Severe Wii U Bug Could Brick your Console if You Don’t Use It

Your Wii U Might Have Died in your Absence

This sounds like a punchline. A console, beloved by a few, but unused by most… bricks itself if you don’t use it. Apparently, the root problem is a “NAND corruption issue”. Slowly, over time, Nintendo‘s Wii U console will build up tiny amounts of corrupted data in its internal storage systems. With enough time to fester, the growths will choke everything out. Not even a factory reset will save you: the console is bricked.

It’s basically Wii cancer.

A user in a Neogaf thread was the first to notice this. Here’s the important bit:

A friend on another forum has tried using his Wii U after several years of it being in the box. And he gets a memory error. He can reach the main menu, but errors will occur etc…
As I was searching the internet about this issue, I found tons of similar issues, with people never being able to make their console work again.

Here are some details :
– Console was not used for several years
– Console was not hacked
– Hacked consoles can also have the issue
– Memory error 160-0103 on the Gamepad
– Trying to factory reset WILL brick the console definitely
– This is a NAND corruption issue that is impossible to restore if you have not saved your NAND through softmod
– Even with a NAND backup, it seems pretty complicated to restore it
– I believe that NAND is encrypted with encryption keys that are of course different for each console, and also need to be extracted

So, if you have a Wii U, maybe you should give it a peek. If only for the sake of resetting the clock. Or buying eShop games that will forever disappear once the store closes this month. Either one.

SOURCE