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Strange artifacts on Wii screen

Hanmik

Member
Hello.. A poster on another forum has some problems with her Wii. It´s 2½ years old, and she is playing her Wii on a LCD flatscreen tv with Scart. But lately the screen starts to "act up." There are some strange artifacts on the screen. There is a little on the menu screen and in some games. But she mostly notices it in New Super Mario Bros Wii. Especially if she is on a screen with a sand storm. it looks like this..

kbzG3.jpg


2M15u.jpg


She just got a new LCD tv, but it looks the same on both TV´s .. so any ideas what the problem is..? is the Wii dying on her..? or is it something else..?

sorry for the big pictures...
 

EatChildren

Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
Looks like the GPU is on the fritz. She'll have to send it to Nintendo.
 

drohne

hyperbolically metafictive
just blow in the cartridge

(but yeah, artifacts like that are usually a sign that the gpu is dying)
 

biocat

Member
It's happened to two of my Wiis. It's your GPU. I've even seen demo units doing it so it seems pretty common.
 

Atomski

Member
Yep I had the same problem. GPU got borked.. whats weird is in some games you wont even see it, but in others it is unbearable.
 

Foffy

Banned
Question: Is WiiConnect24 on quite often? Pretty sure the GPU is going kaputz, and having WC24 only accelerates it. That's how my Wii crapped up.
 
As others said, that means the system is overheating, and needs repair. I took mine into Nintendo when that was happening to me, (exact same artifacts) and they repaired it. If it is out of warranty, it's still worth calling Nintendo - I believe the most they charge to fix a Wii is $75.
 

Hanmik

Member
Thanks for the quick replys.!.. told her that she needed to get it repaired or buy a new one.. living in Scandinavia isn´t so good if you have a problem with a nintendo machine.. and it´s 2½ years old, so out of warranty..
 

Kayma

Member
This happened to my Wii a few years back. Naturally, it was out of warranty. As I recall, it cost about $80 to get repaired.
 
Happened to me as well, but even though it was out of warranty, Nintendo replaced mine for free :) Shipped it out on a Thursday, got it back the next Thursday.

Best customer service ever.
 

Pyrokai

Member
Even though I'm on my second Wii, I never had this problem (my first Wii was replaced for FREE by Nintendo because of a booting issue...sucked because I lost all my save data....my poor SSBB 400+ hours data :( )

So...yeah....what I want to ask is this: What causes this? I don't want my Wii to have this problem? Is it simply a common misfortune or is there something that causes it to happen (like WiiConnect24, if it really does)?
 

Netto-kun

Member
Hanmik said:
Thanks for the quick replys.!.. told her that she needed to get it repaired or buy a new one.. living in Scandinavia isn´t so good if you have a problem with a nintendo machine.. and it´s 2½ years old, so out of warranty..
Just tell your friend to contact Bergsala per e-mail or phone.
 
Yeah this is a really annoying problem. I gave the second Wii this happened to (out of warranty) to my parents and they barely notice it but it drove me absolutely nuts.
 

mokeyjoe

Member
This has been happening to mine for a year or so now. Also the disk drive is getting really loud.

How much does it cost to get this fixed (UK)?
 
Foffy said:
Question: Is WiiConnect24 on quite often? Pretty sure the GPU is going kaputz, and having WC24 only accelerates it. That's how my Wii crapped up.
About a week after getting my Wii at launch, I noticed it stayed warm with WC24 on. I turned WC24 off because I figured it wasn't good to keep the system warm all the time. I never thought about it again until now, but this just confirms what I had assumed.
 

Taker666

Member
mokeyjoe said:
This has been happening to mine for a year or so now. Also the disk drive is getting really loud.

How much does it cost to get this fixed (UK)?

http://www.nintendoservicecentre.co.uk/faqs.php

Minor repairs to a Wii console are charged at £29.00. This is generally applied to consoles that are outside of the warranty period, or in the case that the warranty cannot be validated.

Major repairs to a Wii console are charged at £68.50. This charge is generally applied to consoles that have been physically damaged, such as those with foreign objects inside the disc drive. If your Wii has been modified, this charge may be higher.

It cost me £29 to get my Wii fixed (which had the GPU problem). They sent me what looked like a new Wii (took about a week).
 
Pyrokai said:
So...yeah....what I want to ask is this: What causes this? I don't want my Wii to have this problem? Is it simply a common misfortune or is there something that causes it to happen (like WiiConnect24, if it really does)?
From what I understand when a Wii was on standby the wi-fi module is still on checking for the WiiConnect24* messages but the fans weren't running. I believe the GPU is somewher enear that part so yeah heat related issue.

Apparently later system updates made it so the fan would periodically spin. Also I find using the disc drive makes the system a lot warmer so that might also be a cause. I remember there was one member here who got through 10 Wiis (I can't remember how many were this particular problem) and claimed that vertical was better as in horozontal the bottom gets warm which will be the side in vertical (but I found it only seemed to get warm when using discs).

There are some who believe the problem is a defective GPU (there seem to be a lot of them if thats the case) and think its better to make the thing break completely ASAP. I don't know if people think that these days or not.

Btw, Pyrokai do you know what your booting problem was? I seem to recall if the bluetooth module is busted the thing will completely refuse to boot. But yeah a dead NAND does the same, the latter of which would mean no data transfers.

*-has thing ever been useful, I always hear people complaning "bawww, I was wokens by the blue light flashing at 4AM to tell me about a system update I already had and the week before it was a Mairo Kart competition..." to which I wonder why leave it on.

Taker666 said:
I was wondering when they were going to list prices online.
 
Hanmik said:
Thanks for the quick replys.!.. told her that she needed to get it repaired or buy a new one.. living in Scandinavia isn´t so good if you have a problem with a nintendo machine.. and it´s 2½ years old, so out of warranty..

Where in Scandinavia? Norway has five years of reclamation rights when stuff breaks like this, not sure about Sweden/Denmark.
 
FoxHimself said:
Where in Scandinavia? Norway has five years of reclamation rights when stuff breaks like this, not sure about Sweden/Denmark.

I think since we are in EU it is 3 years for electronics?

*edit google says 2 years
 

Pyrokai

Member
Starwolf_UK said:
Btw, Pyrokai do you know what your booting problem was? I seem to recall if the bluetooth module is busted the thing will completely refuse to boot. But yeah a dead NAND does the same, the latter of which would mean no data transfers.

It's pretty distant in my memory now, but I just remember the OS wouldn't load for whatever reason. I remember I kept thinking it was my fault because I did a hard shut down with the button on the console I *think* while it was loading something (not saving). After that it just wouldn't turn on anymore. Called Nintendo and they had me do some things and then they had me send it in for repair, which they ultimately replaced with a new console.
 
My brothers Wii has had a very very minor case of this problem barely ever notice it but it does happen didn't get round to sending off for repair for months when the disk drive died as well, bloody Nintendo though they fixed the drive but didn't replace the gpu so still got the problem
 

spookyfish

Member
Yeah, it's a known problem with early Wiis, I think. My launch model went bad in 2009 or 2010. They tried to charge me for it, but I told them this was a design flaw, backed up by threads on Nintendo's own boards.

The CSR put me on hold, came back and said "Even though you're out of warranty, we'll repair this free of charge. You just have to ship it to us."

If you call them, push gently if they try and charge you. It's nothing you or your friend did to the machine.
 
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