general after softmod questions

Hello All,

Posting a few noob questions. Your patience and understanding is certainly appreciated.

I acquired a recently softmodded wii. It has the following loaded

1) HBC
2) usb loader as a channel
3) Gamma loader as a channel installed

This is an awesome site and I'm trying to read up on as much as I can but it is like trying to get a drink from the firehose. LOL

That being said, I'm sure I'll have many questions along the way but I'll start with these first. Again, these are noobie questions, hey..I gotta start somewhere, right ?? ;-).


1) I'm nervous about downloading/playing PAL games due to fear it might overwrite something and render my softmod useless. I 'think' I've read that on softmod, any region game can be played. So, do I have a valid concern or am I just being paranoid? How can I safeguard the wii and prevent something from happening in terms of accidental updates etc.

In my reading, I've come across something called a 'brickblocker" - can I install that to safeguard the wii? To keep things simple, I was told not to update the system version. Currently, it is on 3.1u. Originally, I'm told it was 2.2u but using MarioKart, it was safely upgraded.

2) For the most part, I'm not planning on transferring games from Original DVDs to USB hard drive. I plan on using .ISO's files in conjunction with WBFS manager to transfer the .ISOs to the USB hard drive. When I transfer the ISO to a WBFS formatted drive, the options are set to download the covers as well. However, why is it that the game covers are visible through the WBFS manager for all the games, but for some games, when looking them through USB loader or Gamma loader, they are not visible ?

3) Can I launch/play scrubbed games ? Should I treat them no different when installing them ?

Thanks for your time

1. U can play out of ur region games, just do not ever update from them.
For protection u can get pre/priiloader which can block disc updates and u will be OK
(Notice: preloader does not work on 3.1, it only works on: 3.2, 4.0, 4.1, 4.2)(best ver to be in now is 4.1)

3. U should be able to play scrubbed games, they work the same way as regular games(but im using dvd-r and not usb so dono if its diff for it)

1. Yes any region will work with a Softmodded wii. Updates from different regions WILL brick your wii. Downloading and then installing Priiloader to your wii will protect it from different disk updates and you can also add other hacks that make using the wii very easy.

2. When you download the covers using WBSF Manager I beleive that is only for the PC. In USB loader GX if thats what your using make sure you have internet connection and click on the Cover on the left side when you click on a game. It'll download all the covers for you and then you will have them on your wii to access games easily.

(WBSF Manager can only "see" or read ISO files, so if your using a USB Hard drive you need Ciso files. They can be downloaded or you can convert ISO files to Ciso files.
Personally I use WBSF intelligent V6 GUI which is a very simple program that I find better then WBSF Manager. You chose which one you want to use, if one works better for you then use it.)


3. Scrubbed games work exactly the same as regular ISO games or Ciso games. Scrubbed is just that something has been removed from the image file, either an Update or the region was changed or the main.dol file was replaced to get rid of pretection that Nintendo has inserted.

I hope this answers your question. This is a lot of information to read but I hope it helps. If you need help just post, or more direct help PM me!

Dami/FinalTriumpth - Thank you both for providing feedback.

My takeaways from your feedbacks are:

--PAL games, they are fine to run. I'll start to download them, making extra sure NOT to do any updates, if prompted.


--To safeguard from the system getting updated, what are my options, if I'm on 3.1u ? As I read that preloader is available from 3.2u onwards

--Thanks for the clarifications about the downloading of the covers. It appears I have the Waninkoko's USB loader+cfg ( SD/USB loader 1.5+cfg2.0). That loader has the option to "download all" covers

--I didn't quite understand the comments about converting ISOs to Ciso files but I'll start to research that further. I'll also research WBSF intelligent V6 GUI/

Cheers,
Gadgetzilla