Hardware Dots on screen menu

[afnuke]

These dots, which everyone keep saying are dead pixels....showed up on mine about a month ago.....about the time of homebrew installation. They say they are because of overheating......but I never used wifi. My wii was dusty, cleaned it out today, fan works....Ive worked on a lot of computers and it just wasnt that dirty. Its on everything EXCEPT opera channel and homebrew channel. They show everything fine, no dots.......never have been, and left it on for 24 hours online just surfing and playing videos and such as a test. Can this not be a firmware problem?? maybe a bad ios or something. Some games only have a dot or two....and some like overkill have numerous ones. Shouldnt it be consistant, atleast a little? firmware 3.2 and Ive never had any probs with any software before. any ideas....I keep reading its the GPU and I just dont think so Thanks for any info oh and mplayer plays dvd avi's with no problem or dots

 

[Antoneeus]

I have this problem when I press the home button while playing NES VC games but I don't have many dots on the screen. I've noticed that When I leave my Wii on standby , more dots pop up randomly on the wii home button menu because of the heat. Read this to have a better understanding of different types of artifacts: http://www.playtool.com/pages/artifacts/artifacts.html

Around the first part of the article, it talks about artifacts from overheating ("If your artifacts only show up after a few minutes of playing games then overheating is usually the cause. The silicon chips on your video card run slower at higher temperatures. The hotter the chips get the more trouble they have keeping up at their standard clock rates")

I know my wii GPU isn't fried or anything, so later this week I'm going to be trying this out: http://wii.ds-scene.net/?s=viewtopic&id=467 (I'll be using arctic silver 5, and I will follow the instructions on how to apply it on their site)

My theory why this happens in VC games and not in Wii games is because when VC games play, the wii has to run the games at lower settings, with smaller amount of lines (resolution?) so it shows the artifacts/dots better....but I'm still not sure. All I know is that I'm overheating a little bit

Oh and you're right it's not your GPU that's the problem, just the thick, cheap thermal pads used on the heatsink. And just because you never use Wiiconnect/standby doesn't mean you won't overheat because if you don't have good contact with the GPU/CPU and heatsink and then turn it on, You can overheat in seconds.


I hope this helped!

 

[afnuke]

today we tested this thing again.............its on the system menu .....just a little ...........but not on the opera channel at all.......no matter what I play, the wii ware games can be really bad at times ....and about 20 of the 30 backups show some signs....but others dont show any at all. the photochannel shows none either. the HBC .....while scrolling....and all I mean all the apps (the small, oldish type games show NO dots at all. mario tennis .....none show unless something like mario pulling out the hammer and right before he hits it for like 2 seconds they show. Im still determined this is some flaw in the basic programming of the function of the video. maybe an update (nintendo or hbc) and we have a corrupted ios of some sort, just a minor flaw. I dont know much about the wii.....im a computer freak more..... and Im new to the internals of the wii (for now) ........ what ios need to be installed total.....theres so d many ...and theres no list of what needs what to run, just pieces of here and there. Can you have TO much on it maybe? or maybe the video is using the bad parts of the video memory without error checking it?

 

[Antoneeus]

Try leaving your Wii on standby for an hour and then turn it on to see if the dots get worse. If they do get worse, then your Wii is overheating so just do what I showed you on ds-scene. Oh and I have no idea why the dots don't show up in the internet channel..but they will probably show up after a while.

 

[afnuke]

okay.......tried everything today........ one thing made it worse....mplayer..... played some avi's off dvd and the temps went though the roof. So Im thinking that might be the root of evil, maybe this thing cant handle such graphics. The temp was like 3 times more than playing a game. next problem is that nintendo said they would repair it (even though the warranty was up) ...... so can homebrew really be removed completely ?? someone knows this answer, I have 30 days to get it there.