Stupid Wii dies right before X-Mas? And there's games under the tree?

[mcseforsale]

My Wii stopped reading disks.  WTF?     It started about a week ago with Need for Speed Pro Street and now it won't read gamecube games...

Any ideas how to fix this?

AJ

[Circo]

You can replace the cd drive, but it's much easier and quicker to just get another wii.  They have at least gotten cheaper lately.  I've had this happen twice on previous machines.  Good news is even with a bad drive its not a huge ordeal to soft mod it and run those games off an external hard drive.

[Howard_Casto]

Just mod the thing and use a harddrive. 

I had the drive die on mine a year or two ago.  I bought a replacement, installed it, and only got the gamecube games to work even though I was very careful to order the proper replacement.  Upon contacting the company their response was "oh you have to take it to a repair man and have him crack the drive"  which is complete b.s. (no such procedure exists or is necessary for a wii) and totally defeats the purpose of repairing it myself. 

You can buy replacments, but for me the hassle of opening up my wii (which is a pain in the butt because everything is so tiny) only to discover that the drive still isn't going to be fixed turned me off from the idea, especially considering I knew the Wii U was just around the corner. 

Honestly it might be a good excuse to upgrade to a Wii U.  All of those games will still work.   Though to be perfectly honest you must have just gotten the thing to still have games worth buying for it.  There hasn't been a good game released in over a year.   

[dextercf]

Softmod = WINRAR

[ark_ader]

I have one I rarely use under my desk.

How hard is it to mod and what can you do with it after you mod it? 

Can you place gamecube games on a removable HDD?

[dextercf]

I have one I rarely use under my desk.

How hard is it to mod and what can you do with it after you mod it? 

Can you place gamecube games on a removable HDD?

Its easy and yes to the external HDD.

[SNAAKE]

what is this "disc" madness just softmod it. its pretty easy actually if you are patient and read all the clear instructions. people pay me to do it for them. whatever.

[danny_galaga]

This happened to me too!    I went with modmii, but I'm retarded and it's still not set up properly (I have a Mac, and you need a windows machine to create the install instructions)

[ChadTower]

You can put GC games on the hard drive now?

[Ginsu Victim]

The last time I looked into Gamecube games from USB/HDD, the compatibility was ---steaming pile of meadow muffin---. Has it improved?

[Howard_Casto]

Yeah it has a great deal. 

They are stil a colossal pain in the butt to configure. I believe GC iso's only run on a fat partition and even then you have to run the iso through a converter first.  You also need to use your original GC memory card.  Other than that yeah, you can run them from the HDD and you don't have to do stupid stuff like emulate the IOS to run them anymore...you can run em right from your wii iso loader of choice.  I haven't tried it extensively, but Luigi's Mansion and Bubble Bobble work just perfect. 

[mcseforsale]

Dammit!  He had his birthday today (he's 6, hence the interest in the Wii) and yet another Wii game....I gotta fix this fast...

AJ

[Dervacumen]

Short of a softmod, pick up a used one at Gamestop.  They may have a decent supply due to the release of the WiiU.

[dextercf]

Ebay for a non working one and slaughter for parts?

[mcseforsale]

OK, so I got it working.  Seems it was a dirty optical component somewhere in there.  I was able to get almost the entire case apart, with the exception of 2 tri-wing screws and pulled the face of it off.  Next, I sucked all of the openings with the vacuum cleaner and fuzzy attachment. 

When that didn't work, I was just ambling about the garage and happened upon an old Memorex DVD cleaning disk.  It's the one with the 4 or 5 sets of fuzzy wiskers hanging from the shiny side.  What the hell.  I put it in and let it spin up a few times and it started working again. 

Looks like the only one on amazon is this:
http://www.amazon.com/Allsop-23321-Carbon-Edge-CD-Drive-Cleaner/dp/B00000J1QM/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1357086126&sr=8-4&keywords=memorex+dvd+cleaner

But, same idea...

I still can't get Super Smash Bros Brawl working as I get the cannot read disc error, but I'll be calling Nintendo for the free fix tomorrow.

Thanks all for commenting.

AJ