USB Loaders allow you to rip your own discs to an external USB hard drive and then run them from there. This will minimise load times, generally improve performance and means you can switch which Wii game you want to play without leaving your couch.
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We highly recommend Configurable USB Loader (known as Cfg for short) as it has the most features and the best customisability of the many USB Loaders available. Other loaders can be found here.
Configurable USB Loader does not require a hard drive, but it is recommended for installing games. If you just want to use it for region free, then choose SD when you are given the option.
UPDATE
Make sure your USB Drive is formatted as FAT32 or NTFS. Do not format it as other types such as extFS or WBFS, the latter is an old format of storing Wii games. Instructions Downloading. Extract USB Loader GX and put it in the apps folder on your USB Drive. Insert your USB Drive into your Wii, and launch USB Loader GX from the Homebrew Channel.
The new version of d2x allows you to bypass IOS reload. That means the handful of games that didn't work before (Metroid Prime Trilogy, Sam and Max, CSI: Deadly Intent, House of the Dead, etc.) now work perfectly.
What you should install first![]()
What you need
Preparing your hard drive
You will install your games onto a partition of the hard drive (or an SD/SDHC card). As of the v62 series, that partition can be formatted as WBFS, FAT32, NTFS or EXT. If you want to use the Dolphin emulator, you should use NTFS, but otherwise it is recommended that you use FAT32. If you want to play GCN games with DIOS MIOS, you must choose FAT32. The final choice is up to you. The following sections will provide some info about each format type and why you might want to use it or not use it, as well as information on how to prepare your drive for that format if you do want to use it.
WBFS
This is a format type created specifically for Wii games, however it is no longer recommended. It is not compatible with GCN games. There are slight instabilities when deleting games on drives of this format and you cannot use the partition to store other files (i.e., it can only store Wii games).
There is one minor benefit in WBFS that it supports drives with a sector size of 4k. These drives are very rare, but other format types may not work on these drives.
If you do want to format to WBFS for some reason, you can use the GParted tool to prepare your drive for formatting to WBFS with Cfg.
FAT32
This is the most compatible format type and is required if you want to install GCN games. It can store any Wii games and you can store other files on the same partition if you like. This format type is supported by all operating systems. The only real negative is that it has a file size limit of 4GB. This won't affect games as they are automatically split, but perhaps it might affect other files you want to save on the same partition
Your Wii games need to be installed to either a FAT partition or a WBFS partition on the drive. Most external drives come formatted as FAT32 and do not need to be reformatted for use with the loader. If you wish to format a drive to FAT32, this tool is recommended if you are using Windows (the partitioning application that comes with Windows won't create a FAT32 partition of a large enoguh size). GParted or any other partitioning application can also be used.
NTFS
NTFS is a Windows drive format standard and Windows probably formatted your drive this way if you use it. It allows for large files and is quite fast. Unfortunately, other OSes do not have full compatibility for this format and it is not currently compatible with GCN games. This is the choice you want to make if you want to rip games for use with the Dolphin emulator as well as play them from the hard drive. Also, Cfg has some problems with case sensitivity when using NTFS drives.
If using an NTFS drive, you need to add the following options to config.txt or meta.xml. See the Configurable Options page for information on how to do this.
If you want to use the Dolphin emulator, you should also add the following option to the same file to get Cfg to write games as .iso files instead of .wbfs. Note that the games will fill more space on the drive, but Dolphin does not currently accept .wbfs input, so it is necessary.
You can format a drive to NTFS using most partitioning applications or Windows.
EXT
This format covers ext2, ext3 and ext4 formats. These are the formats most commonly used for Linux systems. These formats have the same benefits as NTFS.
EXT support is currently read-only, so there is no way to write games to the drive except via your PC, making it a poor choice. It is also incompatible with GCN games.
Note that ext support is very new (started in December 2010) and there may be bugs.
You can format a drive to an ext format using most partitioning applications or Linux.
What to download
Installation procedure
Meta.xml steps
These steps need to be performed to make Configurable USB Loader try to launch IOS248 or IOS224 at startup. If you do not perform these steps, you will get an IOS249 is a stub message when trying to use the loader. There are several options that you can use.
Perform only one of these bulleted sets of steps (your choice):
Using the Loader
++Using the Loader Without a Hard Drive
Configuring Configurable USB Loader
The Configurable Options page details all the things you can do to configure your loader. It also provides the Configurator application that allows you to set the options in a GUI interface. README-CFG.txt in the Cfg Loader zip file also contains a description of all the options and features.
One suggested option is write_playlog=1. This will make it so that your Wii logs all played games and their times played to the Wii Message Board, just as if you had played the game from the disc. See the Configurable Options page for more info on how to set that option into config.txt.
Updating Configurable USB Loader
With v35a6 and later, this can be done with your Wii online, or you can upgrade manually.
Note that if you have never done the meta.xml steps above, you need to do so.
Online installation
Manual installation
My game doesn't work!
FAQ
What Next?
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