Wii Disc Drive error

[bumblejacket]

My Wii's disc drive has been acting up lately, the first time it happened was in Metroid Prime 3 (great game) and it says "disc error blah blah blah" After that it started happening more and more, but only in prime 3! Then one day in the middle of wind waker it gives me a disc error. I pop in every game in my library and after about 2 minutes of play in each one the disc drive stops making it's spinning noise and the disc error happens. What should I do now?

*P.S. I am a really technical dude and am not afraid to take my Wii apart if the need arises.

[Twilight Wolf]

Well, I know this is advice you'd hear from anyone, but clean the laser lens. A dirty laser lens is to blame a lot of the time. Clean your game discs as well so there's no dirt or fingerprints on them. Windex works well for that.

If neither of those work, then check to make sure there's no loose ribbon cables or wires anywhere in the disc drive area. Someone more experienced with disc drive problems would probably be more help there than me.

[bumblejacket]

How would I go about cleaning the lens? Take it apart and clean the lens? Or something else?

[tom61]

How would I go about cleaning the lens? Take it apart and clean the lens? Or something else?

You use a cleaning disc. Most department stores carry them for CD and DVD players.

If cleaning the disc and lens doesn't work, I'd send it in if it is still under warranty, if I were you.

[bumblejacket]

Alright i'll try that and report back.

[Twilight Wolf]

The thing is, though, I don't think the Wii will accept it since it's not a GameCube or Wii-format disc. If it does work, great, if not, you'll probably have to open it and get into the disc drive.

[Kyo]

it should work fine, because the wii will at least try to read it.

[Twilight Wolf]

Yeah, I was thinking about that, too. The brushes on the disc usually only need a couple of passes over the lens to do their job, so it may work all right after all.

[bumblejacket]

I bought a lens cleaning disc and ran it for what seemed like a million times, popped in Metroid Prime 3 and it did the whole "Error, please do something and consult the manual that you threw away months ago" after about 13 minutes of play. Currently testing other games to see if they fail too, if I remember correctly MP3 was an incredibly disc intensive game. If you want to know the condition of the MP3 disc it is completely smudge free and there are 2 scratches both measuring about 1mm long each and practically nothing wide. Here's the thing though. They both curve around the curvature of the disc, as if a machine caused the scratch. I bought the disc from Amazon, used, condition like new without manual. Not sure what to do know though.

[thewise1]

Before actually opening your wii I would send it in if it's still under warranty. I know you said you were a very technical guy but I would keep it under warranty as long as I could, then fix it myself if there was no warranty. Like you may get in there and find it's not the lens and find out it's something that's not so easy to fix.

I don't know myself what's wrong with the wii though.

Back when smash bros brawl came out some people had errors reading the disk. Nintendo said the lasers were contaminated or something like that, I got that error once, but haven't since.

[bumblejacket]

Ok I am out of warranty and now it recognizes NO DISCS! If I put in a disc, before I navigate to ANYTHING! it says "error please consalt thingy" I'm officially pissed off at this stupid thing.

[bumblejacket]

Okay took it apart checked the ribbon cable and it was loose. pushed it in, and it works again. MP3 still fails after 14 minutes or so. Testing smash bros(gc version) now. It was one of the games that didn't work in the past.

[palmertech]

Get a flatmii.

Problem solved.

[thewise1]

Get a flatmii.

Problem solved.

flatmii?

[Twilight Wolf]

It's a hard drive interface for the Wii that allows you to skip the disc drive entirely and just run images. Something like that, anyways. Correct me if I'm wrong, someone.