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Ever since we bought our Nintendo Wii, there have been problems with connectivity. It works quite happily until we leave it on standby with WiiConnect24 enabled for a few days. When we boot it up again and try to connect to any online channel, it goes into the normal black screen before loading the channel and then does nothing. It won’t respond at all.
After 5 minutes, it bursts back into life as if nothing happened. Following this, we can’t turn off the console using the console or the Wiimote power button. We have to actually pull the plug out of the power socket.
Until now, we haven’t really been that concerned. It’s easy enough to work around. I just did some research to see if anyone had similar problems and found the following bit of news published last week on computerandvideogames.com:
“A number of disgruntled gamers are hitting internet forums saying their consoles have broken after being left on standby with WiiConnect24 enabled for long periods of time.”
Allegedly, WiiConnect24 is causing their consoles to overheat, which may be damaging the CPU. Tech.co.uk and CVG only cite “internet forums” so I don’t know if these people experience the same sorts of problems that we have. I hope our symptoms aren’t signs of imminent failure.
Have you had connectivity or power control problems with your Wii? What happened?
Well i think it servers people right for leaving stuff on standby – sucking up and wasting electricity for no really good reason! If you arent using something just turn it off!
Indeed. People who don’t bother to crawl behind their electronics equipment to unplug their consoles after every session deserve to have their equipment destroyed.
Or, y’know… manufacturers could just provide a damn Off switch. I just found out last week that the slimline PS2 doesn’t have an off switch. Neither does our satellite TV (Sky) box and last time we unplugged that, it corrupted its own software when rebooting.
Rubbish electronics designers…
Was that a deliberately hilarious pun – servers people right?
My cable/dsl modem/router/all manner of gubbins would do something similar now and then. I highly doubt that standby mode is taxing the CPU at all. I’d be more inclined to suggest some sort of capacitor discharge or indeed an issue related to component heating – say if the modem is particularly close to something this is driven when the console is switched on after being on standby.
Well after much searching the web about my current problem this is the first site that actually point me in the right direction. Our wii that we bought 1 week ago was working fine till I used the WII remote to power it down and left it over night. Just this morning I tried to turn it back on and nothing happened. I unplugged the power supply and plugged it back in again to get the red light of power and pressed the power button to see it flash orange for half a second and then die. I hold Nintendo to blame for this completely and as this is a saturday and nintendo’s support line is closed I now have to wait till monday to get incontact for them to tell me what I already know. Their poorly designed software and hardware has damaged my WII and they will request me to have it repaired. I can tell you now after apending nearly $1000 AUS on the console 3 extra controls the nunchucks and 4 games I will be demanding a completely new unit. The amount of time they took to release the console and with the amount of failing units this is just not good enough and nintendo should be recalling the units with a replace or refund.
A week! That’s very poor performance. Will the shop not replace it after so little a time?
My Wii just died few days ago and I already bought the damn Guitar Hero. Anways, I had that stupid standby mode off, but the wii is always plugged in so that the red light is on. But now I’ve found that it isn’t no more. I unscrewed the battery the other day and it worked, now Wii doesn’t react to anything. I tried different sockets and cord extensions but still the same. Anybody has an idea what could be wrong?
This is the main problem. Nothing ever really gets turned off anymore. I go to bed at night and there are lights glowing all around the room at me. Finally, I just plugged everything into the same surge protector and I turn that entire thing off. No more worries about Standby mode.
You could use a power strip to do so like WiiWare posted but if you’re like me you have some devices that have volatile memory settings (like my AVR) that are lost when the power is shut off completely. I have a UPS on my system to prevent that and have programmed my Harmony remote with a macro called “goodnight” which shuts off all components – no Wii issues here… yet. ;)
Funnily enough, ever since nintendo came out years ago, there was always a little connectivity problem, we used to blow in the disk compartment to get all the dust out, and it used to do wonders particularly with re-connecting.