Thread: Wii Homebrew Help! [SOLVED]

Ok, very new to this - basically used the Lego Indy hack to install the homebrew channel & now want to be able to play some downloaded games on it - how do I go about doing this?
I've seen the wiihacks / homebrew sites, but there are pages and pages of stuff & not sure where to start!

I either want to burn the ISOs to dvds (1 of which I've done, but no idea on how to actually load the bugger) & also got the file on a usb stick, but again, no idea how to actually load it.

I have an Apps folder on the SD mem card, but need to know which apps go in there as there seems to be countless different things out there, but don't want to damage the Wii.

Any tips on exactly which apps I need to grab/install.

Cheers.

I soft modded my Wii, but didn't use the Lego Indy hack. Best site I got info from was www.wiihacks.com
namely this thread Full hacking guide for 4.2 system menus!!!!
You need to install a USB loader and BOOTMII into the APPS folder on your SD card, but I run everything I download from an external hard drive, so no need for discs. I'm really, really shite at explaining things, but have a good read of that thread above and it should answer most questions.

Cheers for the reply - think that was one of the pages that confused me

So on your one, do you have the SD card installed as well as having a usb hard-drive plugged in as well (so games on the hard-drive & system stuff on the SD card) ?
Is that about right?

So all I really need is to find a suitable usb loader thing to put on the SD card - hopefully that's it - just finding which one will do the job.

Also the downloaded games - are your ones ISO files?

Yeah, I've got the SD card installed with all the gubbins on. There is a way of getting the homebrew channel running from an external, but I couldn't get it working. There should be a link on wiihacks to a loader called USBLoader GX, that's the one I use.

And yep, they are all ISO files. I had to format the external with someting called WBFS Manager (on the pc) so the Wii would read it, and you also use that to transfer the ISO files to the external. I might be more help when I get home and I can sit in front of the Wii, then I can tell you exactly what I did. Won't be til later, though.

That guide confused the hell out of me when I first read it, but I took it nice and slowly, followed everything to the letter, and had no problems. If you fuck up, there's a guide to get your Wii back to it's original state.

Helpful guides that I used, save you sifting through all the shite on that site:
Softmod for ANY 4.2 Wii! alternative guide to full hacking
Loading and Playing Wii Backup Games from USB HDD (softmod only) guide for using an external

I'll check back later on this evening, when I can sit in front of the Wii, if you've any issues pop them in here and I'll try and help best I can.

Cheers for that - I've got the wbfs manager earlier (although thought that was for ripping original wii games to a file... maybe it's not ).
I'll have to find a spare usb stick to test and format it that way.
The only thing I didn't know was the usb loading thing, so will grab that to - I'll probably be home in the next few hrs so will give it all a test and let u know how I get on.

I've done mine with Lego Indy Hack too

I tried to load games with a USB stick, but it wouldn't work.... I had to get a USB external hard drive. There is a list of which ones are compatible with the Wii on that Wiihacks site. I use a 'Seagate' hard drive and it works fine

The WBFS manager is for transfering the ISO file to the USB hard drive.

Once you install the USB loader app you can also insert a standard Wii game into the console, and then rip it straight to the external hard drive! So basically borrow a mates game, rip it, then give it back to them and you'll have your own copy too

I have a 250GB hard drive which is plenty big enough. I have over 50 games on it and still room for LOADS more.

Originally Posted by DJ Abyss

I've done mine with Lego Indy Hack too

I tried to load games with a USB stick, but it wouldn't work.... I had to get a USB external hard drive. There is a list of which ones are compatible with the Wii on that Wiihacks site. I use a 'Seagate' hard drive and it works fine

The WBFS manager is for transfering the ISO file to the USB hard drive.

Once you install the USB loader app you can also insert a standard Wii game into the console, and then rip it straight to the external hard drive! So basically borrow a mates game, rip it, then give it back to them and you'll have your own copy too

I have a 250GB hard drive which is plenty big enough. I have over 50 games on it and still room for LOADS more.

Mines 250GB. I think there's a limit of 500 files using WBFS Manager as well. Only game I could never get working was Guitar Hero 6.

I like playing 2 player on the Lego games with my nipper - great fun

I managed to get a copy of Lego Star Wars 3 on the day it got released (25th March) downloaded off the net. F*ck paying 30 odd quid for it, lol

Originally Posted by DJ Abyss

I've done mine with Lego Indy Hack too

I tried to load games with a USB stick, but it wouldn't work.... I had to get a USB external hard drive. There is a list of which ones are compatible with the Wii on that Wiihacks site. I use a 'Seagate' hard drive and it works fine

The WBFS manager is for transfering the ISO file to the USB hard drive.

Once you install the USB loader app you can also insert a standard Wii game into the console, and then rip it straight to the external hard drive! So basically borrow a mates game, rip it, then give it back to them and you'll have your own copy too

I have a 250GB hard drive which is plenty big enough. I have over 50 games on it and still room for LOADS more.

Don't suppose there's any chance of you zipping up the files on your SD card & upping them is there? Would certainly save a lot of trial and error like the hours I spent this morning

Will also check into another external drive - would have liked to test with the usb stick first, so we'll see how that goes & if not, will see which ones are compatible.
Cheers.

Another couple of hrs wasted...
Managed to get a Geko thing (which says usb prog not installed) & the Loader GX 2.0 folder on the SD card, but goes black when selected....

There must be just a rar that can be unzipped in the route of the SD card with all needed files in the correct place & named as needed rather than all this p1ssing about.

Try this, it's a backup of my SD card from when I first modded mine.
WiiSDCard.rar
It's when it starts going non about IOS's and WAD's that I get all confused.

Originally Posted by Ghost Of War

Try this, it's a backup of my SD card from when I first modded mine.
WiiSDCard.rar
It's when it starts going non about IOS's and WAD's that I get all confused.

Cheers for that

I've just found some youtube vids as well with some links & instructions - about 1/2 way through that so will see what this does first & if no good, will re-install the backup I took & then grab your link for a try.
Will update once done - let's hope I don't break it!

Ok, all seems good aside from the usb stick I have not working (but guess that means I need a compatible one as per the list on that site).

For anyone that's interested, here's the 3 youtube vids used to do it (even with that it still took a good hour or 2).
This shows how to install the HomeBrew Channel (using the Lego Indy game) & also patching the Wii & getting the apps on there (with links).

YouTube - How to Hack any Wii - Complete Softmod Process Part 1 (Works on 4.3!)

YouTube - How to Hack any Wii - Complete Softmod Process Part 2 (Works on 4.3!)

YouTube - How to Hack any Wii - Complete Softmod Process Part 3 (Works on 4.3!)

** EDIT **

Sucess!!
My WD Elements drive (NTFS) works with it & using the Wii Backup Mgr, the iso files copy over

Can I just ask if you had to format your WD Elements hard drive?

I was going to do this months ago, but I couldn't get a copy of Lego Indy anywhere, it was going for between £80 and £90 a copy on ebay, and I wasn't paying that for a game to mod my Wii, it was actually cheaper to buy a mod chip and get it fitted, lol. Prices seem to have dropped a lot now, so I'll be picking myself a copy up soon.

Thing is I have a 500 gig WD Elements USB hard drive, but it is almost half full of music, I wanted to create a partition on it just for Wii Roms, but after reading through those guides I think you have to have a cleanly formatted drive for it too work, and I can't back up my music to anywhere in case something goes wrong

There is software you can get to partition a drive, but I don't want to risk it unless I have all my tunes backed up on another drive.

Si, you can use a partitioned drive no sweat mate. Mine is.

Sorry, I'm drunk. Use Windows to create free space on the drive, and use WBFS manager to format the free space for the Wii. I'm going to stop now because I'm very drunk and uk typing all this on ky phone. And I'm trying tobwatch night of the living dead.

Originally Posted by Ghost Of War

Si, you can use a partitioned drive no sweat mate. Mine is.

Sweet, I'll give it a go, I really didn't want to buy another USB hard drive, but on the other hand, I suppose you can never have too many

My WD Hard-drive was half full with films/tv shows - was already formatted to NTFS.

I didn't reformat - I just did a test first with that manager prog - set drive 1 up to look at that WD drive - all it asked was to create a folder on there which I let it do.
I then added an iso file to the other tab & transfered that game via the transfer button (took about 5mins) - that was then on the WD hard-drive.
Plugged that into the Wii, loaded up the USBloader thing, it said it found an ntfs drive & I said yep thats the one.
It then loaded a page up where I could select which game to play

So in short - nope didn't reformat - it just added another folder to the drive which stores the games in.

Must have improved something there then, I had to format part of the hard drive to WBFS. Ah well, glad you got it working, if you ever get Guitar Hero 6 to work, let me know how to do it, cos I'm frigging stumped on that one.

The USB loader program thing should be able to d/load the covers to the games (Provided it has net access) So when you are selecting a game, you can see all the Wii game cases

Originally Posted by DJ Abyss

The USB loader program thing should be able to d/load the covers to the games (Provided it has net access) So when you are selecting a game, you can see all the Wii game cases

Yeah, nice little feature that.

Worked out how to do the covers earlier - using the CFG USB Loader prog
And finally worked out how to rip a dvd to a Fat32 usb drive.
Wish there was a bit more documentation with these apps - only had to press the + button when in the app to start up the ripping process - was searching on google for bloody ages

As for Guitar Hero - not really my thing, so doubt I'd be able to help with that one. I have noticed though that only PAL games work. I did grab a couple of NTSC ones and they just bring up a black screen when trying to load them up.
I even tried removing the region thing, but they still didn't work.

Go to the homebrew channel and run Bootmii, and I think, I think there's an option to allow you to play NTSC games, and also an option to stop games checking for updates to the Wii firmware.

Originally Posted by Ghost Of War

and also an option to stop games checking for updates to the Wii firmware.

I've read 3 different tutorials in that forum (admittedly really struggling to get my head round it) but they all saying massive letters in bold, not to allow any updates from Nintendo; surely that option on the channel must be critical?

Am I better off hacking my Wii (why does that statement make me giggle like a little girl?) with the threads, or watching the YT vids?
My brain says through the threads as I can go one step at a time as I tried to clean up my crappy version of Vista following a YT 'helpful' vid and my laptop wouldn't reboot

I'll be honest, I only found out yesterday that COD Black Ops was available for the Wii (I haven't even had the luxury of playing that or MWF2 ) and I did cream myself a little, but I am not looking forward to hacking it (of softmodding, whatever), downloading the games via a torrent, and then trying to get the buggers to run.

You see, Ghosty's very clever (is that the first compliment I've given you on this forum?) but if RG was having a little trouble, then I'm proper cacking meself doing it, as I don't want the eldest's Wii "bricked", whatever the bloody hell that is.

Hmmm, decisions, decisions

Me clever? Fuck off. Box it up and send it to me, I'll sort it out for you. Black Ops is good on the wii as well, our Jack's been playing it, leaving my PS3 alone.