XBOX360 = THREE RED LIGHTS OF DEATH

[ORTA]

My cousin bought an xbox360 for christmas and upon opening it and setting up to play it we automatically had a three blinking red light and it says that we should contact customer support, we then contacted the support center and the person we talked to gave us some troubleshooting steps but unfortunately these steps didn't resolved the 3 flashing red lights the representative gave us 2 options..

1.send it back to the retailer

2.send the console back to microsoft for repair

We opt to send the console back to the retailer but the retailer told us to call Microsoft because allegedly they are the once who can help us.

The thing is... this unit is brand new and we haven't played it yet even for a fraction of a second and microsoft is already asking us to send it to them for repair.

Is there anyone here who knows something on how to fix this problem?

[NFG]

Mine was flaky out of the box - would spit out the 'unreadable' disc every hour or so.  I took it back to the retailer, don't let them give you the runaround, by law (almost universally) they're responsible when selling you broken shit.

Demand they replace it, or demand a refund and buy it somewhere that won't screw you over.  It's rude and you shouldn't have to put up with it.

[Endymion]

I have a launch unit that worked flawlessly for more than a year. Like magic, right when  microsoft extended the warranty to one year for consoles sold in 2005, mine started flaking randomly, and did so more and more all week last week. It started by simple freezing, then I'd get the red lights. A lot of theories swill around about the causes and what to do to prevent it. I had used my 360 upright until a couple of months ago, contrary to a lot of "conventional wisdom" that this caused lock-ups mine worked perfectly the whole time it was upright. The only reason I ever turned it horizontal was in a hope that it would quieten the optical drive, which didn't work, but it was only after reorienting it that I was getting the freezes. Turning it vertical again didn't fix it.

At some point last week, I got the thing booting. It was either red-lighting at boot, or freezing when attempting to start a game. At one time I could boot, and noticed I had an XBox Live Arcade game that was corrupted on the hard disk, I'd lost my Uno! I deleted that but it didn't solve anything. After some angsting over it, and testing by booting with the hard disk removed, I formatted the hard disk, and the unit has worked properly ever since. I know that the hard disk is not required, and that if it were causing problems it really shouldn't do this while unplugged, but formatting the hard disk has made the thing behave for a little over a week now. Give that a try before packing it up.

Well, if you can get it to boot to the dashboard at least, that is.

[col_sandurz]

I was perusing the web the other day when I ran across this fix for the 3 Red Light error.

http://www.llamma.com/xbox360/repair/ring_of_light_x-clamp_fix.htm

It is basically a reseating of the heat sink on the GPU and CPU.  Also they advocate running the GPU hot to re-melt the BGA pins underneath, presumambly creating a more solid connection.  I was wondering how sound the logic is and if anyone has ever tried this.  Also, is the 3 ring error associated with the GPU or is it a more general error, which the above post implies.

[kendrick]

Don't do it. Microsoft's warranty repair place will do one of three things:

* Install a new heat sink for the GPU
* Replace a damaged GPU with a new one
* Send a completely different Xbox in place of one with a bad motherboard

As much as I hate to endorse Microsoft's hardware services, they're really trying to dodge a public relations bullet with the service on the 360. Given the flaws in the console and the parts that are going bad, it's worth your while to go for an official fix rather than doing something homebrew in this case.