Issues with Wii: flickering lines and system crash?

Hi, recently I've had a few problems with my console, and was wondering if anybody else has experienced something similar.

When I play I tend to do so for extended periods of time (as in, I'll leave my console on for most of the day, and sometimes overnight). This hasn't seemed to cause many issues, and indeed I've done it all the time with my 5 year-old full-size PS2 and it still works more or less perfectly. The problems started about 2 and a half months ago. While playing a game, a noticed a number of small flickering vertical lines in a row on the screen, it wasn't immediately slap-you-in-the-face noticable, but it was definately there. At first I put it down to the game being terrible (Bomberman Land Wii :P), despite being new. Then I played Twilight Princess and some other games since then, and the exact same thing happened. It bugged me, but it wasn't enough to cause me any major concern.

Tonight, I just moved my Wii back into its usual spot after a party and fired it up after a few days of inactivity. I changed the game after doing a few other things for a couple of hours, then went to the Disc Channel. Nothing happened, but the lines were flickering worse than ever. For 2 minutes. I ejected the game (which it spat out immediately with no 'thinking' needed), put in a different one. Same thing. Tried it again with a Gamecube game. Nothing. I tried going into the Wii Settings, and it froze on a black screen. The power button on the Wiimote did nothing except turn off the Wiimote. I gave it a hard shutdown with the Power button, turned it back on, everything worked. I'm stumped.

Possible causes I can think of:

• Aforementioned continual use
• While standing vertical, it has accidentally been knocked over a number of times. This never caused my games to freeze, or the console to do anything wierd however
• The new space it's been in for the last 5 months is very enclosed, (area is about 2.5 times as tall as the console is wide) and it lies on its side. Doesn't seem much hotter than consoles usually do though.
• Occasionally I have to move (albiet carefully) it while the disc is playing. I know it's not recommended, but I've never had issues with doing it before with either console, and all my discs are in excellent condition.

My Wii is about a year and a half old, for the record. If anyone can give me some advice as to what's wrong and if there's anything I can do to fix it, I'd really appreciate it :)

yeah im sorry to say but your gpu got burnt. samething happened to me. Your going to have to send it into nintendo to get fixed so go to club nintendo and customer service. Since your 1 year warranty is up it will probally cost you $80 to fix.

Okay heres your problem buddy. your knocking it over is big, because when it gets knocked over, the disk freezes inside the console, which causes the disk to scratch. thats why u see the lines. (i had the same problem with my gamecube, and presumed it to be broken, but when i traded in the game and got new ones, i booted it up curiously and it worked.) if not that, then call nintendo. now what might have happened when u knocked it over is that the disk scratched causing the wheeler (the thing that spins the disk) to freeze and then start up again, making it hit a cable or power fuse. Your best bet is to call nintendo yet again. if u have a warranty, u should be able to get it covered, if u say it broke. Any other questions, feel free to PM me.

Sorry for the late reply, been busy.

Well bugger, was hoping to avoid a trip to customer service, looks like that's inevitable though. Thank you both for your help, in any case! :)