Have another Wii U to repair. This unit when turned on displays the Delete All Content and Settings page and then freezes after about 10 seconds. This is the factory reset crash loop.

This is what you see on the TV.


Here are some pictures of the console:


Typical of the usual production models with the Hynix chips that are known to fail the power port is yellow.


Finally the system information, showing this was manufactured 11/03/2012.

 

This Wii U has no log files. Which is odd because I believe the log files are stored on the SLC, so the state of the MLC shouldn't effect them. This is the 2nd console that dumping log files results in no log files. The other console I had like this the log files dumped only after I installed minute and used that menu to dump the logs. Unfortunately even using minute results in no log files for this console. So I moved on and tried to dump the SLC+MLC and saw the following screen for the first time:

Looks like I cannot unmount the MLC. I wonder what this means...


By hitting the power button I am able to proceed with the SLC dump. I am going to let that finish and then see what happens when it tries to move to the MLC.

Dumping of the NAND was successful, albeit this console has alot of errors/bad sectors.


I am still not able to see log files and when I try to dump them I get none. I attempted to erase the MLC and rebuild the file system, just to test it. Didn't work so I will be installing a NAND-AID into this console.

Disassembled the Wii U and installed a NAND-AID, Its looking good now! I will start the rebuild process and post back.

Rebuilt the MLC and everything went smoothly. The console is working. I have tested the console by installing updates and played a couple hours of games to verify things are working.



System information showing the replaced MLC and the console has been successfully updated to 5.5.6U


Another working Wii U. Things having been going well with these repairs. Its a shame that so many Wii U ended up in a land fill because of these errors.

The factory reset deletes the logs.
The unmounting probably failed because something was using the mlc. Trying UDPIH a little earlier would probably have made the unmounting work.

Quote from: SDIO on Feb 14, 2024, 04:49 PMThe factory reset deletes the logs.
The unmounting probably failed because something was using the mlc. Trying UDPIH a little earlier would probably have made the unmounting work.

SDIO you are a wealth of knowledge! So the factory reset does delete the logs. I had assumed the factory reset may delete the logs after working on 2 consoles that seemed to have no log files after they got stuck in the factory reset loop. Do you happen to know if the logs are deleted early in the factory reset process, for example like the logs can be deleted before the reset hits the corrupted data and freezes.

Here is a full log of the Factory Reset: https://pastebin.com/aZbcFU9T

Interestingly the logs seem to get deleted after the MLC stuff. But I know from my experiences that the factory reset deleted the logs even if it hung because of MLC errors. Maybe I need to capute a log of that at some point