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Okay. What the f*ck is going on with Wii U hard locks.

S

SirPenguin

Member
My Gamepad kept freezing. I was hoping it was a software thing, but after not seeing it widely reported I exchanged it for a new one at Target. The old one froze a total of 10 times in less than 24 hours - twice during setup, twice during Miiverse (in a row), then 5 times during ZombiU. This one hasn't frozen once.

Another guy at the official forums (http://techforums.nintendo.com/message/78333) also confirmed that exchanging his WiiU for a new one fixed his issue. This seems to totally rule out firmware.

So, to be clear, there seems to be a hardware issue with some of the Gamepads that causes them to freeze constantly. That's pretty terrifying.
 
C

chubigans

y'all should be ashamed
SirPenguin said:
My Gamepad kept freezing. I was hoping it was a software thing, but after not seeing it widely reported I exchanged it for a new one at Target. The old one froze a total of 10 times in less than 24 hours - twice during setup, twice during Miiverse (in a row), then 5 times during ZombiU. This one hasn't frozen once.

Another guy at the official forums (http://techforums.nintendo.com/message/78333) also confirmed that exchanging his WiiU for a new one fixed his issue. This seems to totally rule out firmware.

So, to be clear, there seems to be a hardware issue with some of the Gamepads that causes them to freeze constantly. That's pretty terrifying.
Click to expand...

Ah, launch woes. I remember the PS3 having a ton of sixaxis controllers being completely broken as far as tilt calibration goes. Plus a bunch of them constantly losing signal for a few seconds randomly.

Yet I'm sure I'll be there day one for the next wave of consoles. :p
 
S

SirPenguin

Member
chubigans said:
Ah, launch woes. I remember the PS3 having a ton of sixaxis controllers being completely broken as far as tilt calibration goes. Plus a bunch of them constantly losing signal for a few seconds randomly.

Yet I'm sure I'll be there day one for the next wave of consoles. :p
Click to expand...

Yeah, but you could just (at worst) buy a new controller. I had to actually exchange my whole god damned console, losing my original screen name. Thank god I didn't buy anything on the eshop.
 
K

Kamek

Member
Haven't had a hard lock up, but my Wii mote did weirdly go out of sync at one point with a noticeable input lag. I paused then it went away. Weird.
 
ipukespiders

ipukespiders

Member
Was playing sonic racing last night and fell through a track (game bug), this caused a hard lock with my kart floating in air. Had to pull the plug. Was the 3rd race of a grand prix and i was in first place... First world problems.
 
S

superbank

The definition of front-butt.
bh7812 said:
snip
Click to expand...
Great post. I agree, it most likely has something to do with online interaction/miiverse. Not that I know anything about this kind of stuff but it makes sense.

Crashes being caused by faulty hardware seems very unlikely mainly because I trust Nintendo wouldn't ship totally bonked out hardware. If that's the case they're fucked. They would have to spend a lot of money on free shipping for every Wii U owner, not to mention the hit to their reputation. It used to be that you could count on Nintendo to ship a system that just works. That was their philosophy. DS lite cracked hinge, 3DS screen scratching and now a buggy OS. Hopefully they get this sorted out soon.
 
S

Smilax

Member
Have only experienced 7 hard locks currently. Luckily nothing to do with the Wii U Gamepad. It mostly happened while playing Sonic-All Stars and sometimes Nintendo Land. I have yet to have any problems playing Wii games.
 
P

Pachinko

Member
I got a hard lock tonight , I downloaded and tried out the youtube app , watched a trailer and it lost the stream after 15 seconds and I thought, oh well I guess I'll go play mario and I couldn't do anything. Powering off with the tablet just shut the gamepad off , powering down the system did nothing so I unplugged it.


I'm thinking it's a software bug entirely based on network issues myself. I'm sure it'll get smoothed out, hardly the worst launch situation I've had to deal with. It does make me hesitant to spend money on the eshop or transfer my wii over until I've had this thing for a few months though.
 
G

Glass Joe

Member
I've had a total of three.

Day 2: Nintendo Land - Octopus Dance (mid game after playing that stage for the first time)
Day 3: Mario U - after beating a stage (MiiVerse prompt failure?)
Day 5: Hulu Plus - load up (buggy new software?)

The latest one is probably just a bug and I don't *think* any of the 3 are GamePad related. I really ran the U pretty damn long on Day 4 and 5 without issue. This thread seems to have slowed down too. I wonder if they've internally changed something minor in MiiVerse that's helped the issue. Still a follow-up patch would be good news. Hopefully Nintendo knows what's causing this and can get that fixed.
 
O

othersteve

Member
I also cannot even launch NintendoLand. Immediately upon loading, I see the plaza appear, my Mii is there, and the system immediately hard locks. I have to unplug to get it to reboot.

Have tried deleting/reinstalling the update data to no avail. I cannot launch the software without performing the update anymore; the option does not exist.

And hey, this is a review copy of the game, too. Guess I won't be posting a review anytime soon!
 
O

othersteve

Member
All right, an update:

Thanks to the "solution" posted on GameFAQs (mentioned in this thread earlier), I seem to have gotten Nintendo Land working again. Here is what I did:

  1. Deleted Update Data for Nintendo Land from the Wii U Settings menu under Data Management.
  2. Launched Nintendo Land and allowed it to update completely.
  3. Immediately after the software started and the plaza was shown, pressed the Home button on the controller to bring up the system menu.
  4. Chose "Miiverse" from the system menu.
  5. Selected "User Menu" > "Settings/Other" from within Miiverse.
  6. Selected "Miiverse Settings" next.
  7. Under "View community posts from users with which system language?" Changed the option from All Languages to "English Only".
  8. Exited Miiverse and the game continued to work normally for the first time.
This is obviously a pretty major issue, but at least it doesn't appear to be hardware-related. I am assuming the big day one update for either the system or the games also affected Miiverse integration somehow, and that this is what has broken the games for everyone and triggered the hard locks.

I hope that's it anyway. Hope this post helps someone (Matt, have you tried this?).
 
D

djSyndrome

Member
Three hard locks in a row when playing Nintendo Land today (and a few every day on NL and Mario since launch). Called Nintendo; they seem to believe it's the disc drive and are offering a free repair and a warranty extension. They also want me to send in my NL and Mario discs for testing, which I am hesitant to do. Thoughts?
 
M

malingenie

Member
djSyndrome said:
Three hard locks in a row when playing Nintendo Land today (and a few every day on NL and Mario since launch). Called Nintendo; they seem to believe it's the disc drive and are offering a free repair and a warranty extension. They also want me to send in my NL and Mario discs for testing, which I am hesitant to do. Thoughts?
Click to expand...

I had it too, I doubt it's the disc drive, customer support is crazy.
 
D

deviljho

Member
djSyndrome said:
They also want me to send in my NL and Mario discs for testing, which I am hesitant to do. Thoughts?
Click to expand...

It's pretty safe. They will make a note of what items you are sending in. Not sure if it is appropriate to send it in just yet though, you might want to ride it out until before the warranty expires to see if it is resolved though a software update.
 
K

KU_

Member
Locked up on me when I booted it for the first time ever, before I was even at the home screen and could update it. Unplugged it from the wall, and it hasn't happened since.
 
S

surly

Banned
chertipros said:
What is a hard lock?
Click to expand...
It's when the system freezes to the point where all you can do is pull the plug.

I've had 1 on the 360 while playing Juiced 2: Hot Import Nights, a handful on the PS3 across different games, and none on the Wii. Hopefully they can work these Wii-U issues out with a system update.
 
M

Medalion

Banned
I've had 2 freezes/stalls where I had to unplug the system to fix so far since launch

This last one was during playing Ass Creed 3, but it wasn't during a part of the game that seemed all that taxing to the system compared to others.

I should mention that when I had the Wii... it also had freezes/stalls durings its lifetime... but strangely not as much during the first couple of years.
 
M

malingenie

Member
othersteve said:
All right, an update:

Thanks to the "solution" posted on GameFAQs (mentioned in this thread earlier), I seem to have gotten Nintendo Land working again. Here is what I did:

  1. Deleted Update Data for Nintendo Land from the Wii U Settings menu under Data Management.
  2. Launched Nintendo Land and allowed it to update completely.
  3. Immediately after the software started and the plaza was shown, pressed the Home button on the controller to bring up the system menu.
  4. Chose "Miiverse" from the system menu.
  5. Selected "User Menu" > "Settings/Other" from within Miiverse.
  6. Selected "Miiverse Settings" next.
  7. Under "View community posts from users with which system language?" Changed the option from All Languages to "English Only".
  8. Exited Miiverse and the game continued to work normally for the first time.
This is obviously a pretty major issue, but at least it doesn't appear to be hardware-related. I am assuming the big day one update for either the system or the games also affected Miiverse integration somehow, and that this is what has broken the games for everyone and triggered the hard locks.

I hope that's it anyway. Hope this post helps someone (Matt, have you tried this?).
Click to expand...

I used this fix. Stopped the constant locks at least momentarily.
 
M

Medalion

Banned
I've done the "English only" options for both Miiverse and Nintendo Land

The system still locks randomly after all that.
 
K

KojiKnight

Member
It's a shame a lot of people seem to be having this... still been really lucky so far I guess... not a single lockup or issue with Miiverse or anything like that.
 
O

othersteve

Member
Well, I am sad to report that, while the previous fix I posted certainly appears to correct the problem (and I believe it did subvert at least that particular launch freeze), I am now experiencing yet another issue with Nintendo Land. The game once again freezes shortly after launch. Nothing I do corrects the problem. We had simply been playing 8 games of Pikmin before it; after that, the game locked on the 9th and will no longer sustain operation for more than even 10 seconds after launch.

This shit is broke, yo.
 
R

Raistlin

Post Count: 9999
chubigans said:
Jeez, I forgot about that. :(
Click to expand...
Not to mention in terms of Nintendo ... this is a much more costly situation.



Even if they can start offering controller replacements instead of taking back the whole console ... the cost delta between a Wii U tab versus a 6-axis is HUGE. This is really starting to turn into a debacle for Nintendo.
 
S

Septimius

Junior Member
SirPenguin said:
My Gamepad kept freezing. I was hoping it was a software thing, but after not seeing it widely reported I exchanged it for a new one at Target. The old one froze a total of 10 times in less than 24 hours - twice during setup, twice during Miiverse (in a row), then 5 times during ZombiU. This one hasn't frozen once.

Another guy at the official forums (http://techforums.nintendo.com/message/78333) also confirmed that exchanging his WiiU for a new one fixed his issue. This seems to totally rule out firmware.

So, to be clear, there seems to be a hardware issue with some of the Gamepads that causes them to freeze constantly. That's pretty terrifying.
Click to expand...

Could be a hardware problem, yes, but that doesn't mean a firmware update can't fix it. It could be a whole bunch of things making this happen. First one that pops into my head is that on sync of the gamepad, it chooses its frequency based on noise. Maybe it picked a frequency that made it freeze. It's a *highly* unlikely scenario, but it's just to say this doesn't rule out that it can be a fixable problem.
 
S

SirPenguin

Member
Septimius said:
Could be a hardware problem, yes, but that doesn't mean a firmware update can't fix it. It could be a whole bunch of things making this happen. First one that pops into my head is that on sync of the gamepad, it chooses its frequency based on noise. Maybe it picked a frequency that made it freeze. It's a *highly* unlikely scenario, but it's just to say this doesn't rule out that it can be a fixable problem.
Click to expand...

Perhaps, but as you say it's highly unlikely. For what it's worth I set up both systems in the exact same way - same spot for the console, same spot on the couch to control it, etc. I didn't change a thing.

I also (tried?) to resync the Gamepad to no avail, and a guy on the official forums went so far as to factory default the OS, re-did the setup options (and even skipped the update) and it still froze.

I may make a topic about this later, but I don't think I've ever been this nervous about owning a console before. I'm afraid to boot a game for fear of it freezing, I'm afraid of letting anyone touch my Gamepad for fear of them breaking the damn thing. I haven't even registered it with Club Nintendo yet as I have no confidence I won't need to return it again
 
T

The Mana Legend

Banned
I have 40 hours of gameplay, didn't get a single freeze until I opened Hulu Plus. It froze for whatever reason when I tried playing a movie, but it unfroze itself.
 
M

MikeHaggar

Member
i've had two hard locks while playing nintendoland yesterday. i always keep the gamepad volume all of the way down, but there was a high-pitch noise coming from the tv speakers. unplugging the system's power cord was the only way to resolve the issue.

the system has been getting a lot of use today and there haven't been any issues. hopefully it will can be resolved by a patch. i'll be really disappointed if early adopters are hosed. i like to think that nintendo is more reliable than that.
 
J

jeremy1456

Junior Member
I got my Wii U on Tuesday and have been playing New Super Mario Bros U, Sonic Racing Transformed, and ZombiU pretty constantly. Along with that I've watched a bit of Netflix and YouTube here and there.

I haven't had a single hard lock. Are you guys putting the system on bare carpet and/or resting your monitors on top of it? I Remember seeing a gaming set up thread a few years ago where people had actually set their small TVs on top of the Xbox 360 covering some of the vents. I imagine these same people were those who got the red lights and had no idea why.

Makes me wonder sometimes.
 
DietRob

DietRob

i've been begging for over 5 years.
I am so glad I didn't buy one of these things when I had the chance at Best Buy last Sunday. I could have gotten a premium and was very very close to handing them my AMEX. I should of handed them my AMEX and turned around and sold the 5 units they were going to let me buy judging by the going prices on EBAY.

It seems like every time I click on gaming there are a slew of terrible shit the Wii U got wrong. I hope the Big N can patch some stuff up. Though I'm not sure what to think of the RAM situation. I'd really like to have one if/when it functions properly. This is a botched release.
 
C

Chorazin

Member
No hard locks here, played Mario for hours last night, and AC3 for a few hours tonight. Hopefully it's not hardware related for those having issues.

Mines a basic system, if that matters any.
 
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