If you can’t live without your console then cleaning the Wii lens yourself with a lens cleaning or scratch repair kit is the easiest option that solves the problem in minutes. We’ve taken a look at a couple of products available that aim to fix the problem:
Official Nintendo Wii Lens Cleaning Kit – $9.99 – EDITORS CHOICE
We’ve found the affordable official Nintendo Wii lens cleaning kit that keeps your Wii running without those annoying ‘press the Eject button and remove the disc‘ errors. The cleaning process involves placing some drops of cleaning fluid onto the cleaning pad of a specially designed plastic paddle then inserting this into the disc drive slot. You then wiggle the plastic paddle a few times, press eject and the process is finished.
We tried the lens cleaning kit on a frozen Wii we’d given up on, after an initial clean it spat out a disturbing amount of dirt and we were not only playing Super Smash Brothers Brawl again but a scratched frisbee copy of Mario Kart was up and running too. The pack comes with plenty of cleaning fluid and five replacement cleaning pads – for less than 9 bucks this is the cheapest way to repair your Wii and doesn’t invalidate the warranty. You can buy the official Nintendo Wii lens cleaning kit from Amazon.com for only $9.99.
Skip Dr. Motorized AutoMax Scratch Repair System – $29.58
If you’ve got a specific game disc which is causing you problems it may be the disc itself and not be the Wii lens which requires cleaning. The Skip Doctor aims to fix scratches on game discs, DVDs and CDs which are causing problems (there is also a gamecube adaptor available separately). The Skip Doctor is motorised and works by removing the thin scratched layer off the surface of the disc and then buffing a new shiny disc surface which won’t confuse the Wii laser – first attempts using the device still left problems on the disc however on the second attempt we were able to play an error prone antique copy of Wii Sports.
Compared to the official Wii lens cleaning kit this may be an expensive overkill, but if you’ve got some problem movies in your DVD collection or own other consoles (we haven’t tested this on a Blu-Ray disc though) this may be an ideal solution. The kit includes cleaning fluids and cloths which should cover repair of around 50 discs, you can buy the Skip Doctor disc repair for $29.58 from Amazon. A cheaper alternative from the same company is the Digital Innovations motorized disc cleaner for $16.17 although we haven’t tested this on the Wii console.
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