To begin, I was recently playing Monster Rancher Advance 2 on my GameBoy Advance SP when I remembered that I had a GameShark laying around that I could put to good use because, unfortunately, there is some data you can only unlock via cheating device due to the way the game was coded.

The only codes that exist for the game, however, are in a 12-hexidecimal format, and thus the firmware on the GameShark Advance has to be updated to Action Replay GBX in order to use them. In fact, most codes for the games I own are in the 12-hexidecimal format, rendering it useless to me. The other hitch in my plan was that this particular GameShark can only be used with the original GameBoy Advance – which I luckily still have – because of the way in which it’s inserted into the cartridge slot.

After some deep Internet sleuthing, I learned that a guide to update the firmware existed in many spots online. It looked very straightforward, even explaining why the update is needed, and so I attempted to follow the instructions… only to run into several roadblocks.

To start with, I’m running Windows 8.1, which is incompatible with the Action Replay GBX software, so I had to put that on hold for several hours in order to learn about and download Oracle VM VirtualBox and the appropriate extensions for the program so that I could run an older OS within my computer as a virtual machine. Basically, the older OS runs as a separate desktop inside a program window, which is actually pretty neat and deserves some exploring on its own, but I digress…

Once I got that up and running, I downloaded the Action Replay GBX software and went through the steps again, only to run into the same problem when I hit step 5, which asks you to navigate through your C-drive and into the drivers folder of the program in order to right-click and install the file. Somehow, that’s supposed to magically fix all your problems so that you may proceed to step 6 and allow the GameShark to upgrade to an Action Replay GBX; however, whomever wrote the guide failed to address what to do in the event that installing the driver in this way didn’t work. That’s where I’m needing help.

In Windows XP Professional, when the device is plugged in, it initially recognizes that there’s a device plugged in and attempts to install the driver software, but it can’t identify it. I figured that all I’d have to do is install it manually through the Device Manager and be done with, but even that’s a bit too simple for a fix, it seems. I know exactly where the driver is located on the C-drive:

C:\Windows\Program Files\Datel\Action Replay GBX\drivers

The file within is called gbalink.inf.

By navigating to the Device Manager through the Control Panel, I can see that the device is listed under Other Devices as Universal Serial Bus (USB) controller. As I mentioned above, I tried to install the driver manually by right-clicking on it and installing it from a specified location. When that didn’t work, I took to the Internet, trying to figure out why it wouldn’t recognize the driver only to learn that it may be due to the fact that, for some reason, the driver and the device are both assigned different vendor and device IDs. That actually seems like the best explanation, and since I was able to easily find those numbers for the device, I tried to overwrite the driver.

When opened in Notepad, the driver file actually tells you how to modify the document, so even if you’re just a little tech savvy, it shouldn’t be difficult at all. Well, I gave it my best shot and tried again, but no dice.

The truth is that I’m at my wits end, and I’ve exhausted any and all personal sources (i.e. friends who have much more experience with computers than me) in trying to make this upgrade happen. What irritates me is that people did this or did that and it worked for them but not me. I know it seems silly to go to this much trouble to attempt to upgrade an obsolete cheating device when I could just download an emulator and play it on my computer, but I honestly hate playing games via an emulator. Besides, the GameBoy Advance is portable, so I can take it to work and play it there too. If anyone would be willing to help me, I’d be very grateful.

Sounds like something that probably isn't going to work in a VM for a lot of reasons. The host OS isn't going to allow VM software or its guest software low-level access to the real USB ports for security reasons. The utility uses drivers and likely requires some lower level of access.

Find an older machine.

Thanks for the tip!

I wasn't quite sure whether or not running on a virtual OS would work, but I figured it was worth a try. Besides, I'm nerdy enough to have a lot of fun with it too.

Luckily, I do have access to an older Dell running Windows XP Home, so I might get it to work. The bad news is that it's packed away somewhere in the Bedroom-Turned-Storage-of-Doom. I'm not quite strong enough (or tall!) to move some of the boxes and furniture in there, and I can just imagine that it's blocked by holiday decorations, summertime patio furniture, and tools.

When I get it out, I'll report back here!

No problem. Even with XP I've had to use tricks for particularly old utilities and even that doesn't always work. For example, when I want to load stuff on my V64 or flash a ROM chip I need to use a system file called GiveIO.sys and register it for certain utilities to access the parallel port. In 9x/DOS those same utilities would access it directly in real time and communicate with the external hardware. XP-64 and newer would not allow something like GiveIO.sys because that would be a driver that allows applications to do whatever they want with particular hardware instead of having to go through the OS. That's why they all require signed drivers and all that mess.

An XP machine should be able to dual-boot DOS or WinME or something if you can't get it done in XP.