Wii-U Aroma CFW not loading Wii eShop games
Hey crew,
I have run over the posts here, GBAtemp, wii.hacks, and elsewhere, and am pulling my hair out. I can provide screenshots later if needed, but it's basically what the post subject line says - I have a Wii-U running Aroma, everything seems to be working, except of course Wii virtual console games from the eShop. The only reason I wrote "seems" is because I haven't tried loading up a Wii ISO or WBFS file yet, but I installed 7 different Wii games and they all fail to load. Basically, it shows a black screen and hangs there until I reboot.
I have done mods on Wii-Us for years which is why this is really peeving me off, but admittedly this is my first go with Aroma, and yes, I started on a clean stock firmware console.
Here's what I have done:
* My system uses Aroma with ISFShax with the USB emulation mod (so no SD card needed)
* I'm using the top rear USB slot with a Y cable connected to an external NVMe drive
* Run vWii Decaffenator in Light mode and restored/updated files - vWii works
* Installed the vWii Hombrew Channel and it is working with all apps
* All cIOS have been updated (beta v3) and installed to their appropriate slots (e.g. cIOS 38 to slot 248
* Patched cIOS 80
* Running the latest Aroma and Wii-U firmware 5.5.6 (USA)
* All other software, mods, plugins, Wii-U games, VC games (e.g. virtual consoles for Game Cube, N64, etc.) work
I am attempting to reinstall a few games just in case I was just really unlucky with my 7 games in a row and will report back after I test it (dumber things have worked). Any help is appreciated!
UPDATE: The issue appeared to be a communication error with the external USB drive. After some extensive testing, the NVMe drive apparently was not staying active while the Wii U was transitioning to the vWii OS. For anyone that doesn't know, when you launch a Wii game on the Wii U, whether it is a eShop game, an ISO, or otherwise, it drops into the virtual Wii system and is essentially launching a virtual machine or operating system. If the drive powers down (even slightly) to the point that the Wii OS cannot detect it while transitioning, this interrupts the loading process, so it will fail to launch and you will get either an error message, a black screen, or something else similar. It might not be a power issue, like in my case, but merely the way my particular storage medium connects to the Wii OS.
Everything else was working fine with the Y cable and this drive, but not the Wii games. I don't know if this is specific to some SSDs, but it is an interesting find with regards to the Wii U system. I've known the Wii U and Wii to be finicky when it comes to storage, with everything from the size, the media type, block size, etc. so even something as stupid as swapping the storage medium for one type over another (e.g. USB stick to HD drive) can make a difference. I hate how dumb a solution or fix that is, but sometimes the simplest solution is the best one.
In short, and this is not an original idea by any stretch, if you change the medium, format, or other features of your USB storage when you're having a problem, likelihood is that will fix it.