Is there a way to launch channels without a DVD drive?

The dvd drive in my wii is not functional at all. I never use discs, so I figured this would not be a problem. I am not referring to piracy here; I use homebrew games, the internet channel, etc. When I launch, any channel it seems, but the Homebrew Channel, I get a disc read error. I was on 4.2U, but updatedto 4.3U after much frustration trying to get it to work with the later. Homebrew will work fine, but I am unable to launch any other channel. My main goal at the moment is to download the netflix channel, which is proving impossible.

Try to use a homebrew channel loader if you can. You said you have internet channel, so try bootOpera. If it loads the Opera channel, you should be able to load other channels using a similar method. If it doesn't work, you may be out of options sadly. Maybe someone else has some other advice, but please try this. If it works, we can work from there.

You can not load any wii channels, games, wiiware, vc without a functional disc drive. Possible you could patch these channels to not try and initialize the dvd drive, but I have never seen this done. Basically, without a somewhat functional drive board, not much works on the wii.

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SifJar
Try to use a homebrew channel loader if you can. You said you have internet channel, so try bootOpera. If it loads the Opera channel, you should be able to load other channels using a similar method. If it doesn't work, you may be out of options sadly. Maybe someone else has some other advice, but please try this. If it works, we can work from there.

I tried it, but no luck. Thanks though.

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mauifrog
You can not load any wii channels, games, wiiware, vc without a functional disc drive. Possible you could patch these channels to not try and initialize the dvd drive, but I have never seen this done. Basically, without a somewhat functional drive board, not much works on the wii.

That's a poor design choice on the part of Nintendo. I was afraid of something like that. I may look into patching it. Can I just buy a new dvd board and not have it on a drive.

It's not a "design choice" that causes the console to malfunction when a vital component is damaged/missing.

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tueidj
It's not a "design choice" that causes the console to malfunction when a vital component is damaged/missing.

I fail to see how the DVD drive is a vital component to web browsing, or using any other thing on the system memory.

I also have a PS3 and Xbox 360 with broken drives. They run the installed games without a problem, because they do not check to make sure the DVD is functioning if it is not being used.

Just to make it clear, the only console drive that has actually messed up on me is the Xbox 360`s. I bought the PS3 in that condition. In the case of the Wii, I had bought my niece and nephew a Wii and their drive messed up, so I traded drives with them. I did this because of the aforementioned reasons. They play disc games almost exclusively.

A functional drive board is all your need afaik.