A guide to fixing the 160-1400 error without soldering: the UDPIH way

If you've encountered the infamous 160-1400 disc drive error, you probably know that there's already a very nice fix here that involves shorting out 2 capacitors. I tried this and let's just say... it didn't work out. I ended up burning the pads off both capacitors, making it even more difficult to repair. What I needed was a noob-friendly fix.

For months I thought this was the end of my Wii U era, until I came across this thread, where they used De_fuse on a modchipped Wii U to what seems to be disabling the disk drive entirely. It turns out you can do the same with UDPIH, and you don't need a modchipped Wii U. All you need is a Raspberry Pi Pico ($4) or one of the supported devices here https://github.com/GaryOderNichts/udpih

I'm not sure why there isn't any information on this already, maybe I just couldn't find it -- but hopefully writing this post makes the method findable enough.

A quick disclaimer: This method involves disabling the disc drive, which renders it unusable, and you will only be able to play games digitally. I read somewhere that there are issues with opening the Mii channel on the vWii, but I haven't tested that personally. However, on the Wii U end, everything seems to work just fine---including the Mii channel etc. The best part is that this is completely reversible in case you decide to do the CM9/CM10 fix in the future.

Here's what you need to do:

  1. Obtain a Raspberry Pi Pico or one of the supported devices from here.
  2. Follow this guide to boot into minute from your USB device and SD Card. You only need to follow the UDPIH specific instructions. Stop after "Select Load BOOT1 Payload". You may optionally want to create a NAND backup at this point, so you can follow those steps right under "Booting into minute" as well.
  3. In the minute_minute menu, select this option "Backup and Restore >> Set SEEPROM SATA device type >> No device".
  4. Return to the main menu and shutdown. Unplug your USB device. That's it!

It's that simple, and you should be able to boot into the Wii U menu and everything should work as expected, except the disc drive of course. Such an elegant solution, I really can't believe that the Wii U community is this advanced and I had access to all these resources. I'm so grateful.A guide to fixing the 160-1400 error without soldering: the UDPIH way