Wii disk read error - replace laser or drive

fourmations

Hi

my kids wii has disk read errors,
ive done a bit of goggling but cant find a solid answer
do i replace the laser or the whole drive
Hopefully its the laser as its cheaper!
I replaced the laser on his xbox 360 sucessfully
is the Wii any harder?

many thanks

Retr0gamer

More than likely it's the laser. It's a tough job to do I imagine but if you did it on the 360 then you will have no problem with the Wii. One thing to note is that some DVD 9 games like Smash Bros can be a bit stricter to get working probably meaning you'd have to be extra good at calibrating the laser.

fourmations

thanks retro

SSBB is one of his faves on it,
Ill do the laser and hope for the best

cheers

Pac1Man

Stupid question but could it be the disk? Do other disks work in it?

Edward Hopper

Could you not just soft mod the Wii and play the game, that you own of course, from a version via memory stick/hard drive. I'm pretty useless at all things technical but I found that a pretty easy job.

fourmations

thanks guys

Pacman - all disks do the same, they will load and sometimes play
for a short while then the error comes up

Edward - this is new to me, i will do some reading on it,
will he still have access to his saves that are on the Wii?
Does the mod process wipe the memory or anything like that?
Do i just copy the disk to a drive on my laptop?

many thanks

Myrddin

fourmations wrote: »

Edward - this is new to me, i will do some reading on it,
will he still have access to his saves that are on the Wii?
Does the mod process wipe the memory or anything like that?

It's really well worth doing, especially when coupled with a nice dedicated external hard drive (for all your legitimately owned games of course). The only issue is, with a broken laser, you'll have no way to dump the discs to the hard drive...and as such, would need to download them (at worst piracy, at best a grey area given you own them already).

Game saves should remain in tact, & I don't think it wipes anything (though it depends on which firmware you're on...I think 4.3E is the latest/last?).

I've my Wii softmodded, and it can browse/play my entire library of games (and Gamecube games to boot!) via USB Loader GX, without having to bother with the discs anymore (though I still buy/collect them).

Edward Hopper

fourmations wrote: »

thanks guys

Think the "grey area" would be your only option but you own the game so morally at least you should feel OK.

He could move all his saves to another sd card to be safe.

Wiibrew is worth googling, wiki there is a mine of information. I softmodded my Wii with the Lego batman game, using the bathaxx method but there are more than one way of doing it.

Myrddin

Letterbomb is a nice handy way of doing it too (a website generates all the stuff for you, & you just browse to the Wii's message board to initiate the exploit & install HBC - http://wiibrew.org/wiki/Homebrew_setup#Letterbomb

fourmations

thanks a bunch all

ill deffo give this a go,
I didnt even realise that you could backup your saves!
thats the only thing i had concerns about (loosing his saves)

i have no moral issues on this method
he owns at least a dozen wii games and he just wants to play a few for nostalgia, he''l be back on the xbox one in a week,
all titles were genuinely bought

can i just copy the DVDs to a usbdrive using my laptop?
i dont suppose its that simple?

many thanks

Myrddin

fourmations wrote: »

can i just copy the DVDs to a usbdrive using my laptop?
i dont suppose its that simple?

many thanks

Ideally this would be done via the Wii itself, once softmodded. It can be done via pc...but you'd need a compatible optical drive (and they're not too common from memory). The only other way is to download iso's of each game you want, & that's where our advise has to end (piracy etc).

fourmations

haha, head still fried this morning, i should have done the laser!
almost every step of the process had complications
Finally, got two iso's on the USB stick and actually got to launch them
but alas, it wasnt to be....
once i press "start" it just crashes back to the HB channel page

arrrghhh

Myrddin

fourmations wrote: »

haha, head still fried this morning, i should have done the laser!
almost every step of the process had complications
Finally, got two iso's on the USB stick and actually got to launch them
but alas, it wasnt to be....
once i press "start" it just crashes back to the HB channel page

arrrghhh

Google 'pimp my wii'....it's something that runs on your wii, scans it, finds out what's missing, generates a report...& then on your pc you can resolve everything. It's likely something simple that's missing

fourmations

brill thanks, ill have a look

ive tried wiiflow as a loader as well and thats crashing too!

Edward Hopper

Hard drive/flash drive compatibility is supposedly an issue as well. Worth trying a different one if you have the choice.