Wii power – none – then yes!

We had a lot of rain the past few days, and then snow, 5″, yesterday (Sunday, March 1, 2009) and during the snow storm on Sunday the power actually went out a few times, just for a couple of seconds, and a flicker or two here and there. All worked fine with our electronics, they are plugged into surge protection strips, not expensive ones, but decent ones. We did notice though that the Wii system wasn’t powered on (red power light on, meaning it’s plugged in, and also the cooling base we have has blue lights and the fan running all the time … all was silent.)

I wasn’t told this all until this afternoon, but I didn’t have a chance to look at it until we got back from running errands this afternoon/evening. So I checked the plugin area and all was plugged in, so I unplugged and put the plug into another outlet and still no power. I tried holding this button down, that one, leaving it a few minutes, changing outlets again … nothing.

I searched online, and found other people complaining of no power and some answers to leave it unplugged for 30 minutes, or 2 hours, etc. They’d say that worked for them. So I didn’t have the patience to wait that long at that point, and had seen someone mention the fuse going bad on their Wii system and that they just replace it and it works fine, but no mention of where that fuse is located.

So I searched that information out and still didn’t find anything, but I put the computer down and picked up the box and looked around the Wii case and saw one external spot with a little phillips screw and a place to open it up, so I unscrewed it and took the piece out and it was a battery, a flat round one, like a cmos battery in a desktop computer, or in a flat remote. I looked at it and put it right back. Screwed the screw back in. Went to tell my husband what I had done so far, went back, plugged it in and voila! The power red light was on, and it powered up fine. I put it back by the tv and hooked it up and it works fine and all the Mii’s and stuff are there.

So, I think it was the battery that reset it, since I didn’t leave it alone for more than a few minutes at a time, and that’s the thing I did last, before it worked. FWIW.

So try that, if you can’t get your Wii system to power up.