Hey there!
So, I live in Poland, there's no official Nintendo support here since a Czech company handles the distribution of all Wii U related stuff and I would have to contact them with anything and I can imagine sending the console over would be horribly expensive, so I'd like to ask around.
I have bought a used Wii U pretty cheap (I already own one but this one was ridiculously cheap so I thought if anything I won't lose a lot) and I decided, if I can get this baby to work properly, I'll gift it to my cousins who can't really afford gaming stuff and then I'll try to motivate to learn saving money if they want new games for the system.
Anyway, the issue with the console is: it seems to be booting up normal - the fan's running just fine, the blue LED on the console is not blinking or anything, the eject button seems to be working correctly, as in, it's trying to eject a disc but there's no disc in since I'm afraid a broken console would damage my games and the Wii U splash screen shows up on the TV. That's as far as it goes. The gamepad works just fine but it will not sync with the console, obviously because the system itself did not complete the boot operation. That means forcing update via the gamepad's button combination won't really work.
One thing bothers me. It seems that the console's power saving feature is working. If I leave it running for a few minutes, the brightness will lower. It's still stuck on the splash but it seems to be doing SOMETHING. Obviously the system has been used before, the controller shows that there have been demos installed and MK8 / NSMBU have been played with the discs in.
If it's broke then I'll be a bit sad but I'll live with it, but if it's fixable my cousins would be very happy. Attaching a couple of screenshots, sorry for my awful camera, they're just supposed to show what's going on. On the first image you can see the point where the console freezes and it's been shot after the power saving feature turned on. The second one shows that the gamepad is working.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
I'll appreciate any help, thank you all in advance.
UPDATE 1: Here's what I did so far:
- the AC adapter reset, didn't do anything
- trying to force update with the gamepad - won't work, obviously, since it won't sync
- left the console running for half an hour - the TV screen seemed to be getting darker as time passed by
- pressed the Sync button on the console while power saving was going on - it brought the brightness back to normal, what?
Now I'm going to leave it running for an hour, as the manual says it's preprogrammed to turn off after being idle for that period of time. If it does turn off, then my mind will be blown to shreds. It really looks like a software problem, it's as if the console is trying to load something up and fails to do so, which results in a freeze. It's turning out to be quite an experiment actually.
UPDATE 2:
It's been running for over an hour. Nothing happened.
I have replaced the console's 3V battery with a completely new one. No differrence.
One more thing: the disc drive's LED is not lighting up.