Homebrew Browser error: "Creating folders failed."

I've got the homebrew browser installed (used bannerbomb and hackmii installer on 4.0), and anytime I try to download any app, it goes through the download, and then after the download finishes, gives me an error - Creating folders failed.

My SD card currently contains only an "apps" folder, in which the homebrew browser is installed. After installing HBC, I deleted the bannerbomb exploit and the boot.elf for hackmii installer. Was that a no-no? Is there something else I need on this SD card to get the browser to install things properly?

EDIT: Note that the write-lock switch on my sd card is set to "off", and there is one other file on the root directory of the card aside from the "apps" folder, and that's "installer.log".



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/15/2009 12:22AM by teebonesy.

yeap, i can confirm.. i'm having the same problem w/ same install conditions as teebonesy

So, an update here:

I plugged my sd card back into my pc, installed a number of apps manually, and, why not, added the bannerbomb exploit back in (in other words, the "private" folder with all other subdirectories).

I'm now back in the homebrew browser, and trying to install Super Mario War. It actually got past the download without giving me the folders error, and it's now "extracting..."

It's just going ludicrously slow, so rather than wait for it to finish, I figure I'd just post here. I'm not sure if anything I did fixed the problem, but I'm left to believe it did. I would begin by putting the bannerbomb exploit back in, or maybe it's just the private>wii>title folders that are necessary?

EDIT: I can confirm that Super Mario War did successfully download, extract, and install.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/15/2009 01:11AM by teebonesy.

Seems very odd. Not had that issue before, but I very much doubt that it was the return of bannerbomb.
Generally, if I get any errors that are SD card related, I back up the contents to PC reformat it, then restore the files, making sure that I disconnect my reader via the "safely remove hardware icon". These things can be temperamental.

I did as Phoenix suggested however I'm still having the same problem listed above with most applications that I down load



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/15/2009 06:18AM by Envirus.

Oddly enough... I'm getting these issues now, too. Never had an issue before I upgraded to HBC 1.0.2.
Bad news for me, good news for you, since I can help find/work around the issue more easily.
Also having a unrecognisable character like: [] appear at the end of all text in HBB. May be related.

Apps that fail:
MPlayer Christmas Edition
Apps that succeed:
Super mario war wii

Where do you guys stand there? HBC version, text issue, specific apps that work/don't and whether you have DVDx installed too.

The reason super mario war takes so long is because it is a huge folder. And about the apps not working it might be because the little switch on the side is locked. I think its called "write-protection" or something. It probably doesn't have anything to do with it, but you may as well try.

Phoenix I had the same results. Mario works, but Mplayer doesn't. I was able to download Mario via homebrew channel, but ran into the cannot create folder error with Mplayer. So I tried starting it manually; downloading on PC and then putting it on SD card. When I try to start it the screen goes black and I have to restart at console. This has been the result with many apps actually.

Waxy I saw the recommendation to check the lock on the disk in another post somewhere, so I did verify that my SD card is unlocked. Thank you for the suggestion though.

I also have this problem. Get the "Creating Folders Failed." after trying FCE Ultra GX, but have success when I try WiiEarth. No DVDx installed. I also have the [] box after the text.

A very weird bug.
As I said up there, I had it crap up for me earlier.
I now have Mplayer CE and FCE ultra GX downloaded via hbb without issue.
Essentially, I did a fresh "install" of HBB: settings, images and all.
Delete your Homebrew Browser folder from \apps\
Delete the \temp\ folder (may or may not be in the root of the sd, but it contains .png files for the applications - if it contains something else, leave it be.)
Download HBB again
Restore to apps.
Launch from HBC (You'll unfortunately need to wait for the image pack and the app list to be downloaded again)
After that, it worked for me. Honestly, I'd love to pinpoint the issue but... that is the best I can do =/ Hope it works for others.

@Envirus
Unfortunately, I'm not having trouble launching Mplayer, and aside from video being a little blocky, it worked pretty well.

Maybe someone should contact Teknecal about this....

I took PhoenixTank's approach and did a fresh install of HBB and everything is working great now.

Glad to know it helped out =)

@WaxyPumpkin
Probably, though I don't really know what we can do beyond direct him to this thread.
I can only figure it is corruption of some kind, but don't really have a clue.
May leave a message on the talk page later.

Hi,

Didn't see this thread until today. The [] squares after each application name cause this issue and it happens when the list file is updated. When the list is updated I can fix it up a few seconds later. There is a permanent fix in the next version of HBB.

Please do let me know if any applications are still failing to create folders.

About the SD card lock, I did add a check to HBB which should check for this but only myself and another person tested it. It would be great if one of you could try locking your SD card and load HBB to see what it says. Thanks.

Hey there teknecal.
Just tested the write lock switch. Using a microSD in a SD adapter.
Network initialises, then "Could not write to SD" appears, along with a prompt about the write switch, then returns me to HBC.
Seems to work fine, but I'm curious, is it a simple check or something more complex?

Thanks for the bug explanation too.

Below is some code I'm using. When I tried writing only "test" to a file when the SD card lock was on and checked that "test" was written, it said that it was; so it seems to me that there is some sort of cache when writing to an SD card. So I just write 800 bytes which seems to be enough.

// Attempt to write to SD card to check for SD card lock
// There seems to be a small buffer, so we write 200 x 4 = 800 bytes of data
FILE *f = fopen("test.txt", "wb");
char mystring[5] = "Test";

int x;
for (x = 0; x < 200; x++) {
	fwrite (mystring, strlen(mystring), 1, f);
}
fclose(f);
	
// Try to open file
f = fopen("test.txt", "rb");

// If file not found
if (f == NULL) {
	fclose(f);
	die("\nCould not write to SD card. \nPlease ensure the little lock switch on your SD card is switched off.");
}
else {
	fseek (f , 0, SEEK_END);
	int test_size = ftell (f);
	rewind(f);
	fclose(f);
	
	// If the size of the file isn't 800 then something is wrong
	if (test_size != 800) {
		die("\nCould not write to SD card. \nPlease ensure the little lock switch on your SD card is switched off %i.",test_size);
	}
}
	
// We are done with our test so remove the file, so the test can be run on next boot
remove_file("test.txt");

I appreciate the code snippet. Makes sense, and is somewhat like what I was expecting, but I think that cache "peculiarity" would have messed with my head for several hours.
Just to double check, since HBB is closed source, would you object if I used the snippet in an app?

Nope I wouldn't object, use it if you like.

Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but was a resolution ever reached on this? I have HBB 0.3.1 and get the "Creating folders failed" message whenever I download something over 1MB (I'm guessing about this, it worked for 911k and below and failed for 1.1MB and above). I've tried 2 microSD cards and 2 different microSD readers fully formatted, as well as deleting and putting a fresh copy of HBB on the cards and the error remains. The reader is not write protected and the cards are not SDHC. I'm running 3.2 with HBC 1.0.3.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/01/2009 10:41PM by eelmonger.

Lol, i just came back to this thread today and thought about posting something cuz i just started having the same problem, but i decided not to post anything. i thought i could probably figure it out my self, but i may as well mention that this is happening to me too now.