Trouble running VHBL? All your answers here!

We released VHBL for the Monster Hunter exploit yesterday, and despite my attempts to make this release quite user-friendly, many of you are running into issues while trying to use it. In this article I will do my best to give answers to the most frequent problems

I created a INSTALL.ZIP file and copied it to my Vita following the instructions, but VHBL can’t find the INSTALL.ZIP

The symptoms for this one are clear: you copied a savedata containing the INSTALL.ZIP to your vita, but when you try to install it from VHBL, VHBL just shows you the files inside the savedata (PIC1.PNG, etc…) and the INSTALL.ZIP is not even there!

The most likely cause for this is that the file you think was named INSTALL.ZIP is not correctly named. In particular, the uppercase matters, and the extension matters. INSTALL.ZIP is good, but install.zip is not good, INSTALL.zip is not good, and, the most frequent situation if you are a Windows noob: INSTALL.ZIP.zip is not good.

The last one is the most interesting. By default Windows will not show you the extension for files it “knows” how to use. This is typical for zip file. So, as in the screenshot below, you will think that the file is named INSTALL.ZIP, while in fact its real name is INSTALL.ZIP.zip. To solve this, uncheck the hide extensions for known file types option in Windows

This is not good. You can tell by the fact that PIC1.PNG is named PIC1, and DATA.BIN is named DATA : Windows is hiding the file extensions, so INSTALL.ZIP is actually named INSTALL.ZIP.zip here, which is no good

I created INSTALL.ZIP correctly, but when I try to install it with VHBL, VHBL stops after a few files and freezes

wMenu (the menu that ships by default with VHBL) only supports uncompressed zips. In most compression tools, you will find a compression option when you create the INSTALL.ZIP file, and you need to set it to “store”.

A typical mistake, depending on your compression tool, is that if you add files to an existing INSTALL.ZIP file, the tool will not give you the option to choose “store” when adding files, and instead it will use its best compression method. This is for example the case for 7zip on windows. Typically this could happen when you try to add roms to an emulator’s INSTALL.ZIP file. In that case, what I personally do is unpack the INSTALL.ZIP file, add my roms to the right folder, then create a new INSTALL.ZIP archive from scratch

I read the “store compression” thingy above… I think it is awfully complex, is there another way?

Other menus exist for VHBL with more options. One of them is yMenu, which supports all zip compression levels, as well as rar file (INSTALL.RAR). You can find a fully working copy of yMenu for VHBL 1.80 here. To install it, just open your VHBL savedata (the one with the exploit), and copy all the files from yMenu in the VHBL savedata. This will replace, among other things, the file EBOOT.PBP from wMenu with the one from yMenu

I can run emulators, but how do I add roms and/or bios?

For legal reasons the pre-packaged emulator files we distribute don’t have roms, sometimes they don’t have other required files (gba bios, for example).

In that case, you need to add your roms inside the INSTALL.ZIP file, always by setting the “store” compression method (read above)

Roms are installed the same way you install homebrews! The emulator won’t magically find the roms inside INSTALL.ZIP, you need to install the roms by going to the SAVEDATA folder in VHBL, and “install” the homebrew. If you had already installed the homebrew, don’t worry, VHBL will just replace the files and add the new ones (roms)

I got homebrew X to run, but homebrew Y crashes, what did I do wrong?

First, make sure your homebrew was “packaged” correctly (see the questions above on how to create INSTALL.ZIP).

If you don’t want to create your own INSTALL.ZIP files, we have a growing collection of tested and pre-packaged homebrews in this thread. Do read the question above about adding roms to emulators though, we can’t pre-package that for you, for legal reasons.

Other than that, compatibility with VHBL is limited, and some homebrews will work, while others won’t. In particular, some versions of some homebrews will work, while other versions of the same homebrew might not work, so be sure to lurk on the forums for compatibility info, etc…

Can I add several homebrews in one INSTALL.ZIP file?

Yes! For example, you can create a folder GPSP and a folder Snes9xTYL, and add both these folders in INSTALL.ZIP, wMenu will detect them automatically and install accordingly. More generally, you can add an entire “GAME” folder from your PSP memory stick to the INSTALL.ZIP, and wMenu will install all the homebrews from there.

how do I delete Homebrews?

PSPlorer, that you can download in this thread, is a file manager that will let you delete folders.

Alternatively, you can use CMA (the official Vita tool that runs when you connect the Vita to your PC), go in the “copy from Vita to PC” menu, browse to PSP Applications/Games, and delete from there. Since the files are marked as corrupted, it makes it difficult to know which are the homebrews you want to delete though.

I don’t even know how to install VHBL. I can’t even find the PSAVEDATA folder

Right click on the CMA Icon on your PC, and click on settings. What you are looking for is the folder you chose for Applications / Backup Files

Does VHBL for Monster hunter work for Monster Hunter Freedom 2?

Yes! VHBL works fine on Monster Hunter Freedom 2 from the EU stores, this has been confirmed to me several times by trusted people.

As far as I know, yes, but I haven’t seen a video proof yet, if you got it to run, feel free to publish a video and I’ll update this topic.

I have another question and you didn’t answer it

Be sure to check the actual Monster Hunter VHBL page. It has and extensive description on how to install and run VHBL, then how to install and run actual homebrews.

VHBL ships with a README.TXT file inside of each savedata. READ IT, it explains lots of things!

We have a very active community ready to help you, ask questions on our forums!

Still nothing? Feel free to ask your question here in the comments, and I might update this post with an answer 🙂