HD Loader freezes

**jimmyd** · 11-20-2009,11:42 PM

I'm running a 250 GB drive with HD loader through freemcboot and it was working just fine until today. I disconnected the harddrive to connect to my external enclosure to install a few more games and after I reconnected it to the PS2, HD loader would not get past the loading screen. So what would the problem be and how could I fix it? I've tried both the HD loader that came with free mcboot and 0.8c.

Thanks in advance.

**JNABK** · 11-21-2009,12:56 AM

If you installed more games and/or deleted some, it may take a while to re-populate a new list in HDL, so give it plenty of time to do that. If you disconnected it too soon and it was in the process of popluating the new list, you may have corrupted it and will need to delete the old one and allow HDL to re-create a fresh new list.

You can delete the old gamelist.log by using uLaunchELF to access the HDD and look in the HDL partition.

**jimmyd** · 11-21-2009,11:23 AM

So I tried to start from the beginning. I formatted my memory and my HDD, reinstalled free mcboot and reinstalled all the games. Now, I've left HDL on for the last 15 minutes with no luck. Any ideas?

uLauchELF gets stuck on "Loading HDD Module" when I select the HDD.

**TnA** · 11-21-2009,12:00 PM

Depending, on how many games you have added and how big they were + your HD is, it can take up to an hour or even more.

The uLE-Failure is interesting then.
Maybe you´ve mixed 28/48Bit?!

Is your HD properlyconnected?
Take a look at the HD-Pins inside the IDE-Connector, the Pins on BBA/NWA and the connection on PS2, were you connect the NWA at.

Kennedy · 11-21-2009,12:38 PM

An hour seems extremely excessive, even for a very large HDD with a large number of games installed (as is my case). I have 132 games installed on a 750 GB IDE HDD and it never takes more than five to ten minutes for HDLoader to read it after a game installation.

**TehJawknee** · 11-21-2009,12:52 PM

Originally Posted by Kennedy

An hour seems extremely excessive, even for a very large HDD with a large number of games installed (as is my case). I have 132 games installed on a 750 GB IDE HDD and it never takes more than five to ten minutes for HDLoader to read it after a game installation.

132 games is quite a lot. Your HDD needs to re-read each game individually to make up a list. Unless you loaded a bad game into your HDD. Try going back to the games you had loaded before and it will work. Then load each new game individually. I'm sure that one of your games will be the problem. I had to re-rip Manhunt three times before the problem in my system went away.

**JNABK** · 11-21-2009,01:08 PM

Originally Posted by jimmyd

So I tried to start from the beginning. I formatted my memory and my HDD, reinstalled free mcboot and reinstalled all the games. Now, I've left HDL on for the last 15 minutes with no luck. Any ideas?

uLauchELF gets stuck on "Loading HDD Module" when I select the HDD.

Have you checked to see if the HDD your using is compatible with a PS2? Some arent compatible: HDD Compatability Chart

Also check the connections real well as TnA mentioned, for dirt, dust, bent or broken pins. Some pins arent used in the PC that are used in the PS2.

PS: and yes, an hr is a bit excessive for HDL to re-populate a new list....a format might take that long though.

**TnA** · 11-21-2009,01:35 PM

Originally Posted by JNABK

PS: and yes, an hr is a bit excessive for HDL to re-populate a new list....a format might take that long though.

o.k., it is a bit much and of course I also never had to wait that long, but...
I also had a Maxtor 250GB and it seemed to run in PIO only (before it died). If he had a faulty drive, or one which do not support a needed DMA-Mode, this might take that long, too.

Better wait an hour for repopulation on a large drive, than thinking it is faulty when all is (tech-wise) good.
I just remember(ed, when I wrote it) back to a thread, where it took very long.

**TehJawknee** · 11-21-2009,01:46 PM

So nobody thinks it could simply be a bad rip of one of his games?

Kennedy · 11-21-2009,01:54 PM

That's definitely a possibility. A bad HDL game partition also springs to mind. About 6 months ago now my drive's filesystem had been corrupted due to me accidentally formatting it in uLaunchELF (I was new to this stuff back then!) and then attempting to recover it in WinHIIP, which it appeared to succeed in doing. However, many of my games started having problems, such as FFXII freezing at the FMVs, MGS3 freezing after cutscenes and some such as Shadow of the Colossus refusing to start at all. I had to reformat my entire HDD (I did a full fromat, which took almost 3 hours due to the drive size) and reinstall my games one by one all over again. It took a while, but my games worked perfectly again, and I had learned a valuable lesson.

Since the OP's drive is only a third of the size of mine, however, I doubt that it would take anywhere near as long as mine to completely format. Try doing a full format if you haven't done so already (not a quick format). This will clean the HDD entirely.

Edit: Before resorting to a reformat, you may want to try the 0.8b version of HDLoader. If I recall correctly, others have had issues with HDLoader 0.8c freezing on them, but have no such issue with 0.8b. The only drawback to this is that it doesn't have the God of War II fix built in, which will prevent that game and some others such as Metal Slug Anthology (the 6th game in this compilation doesn't start on HDL versions prior to 0.8c) from functioning correctly.

User Tag List

Thread: HD Loader freezes

Tweet

LinkBack

Thread Tools

Display


	Would you like to get all the new info from PSX-Scene in your email each day? Subscribe to our Daily Digest! Want to learn more about the team keeping you up to date with the latest scene news? Read about them now! Check out our Developer bios, too!