send it back in or DIY

So the DVD drive on my wii has finally gone tits up.

It keeps giving me "an error occurred, press eject bla blah" errors whenever i put a disc in. I have tried every disc in my collection all are originals and all are in region.

The problem started when I put a hired game from the video store in the unit and it got stuck just before it would normally read. I hit eject and it spat it out and I put it back in and from that point on it could no longer read discs.

My thoughts are that it damaged the laser.

Anyway, when my partner bought it for me, she bought 2 years extended warranty so it is still under this extended warranty at the moment.
However, I have homebrew on there and have softmodded the wii and am sitting on 4.1 system menu.

If i send it in I am going to have to remove all the softmods, and then send it in, but will Nintendo be able to tell I have softmodded it and therefore reject the repair?

Will they also automatically update it to 4.2?

Would I be better just to buy a drive from ebay for $50 and then do the repair myself? I have no qualms about opening it up and think that having it updated to 4.2 by nintendo or the repair being rejected may be more annoying than just doing it myself.

Anyway, any suggestions or thoughts?

Cheers
Dan

Unless you are really good at soldering parts and computers, I would reccomend sending it to Nintendo.

According to rumours, Nintendo doesn't reject repairs even if "unauthorized software" is found. If I were you, I think I would just do a Bootmii backup and then send it in and when I get it back, I would just restore it with the backup.

Alternatively, I'd delete all non-nintendo titles you have installed with any title deleter before sending it in (and still do the Bootmii backup just before sending it in).

Hey, you can call it a rumor, I call it my experience, they just called to make sure I was ok with them removing it.. I said yes, they fixed my wii, I reinstalled everything I had

Really?

Thats awesome. I guess that gives me a bit more confidence in sending it in. There isnt any soldering required though so doing it myself is easy enough.

Can I get a bit of clarification?

When I first setup homebrew I installed Bootmii on boot2 and took a valid NAND backup, I also have preloader installed on there.

If I remove preloader and all the non-nintendo titles, when i get it back will I be able to just restore the NAND backup via bootmii or will they have overwritten boot2?

I mean I just dont want to send it in and end up with a screwed system

Nintendo will update your Wii to 4.2, thus boot2 will be overwritten. You can re-install Bootmii and restore NAND though.