Do you have a dead 360? Post your experience here!

I'm on my eighth *bleep* console. It stopped working in about a week. The last one they sent me didn't work the first time I tried. Seriously they need to do something about this.

 

I'm one lucky bastard, i'm still on my first launch date Xbox 360?? I know this thing could go belly up at any moment but i'll worry about that when it happens, so far it's happy gaming for me. Not so happy gaming for you abuzar1, you situation sucks royally.. WTF, 8 360's have died on you!! That's totally unacceptable on M-soft part, those a-holes should have fixed this X-clamp problem themselves, now they launch the Elite with no improvements, ohh and let's not forgot about the Halo 360. Probably won't have any fixes, except a fancy paintjob and 120gb hd, shame on you M-soft.

 

I know lol. 3 have died in the past 2 months, it would have been less than 2 months but Microsoft has become slow in returning my consoles.

 

I just got a refurb from microsoft after 3 red lights, and had it modded. Now the one I have keeps freezing after less than a minute of gameplay. The strange thing is that I can play a dvd movie, and downloaded movie trailers on my HDD and that'll work fine. But if I try to play any game disc or any game demos on my HDD the console will freeze within a minute of playing the game. I've never heard of this happening before. My console is in a open area, so is the power supply. I don't think overheating is the problem or the dvd drive since movies work from the HDD, and games from the HDD still don't. What the hell is going on with my xbox 360. Can it be the firmware?

 

Dude...it's an xbox 360, it doesn't need a reason to freeze up or any of that stuff. Bieng a xbox 360 is reason enough.

 

Using the console requires allot more CPU usage which results in the freeze... your console acts just like every other console!

 

thanks anyways guys. Damn I have a feeling i'm going to be one of those guys whose going to end up turning in my xbox to microsoft four or five times. Also I heard the refurbs that microsoft is sending back to the customers has some security block so its harder to flash the drive. Have any of you heard about this or know how to get around this problem?

 

I haven't posted on these forums in.... Ages. I may or may not be back for good.

Anywho, some info for you jrdub.

If it is fine running DVDs and trailers, bt dies when you play games/demos; that indicates the GPU is probably overheating, although it could be the CPU as well, since actual gaming takes much more processing power than video playing, etc. The thermal compound trick is probably worth a shot-assuming your machine (For one reason or another) cannot be covered under a warranty. If you're going to open the machine up anyway you should probably clean and redo the thermal job on both chips, Arctic Thermal Paste works very well, and is fairly affordable. Just make sure you don't under/over do it.

Some people have reported a rather permanenent fix (six months and running), while others have reported as little as two weeks. It depends on whether your system has other faults(Some systems actuall have a warped motherboard, from too much heat over a long period of time, which can cause certain circuits to lose contact, causing three red lights again. This is the problem that people try to address with the infamous 'towel trick', which again works for some but not others, and in many cases isn't a 'permanent' fix.

Realistically, if it's out of warranty, the thermal compound is a great option with solid, logical inteliigence backing it. If that doesn't work, you can always try some of the more unorthodox methods later. I've heard of some people who completely re-do the casing(Visual mod), and place extra cooling all around(Even the bottom). This is only for experts who for some reason are really attached to their system. I considered it with my last 360, since it was one of the last roughly 5% of launch night systems to still be functional more than a year later. But even then, it just wasn't worth the effort to me. I won't suggest this method so much of a fix, as I prefer to call it 'incidental maintenence' while doing visual modification.

Sorry that was long winded, hopefully it gives you some ideas or validation to your own thoughts.

 

thanks for all the help guys, it is much appreciated.

 

I have never had a problem with my 360. May i ask are you Trying to break your 360. It could be your power brick or something like that?

 

Who the hell out there would be trying to break their 360? What kind of question is that. The power brick is over a open basket source. Theres a fan next to my 360 to cool it. I just recieved that refurb because of the 3 red lights after having it for 6 months and it broke on the second day. With all the problems going on with 360 consoles, I doubt I broke, its a design flaw from Microsoft.

 

That is a pretty stupid question. People don't want to break their shit, Microsoft just made a product that breaks down. Sure not everybody has problems, but for us who do its not that fun.

 

@drphilly

You should note-YOU ARE THE MINORITY.

I try to be as balanced as possible in my opinions on the console wars, but to be really honest, M$ is who I often end up siding with, due to my personal experiences with the company. I hate to say it, but I'm much more proned to side with them than Sony or Nintendo. But as an employee for a game specialty store, I can't honestly say that even 25% of the systems from launch night are working without having been repaired. Now, a lot of people were quick to jump on the bandwagon and decry them all as broken in the first month, which is NOT TRUE. The truth of the matter is that a very small margin of those systems worked past the 12 month mark; and while the numbers have gotten better over time, many users still experience issues.

I'm just glad that M$ extended the warranty on these, it makes me happy to see a company do that before a court mandates it, lol. (I'm looking at you Sony.)

I'll honestly say that I think many other companies handled this problem MUCH worse than M$ did, M$ is handling it much better than Sega or Sony did in the past-They denied the issue altogether. M$ may be grudging to accept the problems are their fault, but they're making progress and they did the extended warranty by will, without a court having to mandate it. That's a really big thing whether you choose to see it or not. That's a first for the industry. Whether you like M$ or not, you have to admit that a manufacturer of this size, willingly doing something like this, knowing what kind of loss margin it will create, is unheard of, and though they may have f*cked up the manufacture, it shows that they are making efforts to make things right.

Oh, and in additional response to your question, those who really want a broken XBox 360 can still go down to most any local shop and purchase a Nyko XBox 360 Intercooler. Most Gamestops, Targets, etc still carry these products even though they've been recalled and are known to have a nearly 100% kill rate on 360's, and have even caused small fires. Isn't that lovely?

 

Thanks for all the help guys. My xbox was freezing like I said. I was waiting on microsoft to send me a box for repair. I periodically turned on the xbox and now the three red lights appeared like you all told me. Man this sucks I hope I get better luck with the next refurb.

 

ITs funny im on my 3rd 360, it's not here yet it's actually still in my house, I called them up as usual saying I got the ring of death and they said theyd ship out a prepaid and i wait for about 10 days and i get an email saying something like. We havnt received your xbox do you still want to follow through with the repair process? So i called them up and this indian guy came on know offense but when I here nice men and women who know how to speak english im not this rude but this guy barely talked the lanquage so I go, "I got an email saying: we havnt received your xbox do you still want to follow through... well I havn't received a *bleep* prepaid package to ship the little *bleep* out now why are they telling me whats going on if I don't know whats going on." the guy was like, "ohhkey leme chick your order two minute. Ohhkey sir I chicked and it said you filled in your order for a new repair August 5th, 2007 (which was the day I called) and I'm like, "What the hell are u talking about this somekind of joke." well it's been what 2 days I'd expect them to ship overnight package for my suffering and confusion but I'll expect it in about a week. *bleep* YA MICROSOFT

 

It adds a little spice to our posts lol.

 

For a while I thought my 360 would die on me, but it turns out the problem was with the television. But it seems that the inter-cooler isn't working like it should, should I buy an external cooler? I saw a few a Wal-Mart, wondering if it's worth the buy.

 

The intercooler ruins your 360, don't use it! It will make your xbox melt, it solves no problems and creates many. Sell it on ebay if you must, just get rid of it.

 

should i purchase a warenty?