlets which have more than enough power alone to operate the drives even when the Wii U is off.

 

[godreborn]

try plugging both into the system. I'm using a powered drive for the vwii and an unpowered one with the wii u. it sounds like the system is being taxed somehow

 

[Jman69]

try plugging both into the system. I'm using a powered drive for the vwii and an unpowered one with the wii u. it sounds like the system is being taxed somehow

I’ve tried powering them both from the Wii U, one from USB outlet and both from USB outlet. I’ve also got the same problem from USB thumb drives which shouldn’t have any power issues as they don’t need anywhere near as much power as a spinning hard drive

 

[godreborn]

possibly a hardware problem. I've never heard of this problem before unless stuff was plugged into the wrong ports.

 

[Jman69]

possibly a hardware problem. I've never heard of this problem before unless stuff was plugged into the wrong ports.

Possibly but not sure how to test that. I use USBToggle from the HBC to hide the drive and that is able to detect both drives. It says the Wii U drive is not valid and skips it and lets me hide the Wii drive fine

 

[godreborn]

hide the drive with ustealth. usb loader gx is compatible with it.

 

[Jman69]

hide the drive with ustealth. usb loader gx is compatible with it.

Yeah I’ve tried both. USBToggle is based on Ustealth but allows you to run it directly on the Wii

 

[godreborn]

on the original wii?

 

[Jman69]

on the original wii?

To be specific I ran it from HBC on vWii

 

[GoldenTreesYT]

maybe you have dusty USB ports, it's happened to me before. the wii u is kind of old, I imagine that could cause data transer/detection issues

 

[Jman69]

maybe you have dusty USB ports, it's happened to me before. the wii u is kind of old, I imagine that could cause data transer/detection issues

Ha ha I tried that too. It doesn’t explain why it works when I remove the Wii U drive. Surely it just wouldn’t work at all? From the Wii U point of view I’ve tried all three USB ports that aren’t Port 0 and always the same result

 

[bgermain1689]

I have a similar problem, I've removed the WiiU HD, leaving only my Wii HD connected with Y cable in the rear.

If I boot the WiiU in this setup, the drive is not detected (thanks to ustealth), then when entering vWii, and launching ULGX via hbc its stuck at "initializing usb device"...no app is able to read from the HD.

however, if I leave the device disconnected, then plug it in after the vWii has booted everything works as expected.

Has anyone experienced this?

 

[noodles75]

I had exactly the same problem as @Jman69 with two USB-Drives attached to my Wii U at the same time (one for vWii hidden with UStealth and one for Wii U) and could solve it just by using another Version of USB Loader GX.
USB Loader GX (version 3.0 r1272): Error "USB Device not initialized. Switching to channel list mode"
USB Loader GX (version 3.0 r1271): Works without any errors. USB device was initialized and all games played flawlessly.
Hope this helps others too.

 

[OldGnashburg]

I have similar issues with certain Wii U homebrew not working properly unless I unplug my Wii Drive, might be a similar issue.

 

[bgermain1689]

interesting, I can try to confirm the version change.

oddly i see the same behavior from wiiflow. I wonder if there’s something underlying they share which changed between the two usb loader gx versions.

 

[kcpants]

The latest version of usbloadergx (v3.0-r1281) doesn't seem to have this problem (I'm able to load data from the Wii storage drive without disconnecting the Wii U storage drive in usbloadergx).

oddly i see the same behavior from wiiflow. I wonder if there’s something underlying they share which changed between the two usb loader gx versions.

The reason why some WiiFlow users must disconnect their Wii U storage drive in order for WiiFlow to be able to access data on their Wii storage drive is described in WiiFlow issue #338 (search for "WiiFlow github Issue 338"). The workaround is to set "force load cIOS" to "on" in the WiiFlow "startup settings". If any folks here are using WiiFlow and are still running into this problem after applying the workaround, I suggest leaving a comment on the github issue and/or contacting WiiFlow's maintainer @fledge68