Reviving a dead Wii

[MrCurry]

So after never having owned a Wii before, I jumped right in with two feet and bought a Wii bundle on eBay, with two Wii’s, 6 controllers, 2 wheels and about 15 games. Have been working my way through to see how much of the “everything is working fine” bundle actually works.

Q - how thoroughly do I need to test the game discs? Is it enough that the Wii recognises what the game is, without producing a “disc unreadable” error? Bit hard testing Wii games on your own, afterall.

So far I’ve found that only one of the Wii’s would accept discs, the other has one already loaded which would not eject. Feeling a bit brave, I dived into stripping the thing down yesterday, following this guide:

Nintendo Wii DVD Drive Replacement

Use this guide to replace a broken DVD drive.

www.ifixit.com

It turns out the loaded disc was upside down, so after removing it and unjamming the plastic worm gears on the side of the dvd drive I did get the thing to accept discs again, and eject them cleanly. It’s not actually reading any without giving a disc error message, so next step will be to try cleaning the lens. Just weighing up whether to strip it down again and use a Q tip with isopropanol, or to try this method

 

[cybershot]

Sounds hassle. If you were sold them as working and they clearly don’t. Ask for your money back. If seller isn’t co-operative raise an eBay dispute.

 

[MrCurry]

Definately hassle! Have spent half my weekend researching, taking the bleeding thing apart then putting together again about 6 times so far.

Seller will be getting a request for a partial refund, because posting what is quite a heavy box back to blighty from sweden would be cost prohibitive. eBay won’t touch returns when items have been shipped via their GSP, so you’re left trying to get the seller to agree to cover return shipping, then trusting that they keep their word after you’ve spent £40+ posting it back.

Well anyway, the update is the blessed thing is now working after cleaning the dvd drive lens. I tried the method in the YouTube video above, but that wasn’t working so I stripped it down again and cleaned it with a cotton earbud thing dipped in isopropyl alcohol.

If anyone ever needs to take a wii apart, ask me. I can basically do it in my sleep at this stage...!