Hacking USB Loader GX (vWii) stopped working

[G0R3Z]

I have a WD passport ultra 1tb and am too experiencing this bug. It doesn't seem to work properly by just booting the console - Instead I have to unplug it and replug it just before entering ULGX otherwise I get the waiting for HDD message endlessly. It then works flawlessly.

 

[Kangaxx]

I have a WD USB 3.0 external HDD as well and it doesn't work with USB Loader GX anymore. It worked fine for a couple of days, I then updated USB Loader GX (from within the program itself), still worked fine for a couple of days more. Now whenever I try to launch it, I get a black screen with white text thats says it's going to reboot in 20 seconds. Sometimes I can get it to launch fine and sometimes it crashes during the loading screen. The error happens randomly.

Wiiflow works fine.

 

[G0R3Z]

I have a WD USB 3.0 external HDD as well and it doesn't work with USB Loader GX anymore. It worked fine for a couple of days, I then updated USB Loader GX (from within the program itself), still worked fine for a couple of days more. Now whenever I try to launch it, I get a black screen with white text thats says it's going to reboot in 20 seconds. Sometimes I can get it to launch fine and sometimes it crashes during the loading screen. The error happens randomly.

Wiiflow works fine.

Try what I did, disconnect and reconnect it just before going into ULGX.

 

[GreyWolf]

For those of you using the WD external drives: did you connect it to your computer and disable sleep mode using SmartWare? It may be powering itself down.

 

[VinsCool]

For those of you using the WD external drives: did you connect it to your computer and disable sleep mode using SmartWare? It may be powering itself down.

that was the problem I had!
Well I got a seagate 500gb now.

 

[GreyWolf]

that was the problem I had!
Well I got a seagate 500gb now.

I have one of these that I picked up at a thrift store for $2.99. I stuck a 500gb WD in it and it works fine. It does spin down, but only when the USB connection isn't active for more than about 5 minutes so it doesn't time out while I'm using it but still shuts off when the Wii does.

The network support is awful so I just don't use it.

 

[Kangaxx]

For those of you using the WD external drives: did you connect it to your computer and disable sleep mode using SmartWare? It may be powering itself down.

Wiiflow works fine though, and so does Nintendont. I mean I can the leave the vWii system menu open for 1 hour (idle), come back, launch Wiiflow/Nintendont with any game and it works fine. I also tend to pause games a lot, for long periods (30+ minutes) and everything works nicely.

I think the problem is with ULGX.

 

[Cyan]

the difference is that wiiflow and Nintendont are using IOS58 to init the drive.
USBLoaderGX is using cIOS.

But every time I asked users to test with IOS58 I got strange or no proper report.
- update USBGX to latest revision
- Update meta.xml to use official version to be sure it's correct
- Launch the loader (without the HDD connected) and go to settings>Loader setting>Loader's IOS : set it to use 58
It will (should?) edit the meta.xml arguments to reflect your change.

- Exit, shutdown the WiiU.
- Connect the drive and boot the loader from HBC (not the channel or forwarder)
- it now SHOULD use the same boot sequence than Wiiflow or nintendont.

 

[Kangaxx]

the difference is that wiiflow and Nintendont are using IOS58 to init the drive.
USBLoaderGX is using cIOS.

But every time I asked users to test with IOS58 I got strange or no proper report.
- update USBGX to latest revision
- Update meta.xml to use official version to be sure it's correct
- Launch the loader (without the HDD connected) and go to settings>Loader setting>Loader's IOS : set it to use 58
It will (should?) edit the meta.xml arguments to reflect your change.

- Exit, shutdown the WiiU.
- Connect the drive and boot the loader from HBC (not the channel or forwarder)
- it now SHOULD use the same boot sequence than Wiiflow or nintendont.

I run everything (homebrew, loaders etc.) directly from the USB HDD (FAT32). I don't use an SD card. Could this be a cause?

 

[Cyan]

I don't think it's the cause.
I thought the issue was that the USB Port was disabled by the new WiiU update (it disconnects all USB Port not connected to a WiiU formated drive).
So, I thought that IOS58 had something special which wake up the drive.

But if you are launching the loader from USB, it means the drive is already powered and detected by HBC.
So it's not an IOS issue ...

Users started to test older version of the loader to find the first revision with the issue but had different results.
not everyone are reporting the same revision, and the reported revisions have nothing changed on the boot sequence

 

[EclipseSin]

I don't think it's the cause.
I thought the issue was that the USB Port was disabled by the new WiiU update (it disconnects all USB Port not connected to a WiiU formated drive).
So, I thought that IOS58 had something special which wake up the drive.

But if you are launching the loader from USB, it means the drive is already powered and detected by HBC.
So it's not an IOS issue ...

Users started to test older version of the loader to find the first revision with the issue but had different results.
not everyone are reporting the same revision, and the reported revisions have nothing changed on the boot sequence

Could the changing to IOS58 still apply though? Doesn't it normally reload to IOS249 meaning it needs to re-init? The guy from the other thread should perhaps try this perhaps.

 

[Kangaxx]

I don't think it's the cause.
I thought the issue was that the USB Port was disabled by the new WiiU update (it disconnects all USB Port not connected to a WiiU formated drive).
So, I thought that IOS58 had something special which wake up the drive.

But if you are launching the loader from USB, it means the drive is already powered and detected by HBC.
So it's not an IOS issue ...

Users started to test older version of the loader to find the first revision with the issue but had different results.
not everyone are reporting the same revision, and the reported revisions have nothing changed on the boot sequence

Ah it's a shame, I really like the different GUI options in ULGX. Hope you can sort it out :/

Oh and I also use UStealth R8 to hide the HDD from the Wii U mode. Have users reported something about this? Could this be a cause?

 

[Cyan]

UStealth is not the cause.


The loader is working like this :

HBC (58) > launch the loader > loader try to reloads to cIOS checking them in this order and stop on the first it encounters : meta.xml defined slot, boot.dol version slot, 249, 250, 222, 223, 224.

HBC (58) > loader > reload IOS > init SD > init USB > load config file (from SD or USB) > reload IOS to the user's requested Loader's IOS Slot

If you set an IOS in the meta.xml, it will reload to that slot if it's different than the currently loaded IOS.
If you don't set an IOS in the meta.xml (arguments lines are commented out) it will first mount the IOS that the boot.dol is compiled for (by default 249, but I'm also releasing boot.dol with 222 or 250 as default IOS slot)
so if you set the meta.xml to 58, no reload will be done as it's already loaded by HBC.

HBC (58)> loader > use meta.xml (58) > init SD using 58 > init USB using 58 > load config > reload to "Loader's IOS" setting.


From the report I had in the orther thread, it seems to freeze After USB is detected.
So the issue is not detecting the drive but maybe initiating both USB ports.
I need to make a proper debug log to understand where it freeze.

The "usb init" sequence is done this way :
The loader creates one handle per USB Port (so only 2 handle, it doesn't support 4 port yet).
Starts count down for 20 seconds
for each port, it spin up the connected drives.
When both are spin up, stops the count down
then mounts the partitions.


The freeze seems to occur between count down stop and partition mounting.
it never reaches partition mounting, but we will have proper confirmation when I'll make the sector dump as it will be located inside the partition mounting process.

 

[Cyan]

Maybe we should merge both threads


This issue is still present and I need to make a proper debug version.
You will need SD card to debug it as I will have to write logs to file if you don't have an USBGecko (wifi is not init yet so we can't log through wifi)

USBLoaderGX is stable for a long time (we made it stable at around v2.0)
Since 2.0, the only unstable release is r1235

 

[EclipseSin]

Maybe we should merge both threads


This issue is still present and I need to make a proper debug version.
You will need SD card to debug it as I will have to write logs to file if you don't have an USBGecko (wifi is not init yet so we can't log through wifi)

USBLoaderGX is stable for a long time (we made it stable at around v2.0)
Since 2.0, the only unstable release is r1235

Or merge all 3 into a support thread in the Wii U section. I admit to having all three open in tabs so I can watch for updates. Lol

 

[Cyan]

I merged the two thread.
The 3rd one is the "black screen" thread?
I prefer keeping this thread for HDD issue on vWii. Other issues can be reported in the official thread.

I just read it and it strange that he had issue with his drive while only deleting a file on computer.
He should start testing another HDD to see if the issue is the drive or not instead of formating it. But he formated it already, too bad.
Anyway, it's not an issue with USBLoaderGX as wiiflow has the same symptom. so I won't merge it here.

 

[FaTaL_ErRoR]

I have one of these that I picked up at a thrift store for $2.99. I stuck a 500gb WD in it and it works fine. It does spin down, but only when the USB connection isn't active for more than about 5 minutes so it doesn't time out while I'm using it but still shuts off when the Wii does.

The network support is awful so I just don't use it.

I don't have this problem with my wd. Mine stays on til I shut the console off. And when on the wii it just stays on all the time. It spins down but stays active.
I never had a problem with spinning down due to inactivity. But, I completely removed wd software from the drive before I ever used it. ( I only did that because they sold me a 500gb drive and I was mad when near 20gb was used) I don't think the firmware hibernates the drive I think it's the software that does that.
When I was using gx loader it would hang at the loading screen to gx. When I got it to work my kids said they liked it better than the other one...(cfg)
I still have this issue with cfg if I don't wait for the wii system to load prior to launching. (Basically if I have a disc in the console and the picture for the disc hasn't appeared yet cfg will hang in the loading screen as well)
I truly don't think it's a problem with one drive, I think it's a problem with larger drives and maybe loading time. We used gx with smaller flash drives with no problem at all. And what Cyan said about going through hbc and not using the forwared channel seems to work for me too...( just tried it works perfectly but my kids are very young and remembering to go through hbc is not an option for us)
(also a little bit more info I use wbfs format on the drives with wbfs manager)

 

[Raistlin]

Just a quick update - I fixed the issue I was having.

The only thing I had to do was remove usb loader gx and re-add using the "all in one" package from google code. I find this odd because I just updated a couple of days ago from within usbloader hoping that might fix the issue. My only guess at this point is that some how a config file or setting got screwed up. I doubt this will help many folks out there, but figured I'd report back any how.

 

[Cyan]

you downgraded and fixed your issue.
that's good for you, but it doesn't help fix the issue for everyone else. using an old version is not the solution.
users tried to find the first revision with the drive issue, but I had different reports and the pointed revision didn't have any USB init changes.

If you have time, could you test different revision and tell me which one trigger this issue?
Finding the first revision with that issue will be useful to use it as base for debugging. seeing what's wrong before/after.




Fatal_error :
You are on Wii or vWii?
if it's vWii, be sure to use the updated forwarder (5.1fix) which is initiating USB drives too. the old 5.1vWii by Asper was in fact v2.0.
it might help with init time.
You can even put the boot.dol on USB instead of SD to be sure the forwarder is mounting the USB and it should already be up when the loader check the partitions.

 

[FaTaL_ErRoR]

Fatal_error :
You are on Wii or vWii?
if it's vWii, be sure to use the updated forwarder (5.1fix) which is initiating USB drives too. the old 5.1vWii by Asper was in fact v2.0.
it might help with init time.
You can even put the boot.dol on USB instead of SD to be sure the forwarder is mounting the USB and it should already be up when the loader check the partitions.

Both, (3 u's and 2 wiis spoiled kids...lol) Funny thing is I think we tried gx on the first u but it kept locking up so we tried a different one and all was good. But initial problems were with the wii (black screen all the time) and lock in forwarder with the u. You know how impatient ppl get so picture spoiled children ages ranging from 5 to 10 and you'd see why I never attempted fixing or getting help fixing. I just went for the path of least resistance and the quickest fix. But, I have two of those U's for myself now (at the moment one kid upgraded to xb1 at christmas) and I have a little time to mess around with one not in use.