Some of you may have heard about the Xbox360’s massive warranty upgrade program and the Red Ring of Death. I’m looking to acquire an unmodded(!) console that “reliably” exhibits the Red Ring of Death (some anecdotes on the net of consoles coming back from the dead–I don’t want one of those), and I’ll pay cash (via paypal) for it at market value ($299 for the core system–I’m only interested in the core, of course…). Leave a comment or preferably send me an email if you have such a unit and are willing to part with it…
Uh-oh…you just lucked out. We are on our 4th Xbox 360 as of last week…2 reliably dead, one zombie machine.
Will be in touch re: chumby soon…long time no talk…lots of news!
I sold my launch machine to a friend and it promptly went down. Let me know if you want it.
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Awesome, thanks! I think with these two responses I have all the leads I need.
If anyone else is reading, I’m curious to find out how your console went down:
* Were you playing a game and then it “crashed hot” to the red ring of death, or did it show up only after a power-cycle? If it “crashed hot” did you have to power cycle after the crash to get the red rings, or was the transition to the red rings spontaneous?
* Has the red ring of death been consistent, or did it ever boot (even once) since it started showing the red ring of death?
* Did you do something such as download a patch from Live, change a setting, or plug in a peripheral in the period of usage immediately before you got the red ring of death?
thanks!
1) The first time it crashed it was playing an arcade title. Complete lock-up, green light still but system completely unresponsive, screen was left displaying what it had when it locked up. Played a game off dvd, about 10 minutes in it locked up the same way. Turned off, back on it booted fine, again 10 minutes in same lockup. Shutdown, booted back up fine for the rest of the night. Used the machine for a week pulling streaming audio & video. A week later crashed hard in two live arcade titles, and three sessions of a game off dvd. Then on bootup started getting three red lights, shut it down and it booted up fine. Locked up, three red lights on bootup, rebooted locked up on the 360 splash screen, completely unresponsive, screen continued to show the splash screen. Now I only get those two states (three red lights), and locked splash screen.
2) I am getting three red lights with the top left unlit, contrary to images I have found online.
3) The first time no updates from Live, no change in settings. About a month to the first crash the only change was I started using the digital optical out on the machine. Just before it started crashing consistently I grabbed an autoupdate for Catan, and then for COD3.
It’s never crashed directly to the three red lights, only after restart.
Hi,
Craig: Exactly same behaviour on my machine!
First freezes after 5 Minutes. (Sometime at XBOX360 boot screen). Played for about 2 Days. With some ‘ingame’ freezing, but after restart it was gone. After a while freezing starts at boot screen continuously. After that, Ring of Death. Laid Xbox on side, ROD was gone but came back after 4-5 power cycles.
I am curious as to why you would want one?
I have never owned a 360 myself, but I have suspected lousy soldering, residual unmelted solder paste/flux and or tin-whiskers to be responcible for the bulk of problems, convieniently located under the BGA chips where no one can do any thing about it.
That is unless they own a X-ray examination system and an infrared surface mount rework station.
Man I wish you had posted earlier, my second 360 has been in the shop for about 3 weeks now. Here’s what happened:
I noticed that the fan was pushing a lot more air around than normal. even though nothing had really changed (console sitting upright ontop of a marble table, so not really any issues with heat.
Then, the game started freezing when I ran Guitar Hero II. I thought it was the disc, because usually after taking it out and putting it back in, it would work fine. Then, while playing the game, some objects would just have a checkerboard pattern on them.
It finally died when the screen froze and overlayed a pinkish checkerboard over the entire screen semi-transparently, and then wouldn’t start up.
I’d wildly guess at a tin-whiskers problem as well, especially when combined with the reported overheating problems
I’m in the UK with a core system with the red ring of death (0102 error code). It will never boot except if the motherboard is heated first (will work for a few minutes even after been heated with a hair dryer).
I wasn’t around when it went wrong, but as far as I know it didn’t crash hot, just some graphic artifacts and after a power cycle it started flashing the red ring.
The crash was in the middle of a game, while disconnected from the Internet, no addition/removal of external devices.
Let me know if you need any more info.
I’m in the UK. My console first broke from cold. I switched on to watch a movie – using it as a MCE. I had a Live friend request, went to look at it and the machine locked. The screen became corrupted – you could still see the image that was there but the colour became muted, the image shifted down slightly and there were vertical bars of noise on it. The sound also stuck at the tone it had been playing. The green light remained on but on a reboot I got the 3 red lights.
I’ve had it repaired – not by MS as it was before they extended the warranty. I’m not sure exactly what they did but the repair lasted about 4 weeks before exactly the same thing happened again. I’m probably going to try and shift it through ebay soon for parts unless anyone else wants it.
mine died on august 31. I just turned it on and i got the rrod. However, after i restart, it goes away. Games freeze a lot too. I think it will die completely soon. I filled out the online console repair form and i hope i get my coffin soon. Until then, i can still play game but with a lot of freezing.
Hey –
A lot of these troubles can be attributed to the NYKO Intercooler device.
I was reliably getting at least one ring of death a day until I removed this device a month ago… Not a single problem since.
There is a report out there that the NYKO device actually uses too much ‘voltage’ (current, really)… but I am thinking that it rather puts too much noise on the rails… causing a lot of the lockups.
Yet another set of these problems can be attributed to the flaky connector the XBOX 360 uses for the hard drive… Here in Sunny Southern California, I have had to clean these connections on both the hard drive and the base unit (with alcohol, after using an eraser on the contacts) to get back to functionality.
Yet another type of failure was when my Toshiba CD drive (in the XBOX360) bricked itself… preventing the XBOX from booting up… Thankfully, I had piggy-backed another ROM, with a switch on the front panel, which allowed me to reboot the system using a HACKED PROM I had made some time ago… which seems to have allowed the CD-ROM drive to unbrick itself enough so that I could reboot with the factory PROM without any further problems.
As far as overheating goes… I have placed my XBOX360 in a special cubby-hole/shelf I dug into the wall, just for the purpose. I added the NYKO Intercooler with the thought that air circulation would be a concern… but after removing the device and adding a couple of fans (12V) to the back of the cobby-hole box, I’ve not had a single heat issue, with hundreds of hours on a first-run XBOX 360.
I would be very, very willing to part with my godforsaken 360. it very reliably comes up with the ring of death, so if you are still into buying broken 360s please, please get in touch.
Hey this guide here can help http://xbox-360-3-red-lights-fix.blogspot.com/
my 360 is doing the rrod right now but the strange thing is that it is still booting up and letting me play for about 1 to 2 minutes before it freezes
[…] A while back I posted that I was looking for an RROD Xbox360; I actually sent it off to MEFAS to get digested for solder joint inspection on the GPU through a process called “dye and pry”. In this process, the motherboard is flooded with red ink, and then the GPU is mechanically pried off the board. The red ink flows into any of the tiny cracks in the solder balls, and at least in theory, when you pry the GPU off the cracked regions will shear first so you will be left with visible red spots at the points of failure. […]
Make sure you get the controller’s from the console for me Bunnie! I want the SCP out of them!!! :->
1st January 2007 – I buy my first 360. It gets the rings after 1.5 hours of gaming
2nd January 2007 – I get my second 360
March 2007 – The second one gets rings, take it back same day for a new one.
November 2007 – The third 360 gets rings, next day i take it back and because i had my original receipt i get an Elite at no extra charge.
16th January 2008 – Playing Madden 08 literally 20 yards to the end zone and my Screen fucks out and i get the red lights.
I’m majorly pissed right now, considering getting my money back and buying a wii with all the trimmings.
xboxdude, thanks a lot!
Right when im in the middle of a game on call of duty 4, my screen freezes. i try to restart a few times but it wont get passed the xbox logo. i leave the console unplugged overnight and i have a damn red ring of death.
I have a xbox with the red ring of death.. Send me an email…lets talk..
do you still want xbox with the ring of death cause I have one email me to confirm
i have had 2 360s in the last week, both got 1020 from playing mass effect, i only got it replaced today too, im pissed off
Microsoft all over you would think they would have done more testing apparently they knew about these problems.
Basically i got my xbox at christmas last year. had it about 10 months now. since july at least i can remember was it started saying “open tray” so i looked up on the net. researched it for 3 or 4 weeks. playing fifa 09 demo later today and i got the 3 red lights flashing on my xbox360. i ring up microsoft and ask them why it has done this. they are sending me a new console tomorrow. but i just wanted to know this simple question without warranty i would of had to pay 100 quid to get it fixed. that is fucking outrageous i’ve payed 250 quid for my elite and it goes and brakes. thank fuck for warranty! also my xbox used to scratch my disc’s a slight ticking noise. and so. did this ever happen to yours? good luck guys!
http://www.fixya4you.blogspot.com
first of all remove all power supplys from plugs.
then take every lead that is connected to the xbox out.
then remove your hard drive from the xbox 360.
get a hoover and hoover every air vent on the xbox 360 including the sides and where the hard drive connects on your xbox for a good 2-3 minutes
hoover the xbox power block vents and make sure you put it in an open space where dust cant gather up inside it..basically not tucked under anything .
plug everything back in and your xbox should work….well it did for me!
AND MAKE SURE YOU DONT TUCK THE POWER BLOCK OR YOUR XBOX 360 AWAY UNDER ANY MATERIAL OR IN A CORNER WHERE DUST ACCUMILATES.
hope this works for all. if it doesnt work the first time..maybe try a second time.!
thanks.
you would have thought a genius would have been able to work out how to fix it by now wouldnt you!
It sounds like you’re creating problems yourself by trying to solve this issue instead of looking at why their is a problem in the first place.
i survived the red ring of death
Hi
This red ring of death problem is a real nuisance, and apparently the failure rate is quite high. My xbox went down recently and I needed a quick fix. Don’t fancy doing the towel think, it sounds too risky!
You would think Microsoft would have enough buying power to make a decent system wouldn’t you…?
check out some of the videos on youtube for penny fix etc. If you are still under warranty, send it in. It’s sad we have to go through this while my piece of crap old consoles/pcs/even my first cd player/fm radio thing(manufacturing date on it says 1995 and made in Malaysia) work great. Good luck to everyone…
I bought this because I love gaming…not much gaming going on now is it?
That includes my original Nintendo machine…
Getting RROD, E74, shit pains..you name it..Live looks fine and everything else but I’ve noticed Halo 3 after a minute or so displays artifacts on screen and while still playable makes it difficult sometimes to get a clear image when shooting someone at long range. Iron Man demo, the shadow of IM is a square with dots(looks like the Halo 3 artifacts.). Everything else seems to go well. May try some penny fixes or something..who knows..not concerned about modding my xbox but while i have it apart I might paint the case. I usually use my 360 to play with relatives on live..other than, it’s turned into a streaming media device for my big screen. I take very good care of my machine, no clutter, one user, just retarded this has to happen.
On internet there are many guides to fix red ring of death, selecting a right one is very tedious task. I had found one article on fix RROD http://www.squidoo.com/xbox_360_red_ring_of_death_fix-how_to_guide123
Unfortunately, my xbox’s warranty was expired and I was not having a chance rather than repairing it.
Hello. This is kind of an “unconventional” question , but have other visitors asked you how get the menu bar to look like you’ve got it? I also have a blog and am really looking to alter around the theme, however am scared to death to mess with it for fear of the search engines punishing me. I am very new to all of this …so i am just not positive exactly how to try to to it all yet. I’ll just keep working on it one day at a time Thanks for any help you can offer here.
Its incredible now there is a cool way to fix your XBOX 360 RED RING OF DEATH I just found out last thursday. Check my link posted. If it does not work try rrod-fix-pro dot com.
I own an Xbox and a Playstation and both are really good game consoles. Let’s see what are Microsoft’s future updgrades on its Xbox game console.'”:
Very well written and great post. Big thumbs up!
There are tons of guides on how to fix one’s Xbox online. I found this one How to Fix Xbox 360 Red Ring Video Tutorial to be one of the best and most helpful.
i wrap towels around mine turn it on for awhile and suffocate it and somehow itll work for a couple days b4 i get 3 rings again then repeat. thank god for 12 year old nephews. they can always get a video game working lol!!
We repair the XBOX 360 RROD in our shop in Lincoln UK.
We have fixed over 300 consoles to date.
You cant just fix the RROD because it will just keep hapening, you have to modify the cooling to prevent it from coming back.
Check out my guide.
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