3 red rings of death= F@ck My Life.

[C_F_H_13]

I know this has probably been brought up alot, but I just have to vent.....so bare with me hahahaha.

I work alot. I mean alot. Over the past 8 years I've been working consistently 50-100(yes that's right) hours a week, working under tight schedules, and dealing with some of the most horrific audio editing/vocal tuning imaginable. I take great pride in my craft and I'm very very happy to do it. When I do get some down time, I either spend it with the lady friend, or I play Xbox....or I did.

I woke up yesterday morning and enjoyed have my first real day off it roughly 6 weeks. Got up, made pancakes and bacon, sat down at my tv, turned on my xbox and was ready to spend a good few hours whoppin' some ass at C.O.D. To my horror I got the fabled three red rings of death. You can't imagine how much that ruined my single day off. I immediately got on youtube, figured out what I needed to fix it, and went to town. I spent the better part of the next 2 hours studying the videos, and then applying the techniques to my xbox.

2 hours later, I plug my xbox in.....and it WORKS!.....I was so happy you have no idea....for about 45 seconds. It shuts down...and gives me the 3 red rings again. I opened it back up, check the solidity of my "custom heatsinks", checked for burned out solder points, checked the cables to the cd drive, ensured that the white venting piece was in place, etc etc. etc etc.

My xbox is still fucked and I've resorted to tracking down someone else who can hopefully fix it better then me. This entire post really had no real point except that I'm chocked I'm now spending my days off (when I get em) playing my lady friends god damned Wii. I don't know how many times I can go bowling or play tiger woods golf before I eat the business end of a shotgun..........

 

[PhilTheBeard]

that blows bro i'm glad my original 60gb ps3 has not giving me any problems in the 2 years i have had it

 

[Metaltastic]

Is your 360 over 3 years old dude? If not, I'm pretty sure it's still 100% covered under warranty for the RRoD (none of the myriad other potential errors are covered for more than a year, however :Smug: ), so you should probably send it in, provided you haven't voided your warranty already! Though that's hardly what anyone could call an immediate fix

 

[iamandy]

that blows bro i'm glad my original 60gb ps3 has not giving me any problems in the 2 years i have had it

my 60gig ps3 has just died the drive wont read any disks, at all. phoned sony up and they asked for 150 pound and would send us a refurbished one out!

 

[PhilTheBeard]

^^^Damn that blows i hope i don't have any problems with mine but if i do i have a buddy who fixes them. Plus i wouldn't mind buying a ps3 slim as a backup

 

[Damian B]

Is your 360 over 3 years old dude? If not, I'm pretty sure it's still 100% covered under warranty for the RRoD (none of the myriad other potential errors are covered for more than a year, however :Smug: ), so you should probably send it in, provided you haven't voided your warranty already! Though that's hardly what anyone could call an immediate fix

Yeah he opened it, so the warranty is a no go already...

To the OP, we fix Xbox's at the shop where I work, so I might be able to help. Did you replace the xclamp with screws and washers, and use electrical tape to seal the plastic tunnels?

 

[Chris_P_Critter]

I had 3RoD about a year ago (mine is about 3 years old as well). I sent it in - $100 to fix, but they didn't fix it - they just sent me a newer refurb model. Haven't had a problem since.

 

[C_F_H_13]

yeah I was pretty chocked....my xbox is about 4 months past the point of any warrantee fixes.

Yeah I did the xclamp/electrical tape thing. I've actually found someone here (vancouver bc) that'll do the fix for me again/better, and do the cd drive foam trick to stop the xbox from scratching disks agains tthe laser.....

It's funny that they just had an article on cnn about how 24% of xbox's fail there users....but only 11% if you remove the 3 ring error hahahaha.

 

[Jevil]

What is red rings of death?

 

[Metaltastic]

Damn dude, if yours is like 3 years + 4 months old, I'm amazed it lasted this long!

 

[Damian B]

What is red rings of death?

It's caused by by the xbox overheating, due to Microsoft's terrible design.

 

[Metaltastic]

What is red rings of death?

Basically means general hardware failure (there are a shit-ton of other errors that can happen, I got just one red of the four quadrants of the ring when my GPU died, fortunately it was still within a year of purchase so I was covered under warranty, otherwise it would've been $100! :Smug: )

 

[C_F_H_13]

yeah I know in retrospect I have been incredibly lucky. However I just got madden 10 and I'm craving it so bad right now.

sphykik:

Since you do the repairs yourself, is there anything I should be asking or watching out for when I check out a few of the places that do it here?

There seems to be a lot of different guys, all saying there fixes are the only ones that'll work because of "we use rael xclamp replacements" or "industrial pastE" etc etc etc....

ideas?

 

[Felix Neumann]

That´s why I bought a PS3, although I still think, the 360 has the better games. I had the ring of death 3 times, it nearly killed me I was so angry!!

 

[C_F_H_13]

That´s why I bought a PS3, although I still think, the 360 has the better games. I had the ring of death 3 times, it nearly killed me I was so angry!!

hahahahaha you're tied with my buddy for having the most. He had to replace 3 xbox's in roughly a year. He is now on his 4th and is happy that it's lasted a whole 10 months!

 

[Wolfeman]

Stick with a PC

 

[SocialNumb]

Stick with a Mac

 

[Wolfeman]

Boooo

Well a I'll agree, a Mac is still better than any console will ever be

 

[James Murphy]

same thing happened to my 3 year old xbox a while back.. called msoft, sent it in, got back a perfectly working unit in a couple weeks. no probs since, but i'm sure if i do, they'll fix/replace it again.

 

[Damian B]

sphykik:

Since you do the repairs yourself, is there anything I should be asking or watching out for when I check out a few of the places that do it here?

There seems to be a lot of different guys, all saying there fixes are the only ones that'll work because of "we use rael xclamp replacements" or "industrial pastE" etc etc etc....

ideas?

Well, some of them are just flat out unfixable unfortunately. I always use Arctic Silver thermal paste http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=arctic+silver&x=0&y=0 which is expensive but worth it. You have to use the right washers to make sure that the heatsink is making good contact with the CPU and GPU, and you have to get a good seal on the tunnels. Once you've done all that, unplug the fans and let it stay on for a good 45 minutes. Then let it cool COMPLETELY, like for several hours.

If this doesn't work there really isn't much you can do to fix it. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise... At the store we charged $80 to fix it, and $20 if we couldn't.