Currently, the process I must undertake in order to even play Brawl goes like this:
- Reinstall motherboard drivers
- Restart computer
- Reformat external hard drive to NTFS
- Reformat external hard drive to WBFS
- Copy Brawl ISO to external hard drive
- Start up any USB Loader
- Play Brawl once
This obstacle course, that I must navigate every time I want to play any Wii game, is a symptom of three problems that defy everything I do in order to solve them.
Problem 1: USB loaders are apparently single-use.
USB loaders work fine... once. Just once. No matter what USB loader I use or what game I play, once I stop playing that game, all USB loaders insist that there is no hard drive plugged into the Wii. The only way for me to fix this is to format the hard drive as NTFS, and then format it back to WBFS (and my Wii only wants to talk to WBFS drives, even though I have all the stuff necessary for using FAT drives), and then copy the iso back over. This is complicated by:
Problem 2: USB 2.0 drivers are apparently single-use.
In other words, every time I shut down my computer, it "forgets" that it has USB 2.0 ports and insists on doing all transfers at USB 1.1 speed. Which means that step 5 up there, in which I shuttle seven-and-a-half gigabytes to an external hard drive, takes about three hours. Three hours after which I will no longer be in the mood to Brawl. I can reinstall my motherboard drivers and then restart, which fixes the problem and allows me to transfer at full USB 2.0 speeds... until, of course, I restart my computer again. Which basically means I have to reinstall every time I want to play Brawl.
Problem 3: Nintendo decided it would be a jolly good idea to disguise a lawnmower engine as a DVD drive.
This one speaks for itself, and isn't really fixable. I can technically play Brawl with the disc, but that means half an hour of removing and reinserting the disc until the Wii decides it wants to read it, and then I must play while constantly listening to the terminally noisy drive motor. No thanks, pal.
So, I need two questions answered, in descending order of urgency:
1: How do I make USB loaders work more than once?
2: How do I get the USB 2.0 drivers to stick?
I realize that neither of these questions is strictly Brawl-hacking-related, but they are nonetheless in the way of my Brawl hacking. And my Wii gaming in its entirety.
The motherboard in question is an Intel Classic DG43NB. I'm running Windows 7 Home Premium x64. The hard drive is a SimpleTech Signature Mini "espresso" 120GB, which is listed as compatible.