Updated my Wii a few days ago and now it doesnt read the games on start up. Neither can I go to settings cause it freezes.

Basically I have to turn the Wii ON and OFF several times before it displays the game logo on the Game channel. Settings work fine too.

Is this a common problem or should I ring Nintendo?

I don't think it's common, no. Better contact Nintendo and see what they have to say about it.

call Nintendo, funny thing is if you had the homebrew channel you could fix this yourself :S

I smell a brick for bad soft modding usage.

One_touch_KO,

Nothing like that mate. Not worth modding since I'm only playing it for a few games. (Twilight Princess, Mario Galaxy and MP3)

 It all happened after I updated to 4.0e firmware.

Yet if you had modded it, as One_Touch_KO is obviously unaware.. You could have installed Starbreeze which basically let's you run Wii in a sort of emergency alternate start up mode and fix a semi-bricking.

You could always use a hack to downgrade the Wii from 4.0 though and see if the issue is still there.. It could fix the problem or on the other hand it could actually worsen the issue..

Hmm...

If you have an SD card you can solve that via the homebrew channel by yourself. By doing a downgrade, and then update again. It's not that hard. Or installing new IOS's maybe.

If you ring Nintendo it might take 2 or 3 weeks.

Isn't there a way to access that alternate startup mode through a button combination? I seem to remember such a thing being discovered well before the Homebrew Channel got off the ground.

Z button on the GCN controller as far as I know

I have had a few occasions when the disc has not been detected in the last month but nothing else.