After a lot of troubleshooting I'm sure the problem is when I choose "yes" when the console asks me if I want to use the gamepad; I need to press yes to be able to play the Gamecube game at all obviously. Choosing "no" doesn't make the console turn off. The problem is not the HDD, anything...
hahahaha I'm half way through a bag off my Volcano and my tolerance is way down because I haven't been smoking much lately, so I was a little slow to catch that that was what your angle was