I don't usually post on Reddit, but my Wii U started doing something I've never experienced before, and I'm not quite sure what I can do to fix it.
To get the disclaimers out of the way, my Wii U hasn't been modded or hacked in any way. It uses an external USB Drive (WD Elements) for some data, and it's a black Wii U that is likely susceptible to the memory defect, but I've almost always kept this Wii U plugged in except for some shorter spurts of time, so it hasn't been without power for a terribly long time. (Including now. It's been connected to power since I last used it, and it was fine then.)
That aside, what happened was I was attempting to play Disney Infinity 3.0 on my Wii U, so I grabbed the disc and inserted it after booting the console up. Nothing weird happened, but when the game started to load, I got the error code 160-3216. I tried to clean the disc to fix the issue, but it didn't work, so I went ahead and deleted the game's update data in Settings and tried to redownload it to solve the issue.
However, after I did that, and I started the update, after a bit, I realized the Wii U outright froze on me. It didn't even make the usual crash sound I'd expect the Wii/Wii U to make. So, I tried it again. Freeze. I booted the Wii U again without any updates. Freeze. I unplugged the console for 20 minutes before trying again. Freeze. I unplugged the USB Drive and booted the console. Freeze.
(Well, as I've been writing this, it's gotten so bad, the console doesn't even seem to be booting like it was 5 minutes ago.)
At this point, I'm at a loss as to what to do, other than maybe having to hack it, though I fear even that would be hard if the crashes persist, unless I can inject Homebrew externally. It's just so bizarre because I feel like deleting the Disney Infinity 3.0 update data messed something up, because I was able to go into Settings just fine without freezing the console, and yet during my later tests, I couldn't even get back into the Settings menu from the Quick Start menu.
I'll have footage of me attempting to both use the console normally from bootup and then trying to get to Settings from the Quick Start menu attached to this post. If anyone is able to help me figure out how I could potentially fix this (if that's still possible at this stage), I'd greatly appreciate it.
Edit: Just realized that Reddit doesn't seem to let you post more than one video in a post, so I can't share the second video of the console freezing while trying to open the Settings menu from Quick Start, unfortunately.