Can't read boot.elf (-1)!

I've been trying to get the Homebrew Channel on my Wii all day. I think the Packgen a really awesome idea, but I just can't get it to work.

First, I tried to get a bunch of apps and the Twilight Hack onto my SD card as a Packgen (which came out as a ".exe.zip" file, I'm on a Mac so I don't think it saved as a .exe file), but it wouldn't show up on my SD card when I put it in the Wii. Then I browsed the forums and found the standalone Twilight Hack, which showed up on my Wii, but when all the code is flying across the screen, it suddenly stops and says "Can't read boot.elf (-1)! Can't find files to load. Hanging...". I got on a Windows computer and tried to recreate my Packgen as a true .exe this time, but the same thing happened: "Can't read boot.elf (-1)! Can't find files to load. Hanging...".

Could someone help me please? Thanks.


EDIT: Seems like a lot of people are getting this problem. My packgen is definitely in the root of the SD card, as well as some N64 roms and mp3s.

[Terdinglage]

Did you select the homebrew channel and the Twilight Hack? It is crucial that you select both. Judging by the error you are getting, I don't think you downloaded the Homebrew Channel along with everything. What is happening is the Twilight Hack is looking for the Homebrew Channel boot.elf but its not there so it errors out.

Do this:

1. Redownload the pack as a regular .zip, making sure you select both the Twilight Hack and the Homebrew Channel in addition to you hombrew you want to have.

2. Create a folder on your desktop and extract the contents of the .zip to that folder.

3. Open the folder you created, and copy what you extracted, then paste it onto the root of your SD card.

4. Put the SD card into your Wii, and follow my video tutorial and you should be good to go!

Let me know if you have more problems. Also, may I ask where else other people are commenting on this problem? I would like to get it resolved for all the users, so if I need to adjust the PackGen instructions I will.

Er, well, I've seen a couple of people with this problem. Here are two:


http://wii.brewology.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=260
http://wii.brewology.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1304

And I tried what you said, but I got the same boot.elf message. Just to clarify, Wiibrew.zip goes in the same file tier as the "private" folder, right? Or does it go in "private", or in "wii", or some other folder? I've got it as high in the hierarchy as it can go.

[Terdinglage]

Er, well, I've seen a couple of people with this problem. Here are two:


http://wii.brewology.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=260
http://wii.brewology.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1304

And I tried what you said, but I got the same boot.elf message. Just to clarify, Wiibrew.zip goes in the same file tier as the "private" folder, right? Or does it go in "private", or in "wii", or some other folder? I've got it as high in the hierarchy as it can go.

It should be in the 'root', or the very top of the hierarchy, as you described. The only thing I can suggest is that you format your SD card and try making it once more from scratch, but this time use the auto extracting zip. The target of the auto-extracting zip should be X:\, where X is the letter of your SD Card. If the format doesnt work, I will attempt to recreate the issue and hopefully figure out whats going wrong, but I need to get home first.

I used a different SD card this time, and the same thing happened.

Other things of interest:
--For some reason, the Twilight Hack looked like regular Twilight save data this time. Like a regular Twilight Princess looks like a Triforce with wings or something, and the hacked data has a different image and says "Twilight Hack by Team Twiizers". This time, on the newer SD card, the hacked data's image was the Triforce with wings, and it didn't say "Twilight Hack by Team Twiizers." Only the US save data looked like that, though, the Europe and Japan save data still looked like hacked data. Even though it looked like regular data, though, it was definitely the hacked data. It contained the two hacked files with twenty hearts. This might be because I already had some Twilight Princess data on that card to begin with (in fact, that may be the cause of my whole problem...).
--The two cards I've used were a Lexar 1 GB SD card and a SanDisk 1 GB microSD card with SD adapter.
--It also says something like "Can't read boot.dol (-1)! Looking for boot.elf" higher up on the screen. Then there's a dozen or so lines of unimportant random code, each line looking very similar to the last save for some different random numbers, and then it says "Can't read boot.elf (-1)! Can't find files to load. Hanging."

The next thing I'm going to try is to totally erase everything off my SD card and try again (like you suggested with the reformatting).

That didn't work either. Even with a reformatted SD card with nothing on it but the Twilight Hack and the PackGen zip (and a bunch of N64 ROMs and a bunch of mp3s and two m4vs), it still couldn't read boot; elf or dol.

[Terdinglage]

I think your problem might be that you didn't delete your Twilight Princess saved file. Also, you should only select one region version of the Twilight Hack (the one that corresponds to your disk). Try doing it again, but make sure you delete any Twilight Princess saved data from your Wii's internal memory. I would also try doing so with your regular SD card, rather than you micro with SD adapter.

Hm. Something I just noticed--on my download log, of the six times I tried to download Wiibrew.zip, all of them say "Decompression failed." This sounds like an issue.

[Terdinglage]

I will run through a sample test as soon as I'm finished eating, hopefully we can get to the bottom of this.

EDIT: I just downloaded the file and didn't get an error. Are you saving it to your hard drive or opening it as temporary?

I reformatted my non-microSD SD card, filled it with only Wiibrew.zip (of which my download log tells me "Decompression Failed") and the U.S. Twilight Hack (I deleted the RZDJ and RZDP folders from the "twilight-hack-v0" folder I downloaded, leaving RZDE, which did the trick), some N64 ROMS, and some media files, and got the same error message. I deleted all Zelda save files from my Wii prior to inserting the SD card.

I save Wiibrew.zip to my desktop and then put it on the SD card.

The exact error message I'm getting, which I've been paraphrasing, is this:

Could not read boot.elf (-1)!
Found no code to load. Hanging.

Thank you for taking your time to help me remedy this. I'm curious about this "Decompression failed" business. On my download log, it usually says the name of the file I downloaded and, under it in smaller print, its file size. But for the six times I download Wiibrew.zip, it says "Decompression failed" where it should say the file size. I've been downloading it with Safari on a Mac. I could try downloading with FireFox or on a Windows computer.

[Terdinglage]

Thanks for the extra information. From reading that it now seems that your .zip file must be corrupt in some way. It finds the boot.elf, but there is no code inside it. I would recommend trying it within windows and Firefox, however I think it may also work if you use Firefox on your mac.

I will reboot into mac now and test this further. Thanks for your thoroughness in helping us resolve this issue.

Mac FireFox results--still doesn't work. It didn't warn me about Decompression failure like Safari did, but I still got the boot.elf message when I tried it on my Wii.

Also interesting--there are two "Wiibrew.zip" files on my Desktop now, one from Safari and one from FireFox. If I double click either of them, a warning box comes and says "Archive Utility: Unable to unarchive "Wiibrew.zip" into "Desktop". (Error 1 - Operation not permitted.)". I think you're right--these zip files are corrupt for some reason. I'll go try my Windows.

Windows Opera results--still doesn't work. I replaced the possibly-corrupt Mac Wiibrew.zip on my SD card with a Wiibrew.zip I downloaded on Opera on a Windows. I'm pretty sure the file wasn't corrupt, I was able to open it and see what was inside. Still got the boot.elf message. Dang.

Unfortunately, Opera is the only operating system that will work on my extremely-buggy decade-old Windows; both FireFox and Explorer implode upon startup. The only other trial I can run is to create an .exe file on Opera, but I did that earlier and it didn't work.

[Terdinglage]

Im getting the same permission errors as you. to get this to work properly on a mac you need to download it as a windows executable file, oddly enough. it will then open the zip as a standard issue zip file.

[Terdinglage]

The issue has been resolved. A loose empty file was corrupting the icon for mac users. It should now work fine!