Nintendo Wii WAD files are like a zip or cab file on PC that contain a full set of files for installing an.app (application, program, game). The main purpouse of Wii WAD files is to install custom made channels and cIOS, but they are also considered to be an equivalent of the ROM and ISO files majority of which are warez. (thaT I DOWNLOAD TO THE WII ALL AT ONCE ) but i have 157 wad files i load aLL at once when modding my wii's all the Cios wads, d2x rev6 wads, ios wads, RVL etc. Is this ok or should i be instaling them in seperate batchs at a time?
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This is a quick start guide on how to use USB Loader GX, a popular USB loader for the Wii that’s used to play games from a USB drive.
What you need
- A Wii
- A USB drive
Make sure you have installed cIOS before following this!
We recommend you copy games over with Wii Backup Manager if you use Windows, or Witgui if you use macOS.
To play multiple games, we recommend a USB-powered external hard drive for your Wii. We will refer to it as a “USB drive” in this guide. Most of the ones you can find on the market should work fine if they have USB 2 backwards compatibility. Drives with 1 TB or more in capacity will work. A flash drive will also work, but due to the size of a flash drive, it won’t be able to store as many games.
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
appsfolder on your USB drive or SD card. - Insert your USB drive, and SD card if you’re using one, into your Wii and launch USB Loader GX from the Homebrew Channel.
Getting Started
There is no “guide” to use the USB Loader GX app. This is intended to help you learn how to use it, by giving you a quick start. You should be able to figure out all the great features of USB Loader GX by using it.
- If USB Loader GX says “Waiting for HDD…” with a 20 seconds countdown, it’s likely that it can’t find the USB drive. Try to exit out of the app, and then relaunch it after you put the USB drive in the other port of the Wii.
- You can press the 1 Button on your Wii Remote to open up a dialog to download game covers and artwork from GameTDB. It might take a while to download the game covers and artwork, depending on how many games you have.
- There are WADs that can open up USB Loader GX if you load it from the Wii Menu. This is called a forwarder WAD. An official forwarder WAD can be found here, and a version for the vWii (Wii U) can be found here.
- GameCube or “custom” Wii games may or may not have a custom banner that USB Loader GX uses. To enable this, find or write
CustomBannersURL = http://banner.rc24.xyz/in config/GXGlobal.cfg on your USB drive. Then you can use the “Custom Banner” download by pressing the 1 Button on your Wii Remote.
User Interface
There are multiple buttons in the USB Loader GX interface.
Main Menu
These are the functions the buttons found on the top of the main menu do, from left to right:
- Star - Shows games that you have marked as “favorites”.
- Search - Lets you search for games by name.
- Sort - Cycles through sorting methods for games.
- Platform - Choose to sort games by platform.
- Category - Sorts games by category.
- List - Shows games in a list view.
- Multi-Cover View - Shows games in a multi-cover view.
- Cover Carousel View - Shows games in a carousel view.
- Wii Menu View - Shows games in a Wii Menu view.
- Parental Control - Locks USB Loader GX.
- Disc - Loads a game via disc.
Pressing any game will allow you to play the game by pressing “Start”.
There are also other buttons:
- Icon - “Install” a game, i.e. loading it from disc and dumping it.
- Gears - Settings for USB Loader GX.
- SD card - Remount the SD card.
- Homebrew - Load homebrew apps.
- Wii - Open up the HOME Menu, which can also be accessed by pressing the HOME Button on the Wii Remote.
- Power Button - Turn off your Wii.
On the middle of the bottom of the screen, you can see how much space is free on your USB drive and how many games you have.
Options once complete
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We have many other tutorials that you might like.
On a Wii up to 4.1 What you need:
- SD card (1gb is good enough)
- Latest version of Wad Manager (mirror) (current version 1.3)
- Wiiware/VC Games in the form of .wad files
How to:
- Download a Wad Manager (or use link above) and put it in the “apps” (no quotes) folder in the ROOT of your SD card.
- Once you download a .wad file of your choice, make a “WAD” (all caps no quotes) folder in the ROOT of your SD Card and put your downloaded .wad files there.
- Turn on your Wii and run the Hombrew Channel.
- Load Wad Manager and choose SD Card and install the .wad file that you want.
- Once it is finished installing go back to the Wii Menu and your .wad should be added as a channel like you would’ve bought the game.
This is ideal because if you are still using Wii64 emulator you can use this method and the loading times are as fast as a bought VC game. Enjoy .
On a 4.2+ Wii
First softmod your Wii.
Softmod for 4.2: Here
Softmod for 4.3: Here
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