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GAF Wii Homebrew thread: Homebrew, emulators, USB disc installs! Easy tutorial!

This is a question from a friend of mine:

I have a problem, I just installed start patch 4.2.6 euro version with the help of the GAF's Wii Homebrew Tutorial (I had the official 4.2 system update). And the installation worked perfectly. So I started to install the following patches.

* Disable Disc Region Checks 1/5, 2/5,..,5/5
* Region free GC game no VM Patch
* Region Free Channels
* Block Disc Updates
* Block Online Updates
* Remove no copy protection 1/5, 2/5,..,5/5
* Move disc channel
* Auto press A at health screen

And most of it worked really well. I can move the disc channel, I can copy my Brawl save to SD card, it immediately skips the health screen. All works as it should except for the region free part.

The disc channel recognizes my imported games (No More Heroes and MadWorld, which are both imported US versions). So far so good, I click on the window and I get the usual Wii start up screen. When I press 'start' the screen turns black and nothing happens. Just a black screen! This forces me to shut down the Wii by pressing and holding the power button.

So in short, the Wii recognizes my import games, but it does not start them.

I tried various things to get it fixed. I tried deleting the Disable Disc Region checks and reinstalling them. I disabled various other patches, like Region free channels and GG games, but to no avail. I tried searching the internet, but found nothing. Could you help me?

Thanks in advance
 
I downloaded the latest CFG USB Loader release, I thought it was going to add proper time played logging by default but it hasn't (is it cos it kept my old config file since I updated from within the loader?). What do I have to do to enable it?
 
* Play time logging to message board (marc_max & Dr. Clipper)

When enabled, this option will put the correct title
and play time into the Wii Message Board log and will
also be read by the Nintendo Channel. However, this will
usually fail if you skip the Wii Menu via BootMii or
Priiloader autoboot.

* option: write_playlog = [0],1

Note, it is disabled by default as this fix changes your
Wii's NAND and cannot be used via autoboot methods.
Click to expand...

^
 
MiamiWesker said:
This is a question from a friend of mine:

I have a problem, I just installed start patch 4.2.6 euro version with the help of the GAF's Wii Homebrew Tutorial (I had the official 4.2 system update). And the installation worked perfectly. So I started to install the following patches.

* Disable Disc Region Checks 1/5, 2/5,..,5/5
* Region free GC game no VM Patch
* Region Free Channels
* Block Disc Updates
* Block Online Updates
* Remove no copy protection 1/5, 2/5,..,5/5
* Move disc channel
* Auto press A at health screen

And most of it worked really well. I can move the disc channel, I can copy my Brawl save to SD card, it immediately skips the health screen. All works as it should except for the region free part.

The disc channel recognizes my imported games (No More Heroes and MadWorld, which are both imported US versions). So far so good, I click on the window and I get the usual Wii start up screen. When I press 'start' the screen turns black and nothing happens. Just a black screen! This forces me to shut down the Wii by pressing and holding the power button.

So in short, the Wii recognizes my import games, but it does not start them.

I tried various things to get it fixed. I tried deleting the Disable Disc Region checks and reinstalling them. I disabled various other patches, like Region free channels and GG games, but to no avail. I tried searching the internet, but found nothing. Could you help me?

Thanks in advance
Click to expand...
I don't have 4.2 so I can't test this (could somebody else who is on 4.2 test this out please)? I do know that StartPatch for 4.1E has two different types of region patching and only one of them works on my Wii. Perhaps the one that was added to 4.2 is the same as the one that doesn't work in 4.1. Without further information, all I can suggest is that he looks into the other region free methods.

Agnates said:
I downloaded the latest CFG USB Loader release, I thought it was going to add proper time played logging by default but it hasn't (is it cos it kept my old config file since I updated from within the loader?). What do I have to do to enable it?
Click to expand...
You need to add "write_playlog = 1" to config.txt and your Wii startup procedure must not skip the Wii menu. That means you can't use Preloader/Priiloader to autoboot to Cfg and you can't use BootMii as boot2 to autoboot to the HBC.

Ah, beaten... but seeing as I'm the author of the text Nabs quoted, I guess it's a moot point ;).
 
From what I understood of the thread where the possibility was revealed the Wii writes all of the records to the message board. however, it only write to the message board once a game has been finished playing. While the game is playing it writes to some other temporary file (which has a checksum of sorts so if the file becomes corrupted > checksum fails > nothing written to message board).

From what I understand the write_playlog opens this file (the file needs to be created by the Wii menu which happens when a channel is run, this is why it won't work via bootmii), edits the title ID parts of the file (So instead of saying Homebrew Channel it'll say what the game says as if you were playing it off disc) and handles the checksum part (as mentioned earlier, need checksum to pass to write anything to message board).
 
Starwolf_UK said:
From what I understood of the thread where the possibility was revealed the Wii writes all of the records to the message board. however, it only write to the message board once a game has been finished playing. While the game is playing it writes to some other temporary file (which has a checksum of sorts so if the file becomes corrupted > checksum fails > nothing written to message board).

From what I understand the write_playlog opens this file (the file needs to be created by the Wii menu which happens when a channel is run, this is why it won't work via bootmii), edits the title ID parts of the file (So instead of saying Homebrew Channel it'll say what the game says as if you were playing it off disc) and handles the checksum part (as mentioned earlier, need checksum to pass to write anything to message board).
Click to expand...
That's how the original version works (mostly) but Cfg changes things up a bit.

There are two files, really: the play log for the current game, and the log of all play time. Whenever the Wii menu opens, it merges the 'current game' log into the complete log.

The current game log file is on your NAND and is always on your NAND. Games (or a background process that's part of the IOS) write to that file to change the last played time every minute or so. The file is first created when launching a channel from the Wii Menu and the Wii Menu deletes the previous one when it adds it to the main log.

When you choose to start a game, Cfg creates a new file with the title and sets the start time with the current time then writes over the file that is there. The file must be there to be overwritten for it to work, though (Cfg will warn you if it can't write it).

Thus, it is probably completely safe. It's not writing anything the Wii wouldn't write anyway. The main reason it's disabled by default is that many people bypass the menu and thus they would get the warning that it's not working every time they play a game.
 
Did I just see GoldenEye 007 running at a playable rate on Wii64?

Finally! Now all the people on gbatemp can stop endlessly requesting it. :lol
 
Okay thanks, tried it a bit, works like a charm. Though, it seems to completely eliminate homebrew channel time played for the session? If I go to homebrew channel, and play some movie with the media player, then go back to homebrew channel and run the cfg usb loader, will it change all that time homebrew channel stuff have been running as the time I've been playing the game I launch with it? Minor annoyance if so, will have to make sure to completely drop out of hbc when doing other stuff be4 launching a game for the time played to be accurate. Or does it actually completely remove the HBC time played and just begin play logging from the moment the game is launched? Would be good to know for sure.
 
Agnates said:
Okay thanks, tried it a bit, works like a charm. Though, it seems to completely eliminate homebrew channel time played for the session? If I go to homebrew channel, and play some movie with the media player, then go back to homebrew channel and run the cfg usb loader, will it change all that time homebrew channel stuff have been running as the time I've been playing the game I launch with it? Minor annoyance if so, will have to make sure to completely drop out of hbc when doing other stuff be4 launching a game for the time played to be accurate. Or does it actually completely remove the HBC time played and just begin play logging from the moment the game is launched? Would be good to know for sure.
Click to expand...
My method in Cfg changes the start time of the game to be the time when you push the button to launch the game, so the scenario you mentioned above will only log time for the game and not the other homebrew stuff. The HBC and other homebrew time will be totally ignored unless you return to the Wii Menu before starting the game in Cfg.
 
radioheadrule83 said:
HOLY shit. Awesome
If outdoor levels run okay, thats pretty damn awesome. GoldenEye with a wireless controller might tempt me to play it with friends again -- I really need to ship my N64 down from Liverpool actually.
Click to expand...

It seems smooth enough in the air vent there, but in the actual bathroom area, it's pretty slow. Still impressive, but slow enough that the outside areas will be near enough unplayable at the moment.

Even so, the multiplayer maps may well run decently...
 
This is probably a dumb-looking question, but I've never used an SD card before and I'm pretty paranoid about anything happening to my Wii, so I have to ask.

The homebrew wiki says that Bannerbomb's file should be saved to the SD directory (so Bannerbomb's file would be at sd:/private/wii/title/aktn/content.bin). However, my file is at F:\private\wii\title\aktn\content.bin because I don't see sd: anywhere. Does this matter? With another person's Wii being taken out on this very page, I want to be careful here.

Also, I just want confirmation on this - BootMii is just something that allows you to boot the Wii up with its own menu and not the default one, which is good for security, right?

This is sort of an OCD thing, but installing BootMii to boot2 means that the Wii will always boot on BootMii's menu, right? Is it at all possible to install it to boot2 but have the Wii start up like it normally would (I'm guessing no because that's probably the entire point of BootMii)? Is there any reason at all to install to the IOS instead of boot2 (I have a 2006 Wii and I know that IOS is supposed to be unsafe compared to boot2)?

I know a lot of these are mentioned on the homebrew wiki, and I have gone through the relevant pages, but I want to ask these questions to be sure before I do anything to my Wii.

And just so it's out there, my Wii is 4.2 already.
 
sd: is whatever directory your sd card is. f: would be the right location.

if you can install bootmii as boot2, you can then backup your wiis memory. if you make a mistake later on, you can revert back to an older backup. it's good to do this as soon as possible.

bootmii only starts up if it finds the bootmii folder in your sd directory. so once you backup your wii and everything, you can just rename it to something like 1bootmii, and it'll just start up like normal.
 
Nabs has you covered on the sd:/f: thing, but he didn't answer all your questions on BootMii.

BootMii as boot2 is not a replacement for the Wii Menu. It is an application that boots before the Wii Menu and lets you do the backup stuff as stated. It also allows you to run some special homebrew that you can't run from the HBC, but there are no compelling applications for that yet.

A better way to avoid BootMii from booting up by default is to set it to autoboot to the normal Wii Menu by editing the bootmii.ini file. Instructions for doing that are part of the Wiki page for BootMii.
 
Okay, I've installed the HBC and BootMii and have made a backup.

How do I make the change to keep BootMii's menu from showing up on startup? I see the directions but I don't know where I'm supposed to make them.

EDIT: I started the Browser, and it went through a menu where it said it was downloading a ZIP of images. Then, while it was opening them, it said it couldn't and sent me into the browser menu. But while I was scrolling through the menu, I noticed that some of the images were broken, and then it glitched up and sent me to some sort of error message screen (black with a lot of white technical text and I don't remember what it said). I couldn't do anything to the Wii except turn it off by holding the power button for around five seconds, but everything seemed fine when I turned it back on, so I guess no harm was done.
 
Sir Ilpalazzo said:
Okay, I've installed the HBC and BootMii and have made a backup.

How do I make the change to keep BootMii's menu from showing up on startup? I see the directions but I don't know where I'm supposed to make them.
Click to expand...

I'll answer in the form of a quote:
GWHT said:
If BootMii is installed as boot2, you can make BootMii autoboot to the system menu or Homebrew Channel after a specified number of seconds of inactivity by altering sd:/bootmii/bootmii.ini by adding or changing the following lines:

* AUTOBOOT=HBC (or SYSMENU)
* BOOTDELAY=5 (or any other number)
Click to expand...

EDIT: I started the Browser, and it went through a menu where it said it was downloading a ZIP of images. Then, while it was opening them, it said it couldn't and sent me into the browser menu. But while I was scrolling through the menu, I noticed that some of the images were broken, and then it glitched up and sent me to some sort of error message screen (black with a lot of white technical text and I don't remember what it said). I couldn't do anything to the Wii except turn it off by holding the power button for around five seconds, but everything seemed fine when I turned it back on, so I guess no harm was done.
Click to expand...
Sometimes, things that access the SD card will corrupt files like this. It's a bug in the FAT library. It's quite rare and probably won't happen again. This bug will not have corrupted anything on your Wii (although it might be a good idea to do a chkdsk on your SD).
 
I did think to double-click the configurations file right after making that post, but upon looking at it then and right now, both of those values are already in the file.

HBC
#AUTOBOOT=SYSMENU

# Autoboot delay, in seconds:
# Default is 5
#BOOTDELAY=5

That's copied right from my file. What am I supposed to change them to?
 
Remove the "#" before BOOTDELAY. Anything after a "#" is considered a comment.

Your file should look something like this:

AUTOBOOT=SYSMENU

# Autoboot delay, in seconds:
# Default is 5
BOOTDELAY=5
Click to expand...
I think SYSMENU is default, but you can change it to HBC if you want to homebrew channel to launch upon boot. You can change the delay to 0 if you don't want it showing up at all, but I think it's better to put something like 5 in there just in case you need it.
 
Okay, so it should look like this if I want it to load just like it would normally?

HBC
AUTOBOOT=SYSMENU

# Autoboot delay, in seconds:
# Default is 5
BOOTDELAY=0
Click to expand...

I just want to be sure before I make any alterations to something which is basically controlling the Wii at this point.
 
Here's an example of a normal boot:

AUTOBOOT=SYSMENU
BOOTDELAY=0
Click to expand...

Here's another example, this time booting to the homebrew channel with a 3 second delay:

AUTOBOOT=HBC
BOOTDELAY=3
Click to expand...

Remember, anything after a # is ignored by the Wii so you can remove those lines if you want to and they'll look similar to what I have above. Although for your sake, I would keep them in.
 
Ah, so that's what was causing the confusion. Tutorial now says:

If BootMii is installed as boot2, you can make BootMii autoboot to the system menu or Homebrew Channel after a specified number of seconds of inactivity by altering sd:/bootmii/bootmii.ini by adding or changing the following lines (in particular, note the lack of the # character):
  • AUTOBOOT=HBC (or SYSMENU)
  • BOOTDELAY=5 (or any other number)
Click to expand...
 
i am struggling really hard at installing a usb loader lol, i just got a hard drive and want to try installing my games to save time.
i'm reading the help guide but im still confused :lol
so is there any way someone could explain it any simpler, or post a link to a couple of alternatives to usb loaders? like a different one
I'm stuck where i downloaded it and need to put it on the SD card, it wont show up in the homebrew channel
I would really appreciate it :) thanks in advance
you can pm me it or post it on here.
 
So you downloaded the v52 .zip file and you are at the instruction:
Unzip the Configurable USB Loader .zip file and copy the contents of SDUSB-Loader_cfg##/inSDRoot to sd:/.
Click to expand...

The contents of that directory are two directories, "apps" and "usb-loader". Just extract both of those directories so that they go onto your SD card. The apps directory should merge with the apps directory already on your card and the usb-loader directory will be a new directory.
 
Yay, got my drive formatted to NTFS, everything working good. Being able just drag isos on is way better than that WBFS stuff.

I'm going to my bro's and will probably put usbloader on his wii and use it to rip my games. Is there any way to rip them as isos, if I format his drive as FAT?
 
mugwhump said:
Yay, got my drive formatted to NTFS, everything working good. Being able just drag isos on is way better than that WBFS stuff.

I'm going to my bro's and will probably put usbloader on his wii and use it to rip my games. Is there any way to rip them as isos, if I format his drive as FAT?
Click to expand...
No, but why do you need to use isos? You can use a Wii to rip your games to a FAT drive as .wbfs files that you can just copy over to your NTFS drive. They take up less room that way.

Also, I'm not sure how to take your first comment... what isos are you using if you haven't ripped your games yet?
 
Clipper said:
No, but why do you need to use isos? You can use a Wii to rip your games to a FAT drive as .wbfs files that you can just copy over to your NTFS drive. They take up less room that way.

Also, I'm not sure how to take your first comment... what isos are you using if you haven't ripped your games yet?
Click to expand...
My laser broke remember? I had to download the ones I have now... which is legal since I own them.
Right? Or should I edit that? >_>

But if wbfs files work on an NTFS drive without me having to make a partition then it's all good, thanks.
 
mugwhump said:
My laser broke remember? I had to download the ones I have now... which is legal since I own them.
Right? Or should I edit that? >_>
Click to expand...
Technically no, because by doing that, you are supporting the actions of the person who uploaded the game, which is definitely illegal. Morally is another question which is up to the individual. In terms of whether it will get you a temp ban from GAF, I really don't know, but given that emulation is open fare (of systems that you can't make your own backups from), you are probably OK.

And sorry, forgot it was you who had the broken laser. So many people to help...

But if wbfs files work on an NTFS drive without me having to make a partition then it's all good, thanks.
Click to expand...
Yep, that's the easiest way to go.
 
Clipper said:
The contents of that directory are two directories, "apps" and "usb-loader". Just extract both of those directories so that they go onto your SD card. The apps directory should merge with the apps directory already on your card and the usb-loader directory will be a new directory.
Click to expand...
Just wanted to comment that on Mac OS X, the contents of the two folders would NOT "merge".

So, if the destination SD card already has an apps and/or usb-loader folder, copying them from the .zip file will COMPLETELY REPLACE the two folders that were already on the SD card (for better or worse).
 
ShyGuy said:
Just wanted to comment that on Mac OS X, the contents of the two folders would NOT "merge".

So, if the destination SD card already has an apps and/or usb-loader folder, copying them from the .zip file will COMPLETELY REPLACE the two folders that were already on the SD card (for better or worse).
Click to expand...


yeah i'm having the same problems
but i tried something else and its sorta working but i got this error message saying *off the top of my head during the usb loader page

"error=1" and then i just reset the system

so is that all i need to get the usb loader, i think im missing a step/download, sorry again lol
but im just terrible at this :lol

and Clipper, i appreciate all your help man :D
 
friskykillface said:
yeah i'm having the same problems
but i tried something else and its sorta working but i got this error message saying *off the top of my head during the usb loader page

"error=1" and then i just reset the system

so is that all i need to get the usb loader, i think im missing a step/download, sorry again lol
but im just terrible at this :lol

and Clipper, i appreciate all your help man :D
Click to expand...
Did you install IOS249 and Hermes IOS222/223 as per the "What to install first" section?
 
Anyone else getting a DSI Exception Error code dump when trying to launch Cfg USB Loader v53a? Getting a code dump both with my old forwarder (Narolez v3 IIRC) and HBC.

I updated to 53a, updated Hermes CIOSes to v5, and tinkered about with Configurator 53 for the first time today. One of these three actions broke Cfg USB Loader, and I'm trying to figure out which...
 
Found a problem with one of my new settings, but that didn't fix the code dump.
However, switching to IOS249 v17 did, which tells me that something went wrong when I updated my Hermes IOSes to v5. I guess I'll tinker with it further tomorrow.
 
Mejilan said:
Found a problem with one of my new settings, but that didn't fix the code dump.
However, switching to IOS249 v17 did, which tells me that something went wrong when I updated my Hermes IOSes to v5. I guess I'll tinker with it further tomorrow.
Click to expand...
You weren't trying to launch to something other than IOS222 are you? Cfg only works with IOS223 and 224 as per-game options if they are v5.

Edit:One more thing: If you copy out or photograph the stack dump section of the DSI error, then it is fairly easy for one of the devs to work out where the error is occurring.
 
I was having a problem with my wbfs formatted drive crashing every so often so I figure I'll get a new one and format it to ntfs for use with the newest USB loader.

I've extracted all my games from the old drive to .iso files, copied these over onto the /wbfs folder on my new ntfs drive and made sure I'm running the most up to date fat version of the configurable usb loader but when I boot up the channel I get a message saying "partition wbfs1 not found" and this leaves me with the only option being choosing a different partition or formatting existing partitions.

Any help would be very welcome GAF, thanks in advance.
 
LeaveItAlone said:
I was having a problem with my wbfs formatted drive crashing every so often so I figure I'll get a new one and format it to ntfs for use with the newest USB loader.

I've extracted all my games from the old drive to .iso files, copied these over onto the /wbfs folder on my new ntfs drive and made sure I'm running the most up to date fat version of the configurable usb loader but when I boot up the channel I get a message saying "partition wbfs1 not found" and this leaves me with the only option being choosing a different partition or formatting existing partitions.

Any help would be very welcome GAF, thanks in advance.
Click to expand...
So did you choose your NTFS partition? If you do that and then save the global options, it will store the chosen partition in settings.cfg and that will be the default at startup. You can also set that partition as default by editing settings.cfg and/or config.txt (settings.cfg has priority). Seeing as you say you are using the fat version already, the option must already be saved in settings.cfg to start with WBFS1, so edit that file if you want to do it the manual way.
 
Clipper said:
You weren't trying to launch to something other than IOS222 are you? Cfg only works with IOS223 and 224 as per-game options if they are v5.

Edit:One more thing: If you copy out or photograph the stack dump section of the DSI error, then it is fairly easy for one of the devs to work out where the error is occurring.
Click to expand...

Ah, I've always been booting with the CIOS222-mload option, and I didn't change that. Thank you, I'll take a look tonight.
Is there a "preferred" way to install Hermes v5?

Going by what I was able to make out of the Spanish wiki, I think I wound up going:
CIOS202 (IOS60)
CIOS222 (IOS38 - mandated)
CIOS223 (IOS37)
CIOS224 (IOS57)

Once I switch to CIOS223 or 224 as my default, I should be good, right?
 
CIOS 224 causes the same (or extremely similar) code dump.
I'll try CIOS 223 a little later, but I'm not too hopeful.
Strange to be back to using CIOS249 again after all this time. *shrugs*
 
My drive is making some weird noices every now and then so I just want to ask if Nintendo considers my Wii as hacked when I only installed the Daigassu Channel ones I got the game throught the Twighlight hack.

IF I'll send it in I don't want to pay 120€ for this :(
 
Booting with CIOS222-mload, CIOS223-mload, and CIOS224-mload all cause the same or similar code dump.
On a whim, I tried CIOS223-yal, and that worked. Weird.
Games don't seem to work, though.
CIOS249 it is!
 
Mejilan said:
Booting with CIOS222-mload, CIOS223-mload, and CIOS224-mload all cause the same or similar code dump.
On a whim, I tried CIOS223-yal, and that worked. Weird.
Games don't seem to work, though.
CIOS249 it is!
Click to expand...
What I was trying to say earlier is that only 222 should work as startup. I know that doesn't explain your issues, though.

Incidentally, the next version of Cfg should have the ability to select startup ios separately to the default IOS chosen for games.
 
Clipper, thanks for all the help man. You are awesome.

Caesar III said:
My drive is making some weird noices every now and then so I just want to ask if Nintendo considers my Wii as hacked when I only installed the Daigassu Channel ones I got the game throught the Twighlight hack.

IF I'll send it in I don't want to pay 120€ for this :(
Click to expand...
That's what happened to mine before it dieeeeeeeeed D:

Delete your homebrew and send it in!
 
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