Hacking USB Loader GX

[lovewiibrew]

Don't worry. It seems like Wii hacking is quickly tapering off. WiiPower disappeared, d2x is no longer worked on, WiiBackupManager has been abandoned, and now crediar said this will be his last DM update "for some time" (I'm guessing forever), since he is focusing on other things, i.e., the Wii U.
Still, it's amazing to see how far all this went thanks to contributions from people like you, so thanks a lot.

I think crediar will finish up DM at some point. I don't think he's abandoning it.

 

[themanuel]

I think crediar will finish up DM at some point. I don't think he's abandoning it.

I think those are his intentions but my guess is he'll become too interested in WiiU and since DM will not work in it, he won't come back to it. It's just speculation, of course.

 

[Arm73]

Yesterday I made an interesting discover.
Sorry to double post,but I just quote myself from the Wiiflow topic as I feel this is relevant to other loaders as well :

I just wanted to say that in the past couple of years I never bothered to install WiiFlow on my system
I was actually satisfied with CFG and later with USB GX that I never felt the urge to try yet another Loader.
However.....I tried it yesterday out of curiosity and I'm so glad I did !
Really, functionality wise I don't see any huge difference from the other Loaders, however I had a big problem with my Toshiba Canvio 500GB USB 2.0/3.0, namely I had to unplug it every time I started the other loaders or between games, otherwise my Wii would freeze or keep looking for the HDD.

I'm happy to report, that with WiiFlow there is no such a problem
It seems that the games take a few seconds more to boot ( and it's alittle bit of a hit and miss ) , but the Wii doesn't freeze upon initializing the HDD anymore !
That's a huge plus in my book, and reason enough to switch over from anything else.
Maybe there is a different call in the way the HDD initializing is handled, after all, Wii Explorer always finds my HDD as well.

Oh, let me add that I'm using d2x-v9-beta(r49), with v8 final Wiiflow would boot but freeze before loading a game.

Maybe somebody should edit the Wiki page regarding HDD compatibility and add this info, I'm sure there are quite a few people with the same problem out there.

Hope it helps.
Cheers

So my question is: Why do WiiFlow and Wii Exloprer find my HDD and other USB loaders do not ?

 

[Cyan]

Like you said, probably the way the device handler is mounting the drive.
I didn't check the differences with Wiiflow, but I remember that Dimok changed the handler in 3.0 (compared to v2.3)
I'm not very hardware techy, so I don't know how HDD are working/initiated/mounted. But if I have time, I will try to fix that (though, my drives works all fine, so I can't debug it myself).

 

[gbatempfan1]

We don't have such logs, it could be useful.
It seems since v3.0 we have problems with USB initialization, we got few users report saying their drive stopped being detected/mounted.
I think dimok changed something but I didn't check it yet.

I found out the problem with loading my USB Flash Drive, it was because it didn't have a partition table and the OEM formated it like floppy disks of old, with the fat starting in the first sector. USB Cfg Loader supports this just fine(look for "RAW" as the partition type in their source), but it might be the source of some people's usb drives failing on this forum. I deleted the "partition" in PARAGON then used diskpart to create a table and an actual partition and then the drive worked in both ports.

Thanks again for your help.

 

[Cyan]

Thank you for that information

I think Dimok made the loader skip the partition table and look only at the partitions themselves as some partitioning software didn't update the table correctly.
But maybe now it's skipping the first sector thinking it's the table. (not sure, just thinking it could be that, I didn't check the sources).

 

[Arm73]

Like you said, probably the way the device handler is mounting the drive.
I didn't check the differences with Wiiflow, but I remember that Dimok changed the handler in 3.0 (compared to v2.3)
I'm not very hardware techy, so I don't know how HDD are working/initiated/mounted. But if I have time, I will try to fix that (though, my drives works all fine, so I can't debug it myself).

Well I do have a 1.5 TB WD My Book ( which works fine with everything , but it's an older model and it's a little bigger and need power ) and this infamous 500GB Toshiba USB 2.0/3.0 ( tiny , pearly white, just the perfect companion for my Wii !! ) , so if you need me to test something for you, no problem at all, I have plenty of free time.

Thanks for the interest, I thought my HDD was at fault and I gave up on it already, but after trying Wiiflow I'm really curious now to know the nature of this problem.
Cheers

 

[plasmata]

I've been using USBL Gx for years now and just love all of the new features that have been added along the way. I just ran into a problem trying to play RB3 on NANDemu with DLC. RB2 works fine in NANDemu with the DLC that I downloaded in it. But when I run RB3 and choose play, it hangs at "Loading New Downloaded Content 1/9 Loaded". The "1/9" refers to the DLC downloaded from RB2. I'm using rev 1204, d2x v9 r49 base 56, and full emulation. My first launch of RB3 was in full emu. When that hung as mentioned I tried running the game in real NAND, which worked but I had no DLC in real NAND. I then used the "Extract Save to EmuNAND" to create a new save file. I switched back to running it in full NANDemu and it still hangs at the same point. BTW, I dumped the NAND from within USBLGX. Any ideas about what I can do to fix this? Is anyone else able to use RB3 DLC in full NANDemu? If so, what is your setup?

***Edit: Just tried it again to verify that I described everything accurately and have one clarification. The game itself doesn't hang as I can still pull up the player menu and scroll through the options. But the "1/9 Loaded" never moves. I even let it sit there over night and it did not change.

 

[narutoman123]

I have been having some trouble with USB loader GX 3.0.

I have installed some WiiWare games on the emulated NAND, but when I try to launch them I get taken back to the system menu.

I am using d2x v8 base IOS 56.

My firmware version is 4.3E.

EDIT

I also have some backups in the directory sd:/wbfs/[gameID]_gamename/[gameID].wbfs.

It says on the wiki that USB loader GX will load games off an SD card, but they don't show up at all.

 

[juggalomars]

I have been having some trouble with USB loader GX 3.0.

I have installed some WiiWare games on the emulated NAND, but when I try to launch them I get taken back to the system menu.

I am using d2x v8 base IOS 56.

My firmware version is 4.3E.

EDIT

I also have some backups in the directory sd:/wbfs/[gameID]_gamename/[gameID].wbfs.

It says on the wiki that USB loader GX will load games off an SD card, but they don't show up at all.

Did you try multiple times to launch a game? Some games go back to the wii menu the first time I run them then work fine afterwards.

 

[Cyan]

USBLoaderGX doesn't support Wii games from SD card.
Only Emulated NAND and Gamecube games are working from SD cards.

Did you make a full NAND backup?
if it's rebooting, it's likely that you have missing files on your emuNAND, or that it couldn't mount it for any reason (you are using FAT32/32k cluster right?)

 

[CheatFreak47]

The easiest workaround for that EmuNAND games reseting to the wii menu thing-- at the moment is to install the wads to your NAND, set both the EmuNAND paths to the location where you want the games to be, then dump the whole NAND via the features menu. The games that reset should at least start after that.

Cyan, is there any way you could fix this? What does a wad manager do that USB Loader GX's EmuNAND wad installer doesn't?

 

[Nemesis90]

I can't seem to get GC games to show up in this loader, is there something special you have to do unlike Cfg? I'm using r1204 with DM 2.6 and i already have the filenames/partition set up properly.

 

[Cyan]

you need to tell the loader to display GameCube games.
click on the 4th icon in the top menu.

@cheatfreak:
I don't know what's different, I didn't check that yet.
Also, I don't know if his reset problem is caused by the wad manager, he didn't tell if he had a full NAND or if he only installed a wad on an empty NAND.

 

[Nemesis90]

you need to tell the loader to display GameCube games.
click on the 4th icon in the top menu.

@cheatfreak:
I don't know what's different, I didn't check that yet.
Also, I don't know if his reset problem is caused by the wad manager, he didn't tell if he had a full NAND or if he only installed a wad on an empty NAND.

I apologize for not saying before(tried to edit in anything i could remember in my previous post) but i've already done that with no luck.

Edit: Awesome figured it out, i needed to set my custom path in the settings to the games folder.

 

[gridatttack]

I have to ask, does USB loader GX can load from retail disks?

If it can, would I still need a WBFS USB/HDD inserted in order to load retail disks?

 

[gooddegenerate]

If the console shutdown it's because DM encountered a problem and crashed. it's switching the console in this case.

Is it always after an exact amount of time, or at a specific place in game?
Is it doing it with all games? (it could be special commands which are not compatible with DM for the moment, like sound effect/streaming etc.)

I played a game fully with DM2.2 and didn't encountered this problem. I didn't play games a lot since then, so I can't tell what happens after 45min, but it's not the loader (once in DM, the loader has no effect on the console).
It's either DM itself, the game data unrecognized/incompatible, or maybe a hardware problem (your HDD going to sleep in some cases?)
If it's a sleep problem, DM2.6 set the ping delay to 25 second (some HDD have it set to 30second of inactivity).

Well I installed DM 2.6 but it had lots of freeze issues for some reason. DM 2.5 works fine except still has the console shutting off. I believe maybe it is an HDD sleep issue. How do I set the ping delay to 25 seconds? I don't know how to even access DM2.5's settings. I don't see them in usb loader gx.
(The freeze issues with 2.6 happen the same place in each game)

If there's a way I could get DM2.5 to do the 25 second ping delay, that'd be wonderful.

 

[Maxternal]

Well I installed DM 2.6 but it had lots of freeze issues for some reason. DM 2.5 works fine except still has the console shutting off. I believe maybe it is an HDD sleep issue. How do I set the ping delay to 25 seconds? I don't know how to even access DM2.5's settings. I don't see them in usb loader gx.
(The freeze issues with 2.6 happen the same place in each game)

If there's a way I could get DM2.5 to do the 25 second ping delay, that'd be wonderful.

You can't change the delay without changing the code and recompiling it, unfortunately.

I have to ask, does USB loader GX can load from retail disks?

Yes. I think the button's in the top, right corner.

If it can, would I still need a WBFS USB/HDD inserted in order to load retail disks?

No. ... but if you don't have SOME USD drive connected (you can play games off of FAT32 or NTFS, too) you'll have to wait while it's looking for the Hard Drive. I think there's a button you can push to make it skip that, though, just that I don't remember what it is.

You could always use something like gecko OS for times when you're JUST gonna be playing from a retail disk (which is all it's made to do)

 

[gridatttack]

Yes. I think the button's in the top, right corner.
No. ... but if you don't have SOME USD drive connected (you can play games off of FAT32 or NTFS, too) you'll have to wait while it's looking for the Hard Drive. I think there's a button you can push to make it skip that, though, just that I don't remember what it is.

You could always use something like gecko OS for times when you're JUST gonna be playing from a retail disk (which is all it's made to do)

Oh, ok. Thanks again :3

I have an USB connected, but I only use it for GameCube games, so it doesnt have any WBFS partition.
(and its formatted in FAT32 with 32kb cluster size)

Ill first try with USB loader GX, if not ill try too Gecko OS, but I thought that was only for playing Import games and using cheat codes. Nice to know otherwise

 

[Maxternal]

Oh, ok. Thanks again :3

I have an USB connected, but I only use it for GameCube games, so it doesnt have any WBFS partition.
(and its formatted in FAT32 with 32kb cluster size)

Ill first try with USB loader GX, if not ill try too Gecko OS, but I thought that was only for playing Import games and using cheat codes. Nice to know otherwise

Okay, you shouldn't have to wait that long for GX to start up then.
Gecko OS can play imports just as well as same region games (it just ignores the region) and leaving whatever codes you may have turned off makes it basically just an extremely simplified disk loader.