I programmed and installed my wiifree chip two days ago.
I have a NTSC united states console that I got on launch day.
Everything went flawlessly, I turned it on and it recognized my backup of metroid 3. I played it for a couple days, and acquired another backup game of sonic and the secret rings or whatever, i was watching the intro after creating my savegame and the wii froze up. So I turned it off and tried a different game. It won't recognize any backups.
It also won't read my original Wii Sports game. I have not tried any other originals yet.
The symptoms are the same with the chip plugged in or not.
After all this, it did boot up an original gamecube game.
But the gamecube game I had stopped working after only one sucessfull boot.
The backup of sonic I was playing when it crashed was a pal version,
I'm no fool, I brickblocked and regionfrii patched it.
The error I get when any game is in is:
An error has occourred ... blah blah eject the disc, turn off the console and consult your manual.
Without the chip in the dip socket, if I put a backup in it says something like "can't read this disc" But does not crash
if I put a backup in with the chip it starts to load then I get the black screen with the error again.
If I put an original wii game in without the chip it gives me the same error as with the chip.
I can still get into all the menus and settings.
Well, I can't get into the Wii Shop channel, it freezes when that thing is loading too. But I have never even been into the Wii Shop channel before.
It says I'm running 3.0(U) firmware on this thing.
I have tried laying it on it's side, it did feel a little warm.
I know that the fan _is_ spinning and displacing hot air.
I don't think the laser is burned out because it recognized gamecube games, and it knows the difference between a real game and a copied game.
Things must seem bleak for you, I am sorry to hear your problem. Did you try restoring to factory defaults? I hope my solution works and I hope the best for you and your console.
