Hardware WiiU freezes on main menu after ~10 seconds, now won't display video or connect to gamepad (Error 160-0103)

[AltoSalamander1]

Hello. I recently tried to use my old WiiU again that has been sitting for a few years connected to power in idle mode (red light illuminated) and not connected to the internet. I was able to boot the console, select a user, and enter into the main menu. After attempting to launch any app (settings, wii mode, etc), the console would completely freeze and I would have to hard cycle the console, after which I would remove the power cable for 10-15 seconds and repeat. Upon relaunching, the (empty) disc drive would make two distinct disc reading noises and the console would boot as normal. When attempting to select a user other than the default, I was immediately presented with a black screen with the error code 160-0103 informing me of issues with the system's memory. I decided to go the route of attempting to connect the console to the internet and update it's likely extremely out-of-date software but was once again met with a freeze. Eventually, the console no longer reached the boot screen, instead displaying the blue light and making HDD and disc drive noises but no display whatsoever (checked cable, attempted rebooting) and would no longer connect with the gamepad. There are no external storage devices or USBs attached that might be causing this.

Anyone have any advice on how to approach fixing this? It seems to me like its an issue with the physical storage as I experienced similar behavior when one of the cells one of my RAM sticks died. It seems that after attempting to load the full main menu, reaching a dead/corrupted portion of memory, the system halts. I would however still like to try everything in my power to fix it as I have many games for it still and all of the peripherals that I would like not to go to waste. Is there a way to perform a factory reset of the console using button combinations or physical inputs on the console itself? I cannot access the system settings for long enough to do it with that method. Otherwise are there jailbreak options available to me to restore a saved state or install new firmware? I have a number of cables, adaptors, and windows and linux computers available to me but no Raspberry Pis or related equipment. The Wii U console is one of the earliest models purchased within a year or two of launch.

If there's any relevant information I forgot to mention I will be glad to provide it if necessary. Thank you.

 

[V10lator]

This is most likely a hardware issue. See https://gbatemp.net/threads/ultimat...reset-black-screen-after-stuck-update.642339/

Now with doing more and more to the failing eMMC, like the firmware update, you corrupted more and more things until the font or something important for the display corrupted. So let's hope that the recovery menu still works, just that you have to navigate it blindly, else things get more complicated.

 

[SDIO]

Doing a Fimrware Update when getting 160-0103 is one of the worst things you can do, as in most cases that then leads to this full brick.
You can try UDPIH, but most likely it won't work.
What probably happend:
during the update there are many writes, which first go to SCFM. When SCFM tried to evict something and caused a partial write to a corrupted page. Since the untouched part of the page can't be read back because of the ECC error, the operation fails. Since this failure happend on a evict (and not a write on the FS level), it doesn't report an error but causes a panic, which you see with the halt.
Now it retries the evict every time you try to power when it loads SCFM, which happens long before UDPIH works, and panics there again.
So this will either need defuse or you dump the eMMC in hardware and replace it with a 32GB SD you write the dump to. Since the SD won't report errors on the evict, it should not panic again and the console should boot further. But that this is not guaranteed to work, as it depends on the assumption that is is the SCFM evict that fails. But you will have to replace the eMMC anyway.
defuse would show you exactly whats going on. You will still have to replace the eMMC, but with defuse you don't need to dump the old one in hardware. But defuse requires some more soldering.