The Gamer's Quarter

david · . Joined: 03 Mar 2005 Posts: 170 Location: b, md

Last night I noticed my Wii making unusual sounds. They're nothing awful or intolerable, but I thought it was pretty quiet before. For example, when it accepts a disc, I remember it being really smooth and almost silent. Now, it makes a quite aggressive "whirr, whirr." Also, the console sometimes makes a persistent buzzing/humming. It's a little annoying, but mostly it bugs me that there's something wrong with my console.

What do your Wiis sound like?
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Lackey · . Joined: 11 Jul 2005 Posts: 1107 Location: Canada

The machines are stirring. Sleep with one eye open.
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| Little bird fighting against a bat sect game |

Shapermc · Hot Sake! Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279

My Wii has made some really strange errors. Like twice when going into or leaving the Mii channel the whole thing locked up. Once I let it wait for like 5 minutes and it finally went to the Mii channel. Then, nothing, it hasn't happen again. I also get locked up in the rotating ring for the shopping channel occasionally, and at other times I'm told I can't even access the internet from my wii. I have heard many reports of people's Wii acting up for a day and then fixing itself for no aparent reason, even overheating problems.

Also, without hearing your Wii I can't say for sure, but I didn't notice that my Wii was making noises when accepting a disc until one time I fed it a disc when my room was silent and it was quite a bit louder than I expected it to be. I notice it now where before I had thought it was silent. It could be a mental thing.
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“The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932

"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!"

simplicio · . Joined: 03 May 2005 Posts: 1091

Shaper, your entire post mirrors my experience exactly, minus any internet problems. I'm trying not to be too worried, and hopefully they'll get to new firmware soon.

david · . Joined: 03 Mar 2005 Posts: 170 Location: b, md

Yeah, all those things have happened to me, too.

I called Nintendo and they were very nice about it... they told me it sounded benign and they couldn't promise that a replacement would be any different, but if it would help my peace of mind, I shouldn't hesitate to take advantage of the warantee. The most interesting thing I heard was that my rep's supervisor had the same thing happen to his own Wii -- some noises start after about a week or so -- and he concluded that it was normal.

It's just that I wanted my Wii to be youthful forever... sniff.

Just the price of early adoption, I suppose. If it gets worse, I can get it fixed.
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player 2 · . Joined: 10 Jul 2005 Posts: 585 Location: Madison, WI USA

I can't get my Wii to work despite changing the channel to my wireless router.
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Wii #: 8749 9109 9732 3653

"It is a peaceful way of understanding life, to play"
_Marcel Duchamp

Nana Komatsu · weak sauce Joined: 17 Jul 2006 Posts: 1293

My iBook has a slot loading drive and it makes horrible, horrible noises when there's a CD inside. It has made these noises since I got it, but they've been progressively worse over the year and a half of use, and yet there's no problem with the drive I can tell and my CDs come out just fine.

Does the Wii have support for WPA wireless encryption?

Pijaibros · Posted: Mon Nov 27, 2006 3:11 pm Post subject:

This Wii sounds more and more like the Dreamcast with every passing week.

GcDiaz · . Joined: 25 Sep 2006 Posts: 35 Location: Clinton, MA

Nana Komatsu · weak sauce Joined: 17 Jul 2006 Posts: 1293

Dude, I thought you can't buy the wii standalone at EB Gamestop, you had to buy the $700 package.

player 2 · . Joined: 10 Jul 2005 Posts: 585 Location: Madison, WI USA

the $700 package thing is an untrue rumor.

and the "other retailers getting them in by the dozens" is also an untrue rumor. best buy does hold onto their units till they have a dozen, but that's for advertising purposes. either by law or company policy they can't advertise "Nintendo Wiis!" unless they have twelve units. other stores follow similar policies as well.
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Wii #: 8749 9109 9732 3653

"It is a peaceful way of understanding life, to play"
_Marcel Duchamp

GSL · Posted: Mon Nov 27, 2006 7:07 pm Post subject:

Mine makes a bit of noise upon loading and ejecting a disc which I'm assuming has something to do with the auto-loading nature of the drive.

When playing Red Steel, though, I get quite a bit of disc noise at times. It's not quite as noisy as the Dreamcast's drive, but I was pretty concerned the first few times I heard it. At first, I figured it might be because I had the system in its stand on the side, but upon setting it horizontally on a flat surface, I got the same noises.
I finally figured out that they only occur in large outdoor areas or rooms where there's a lot going on. It reminded me of Metroid Prime, which is constantly streaming info from the disc and can make a decent bit of noise for a Gamecube. With the Wii's large amount of system memory, I thought it might have progessed beyond the need for such constant streaming, but maybe there's something going on under the hood that I'm not aware of. The game does run off of the Unreal Engine 2 and apparently makes use of Ageia's fancy PhysX engine (?!), so it could be that there's just a lot of game data to shuffle. Or it could be the usual case of launch titles and their developers not entirely sure how to completely optimize a game for a new system. Either way, it's not worrying me too much anymore.