PS2 Codebreaker feezes at black screen before splash screen

[bear8ruf]

I have a fat PS2 with an internal hard drive and I have memory cards with Free MCBoot and an older exploit. When I load Codebreaker, my hard drive spins up and the yellow/orange LED flashes a few times, the screen just stays black. I tried several different versions of Codebreaker, some patched, some not, some not patched and then I patched them. I tried loading from 2 different memory cards, from the hard drive and from a usb drive. I have tried with only 1 memory card at a time, and with NO usb attached when loading from the memory card. They all do the same thing. I have not used any other version of Codebreaker on any of this equipment, but I still look for any .PCB files/folders/partitions on all my storage. None exist. I have also tried starting Codebreaker with a disc in the tray (some posts have suggested that.) I have searched the web and everything I have tried covers all the info and suggestions I could find. My searching also suggest that other people have experienced the same problem as me and never figured it out.

Last night I removed my network adapter and hard drive and Codebreaker launches fine. Again, there are no codebreaker files or directories on my hard drive. Are there any known compatibility issues with Codebreaker and certain hard drives? I forget what brand it is, but it is an 80 gig drive and I've never had any problems with it and HDLoader.

I wonder about a corrupt partition or something causing it to hang, but I would rather not reformat if I don't have too. I have about 70 gigs on the drive, so there is free space left if Codebreaker is trying to create files...

[Combusto Dragon]

sound like you use AR Max non-Evo with PS1 exploit

anyways, get AR Max Evo Edition and the right version of Codebreaker

[bear8ruf]

Skipping some backstory... I realized I was unable to create partitions manually on the hard drive, although HDLoader could still install games.

I busted out my old Windows computer (my daily driver runs Ubuntu) and hooked up my PS2 hard drive and was able to repair it with WinHIIP's repair feature. Now I can create partitions and Codebreaker works too. It was hanging because it was unable to create a partition.

Hopefully this helps someone else out, as it looks like I'm not the only one that has had this problem.