Wii Hangups, softlocks, and other weird garbage.

[MeXen]

I been always dealing with this issues ever since i started emulating on the Wii, but it seems every time i do speak about it i always get caught on deaf ears, i been playing on my Red Wii Mini on both RetroArch and FCEUGX and sometimes after not playing for awhile and trying to continue, when i close the rom and trying to select another, THE ENTIRE DAMN SYSTEM WILL SOFTLOCK AND I HAVE TO LITERALLY UNPLUG TEH DAMN CABLE TO TURN IT OFF!

This has happened to me 3 damn times in the same weekend.

Same thing happened the first time i was playing the new Shantae Advance game on mgba, there will be a micro sustain pause (the one when it makes an waful noise that sustains itself) and after playing for while, when i resetted the game, it hanged up, the same thing happened to me long ago while i was playing Wario Land 4.

why is everyone ok with this things?, and please, dont give me dismmissive and evasive answers.

 

[KleinesSinchen]

That's a tough one.
I've not encountered many crashes when using the Wii as emulation beast.

Retroarch might be unstable on some platforms and I never got warm with the overly complicated interface and the myriad of options I don't need.

The standalone "GX" emulators as well as mgba work flawlessly for me.
=====

Some things that come to mind. Maybe you can rule out some (or even all) of my ideas right away:

• Questionable software modification like DarkCorp/cIOSCorp
  • That might or might not cause trouble, just mentioning it for the sake of completeness
• Hardware problems like
  • heat
  • weak voltage converters
  • dying RAM
• SD problems for example
  • file system corruption
  • bad SD
  • bad connector/slot
  • using USB drives instead of SD cards potentially brings other problems

why is everyone ok with this things?, and please, dont give me dismmissive and evasive answers.

I'm certainly not okay with things like this, but as mentioned above, I've personally very rarely encountered chrashes. Hell, I get more crashes caused by the official GBA emulator on Wii U when just starting up.

 

[MeXen]

• Hardware problems like
  • dying RAM
• SD problems for example
  • file system corruption
  • bad SD
  • bad connector/slot
  • using USB drives instead of SD cards potentially brings other problems

I remember having literal haltpause issues waaaaaay back on Wiistation 2.4 on my White Wii (not mini) which i didnt had on the Mini.

 

[SaulFabre]

i think u should backup everything stored on the Wii's system memory on elsewhere and virginize ur Wii, RESET everything (leave as from factory with all vanilla IOS) with Ohneschwanzenegger, and reinstall (remod) ur Wii again.

https://wii.hacks.guide/wii-factory-reset.html

or better, ModMii by @XFlak is ur friend
https://modmii.github.io/

EDIT: it would likely not work, as u said it was on Wii mini

 

[Exidous]

I had some truly gnarly issues with some emulators on Wii - most egregiously a SNES emulator corrupting/overwriting the SD/USB partition. For your purposes, I had overlapping issues on the emulator pause menu that I assume is a default from the dev kit. If I let it sit for too long on that menu, I'd risk softlock, but in only some emulators.

I tested alternatives and haven't had those issues since I substituted out to my current set of emulators. My basic prejudice now is avoid 'native' emulators (like SNES 9x GX) and preferentially use RA Hexaeco. Sorry, I know this is the opposite of advice you're hearing here, but that's why I call it my prejudice rather than expertise.

One thought: 'close one rom and load another' is the kind of behavior that the memory-starved Wii is likely to have issues with. I wouldn't be surprised if some commonly used emulators are not champions at clearing out the ram and launching a second ROM as if it was the first, for memory purposes. Once that memory fills up, a Wii is going to freeze. My Wii is configured to reboot when exiting an emulator, and it always boots straight into my USB loader. I can't remember the last time I 'loaded a second ROM' on a single boot.

 

[RunningSnakes]

@MeXen

I suspect you are using a flash drive, yes?

At least through WFL (on original wii), using a flash drive will cause softlock if left idle too long. It happens if using SD/USB Flash combo as well. Using SD only, HDD only, or combo SD/HDD never causes the issue.

Since the Mini doesn't have an SD slot, i would be curious if this happens with HDD instead of Flash.

 

[MeXen]

@MeXen

I suspect you are using a flash drive, yes?

At least through WFL (on original wii), using a flash drive will cause softlock if left idle too long. It happens if using SD/USB Flash combo as well. Using SD only, HDD only, or combo SD/HDD never causes the issue.

Since the Mini doesn't have an SD slot, i would be curious if this happens with HDD instead of Flash.

I only ever use WiiFlow for loading a few Wii games but that was a while ago, but i do remember having issues with softlocks indeed.

I can use indeed a HDD but my obvious issues are with USB3.0 (my current PC case doesnt have a proper connector for my current motherboard), also i live in mexico, so it would be a pipedream to do the SD card mod to my Wii mini.

 

[Playerwii357]

Its relatively common to me that emulators and usb loader (not on games) just hang up and give no response so i have to turn it off by holding the wii power button. I think its my hard drive because its one that goes to sleep if left idel too long. This itself is not the problem, i just think that the wii and apps are not made for this and sometimes (not when it goes to sleep, its rather random) it hangs up because its too much for the hard drive to give it fast enough.
It happens like twice per week maybe. Taking time to do things slower would work, but who would do that? its rare enough for me to not care.
Never happened on genplus gx, proving again this is the best emulator code-wise, but on the rest of the gx emulator it happens. never on mgba either but i dont use it that much

 

[MeXen]

Its relatively common to me that emulators and usb loader (not on games) just hang up and give no response so i have to turn it off by holding the wii power button. I think its my hard drive because its one that goes to sleep if left idel too long. This itself is not the problem, i just think that the wii and apps are not made for this and sometimes (not when it goes to sleep, its rather random) it hangs up because its too much for the hard drive to give it fast enough.
It happens like twice per week maybe. Taking time to do things slower would work, but who would do that? its rare enough for me to not care.
Never happened on genplus gx, proving again this is the best emulator code-wise, but on the rest of the gx emulator it happens. never on mgba either but i dont use it that much

Most of the Wii emulators are so damn outdated optimized code wise.

 

[nmagod]

@MeXen
At least through WFL (on original wii), using a flash drive will cause softlock if left idle too long.

I've never heard about that before