Faulty Xbox 360's Why?

[5cent 0]

I recently purchased an Xbox 360 and it began to work slower and slower until it finally stopped working, later that week i was talking to my friend about and he said that 1 in 10 do this, why?! If Microsoft knows about this problem then why don't they fix it? Then my friend said they would send me a new one if I just shipped them my old one, I then called the support line and they said I needed to send my Xbox in the box it came in. (i didn't have it because i didn't know about this problem.) I asked her if they could ship me a box so that i could send them my Xbox to them to have it replaced, they shipped me one but it took about 2 weeks to get to my house. When i shipped it to them I was hoping they would send back a new one, ready to play, but they sent my old one back with a "Void Warranty" note stuck to the side of it My question is, why don't they just fix this problem, it would make their customers more appreciative of Microsoft, please comment on this with any experiences you have had with this problem. Thank you and have a good day

[meinbcca 0]

Hi I am new on the site, this is my first post!This particular subject caught my attention for a few reasons, the main one being I am by no means a technology expert but I do love to play and learn the tedious ins and out. I started looking into 360 problems because several of my friends were having issues with their consoles, I personally did not own one. One of them offered theirs as a experiment and learning box.. boy do I appreciate that! I have since opened and repaired to the best of my ability around 30 consoles. So far only 2 of them ended up malfunctioning after "repair."If microsoft sent your console back with a void warranty sticker, its probably because the seal on your console is broken (the one under the faceplate). If that was cracked, ripped or cut they will not cover any errors as they cannot prove the fault is in their work or something you have done to the console (replaced drives, modified etc). If you were to call back and tell them that the sticker has been removed or otherwise altered, but would still like to have the console repaired, they generally will BUT at your expense not theirs ($120-$220 from what I have heard). Not to defend Microsoft as the failure rate of the 360's does seem awfully high to me personally, but they have started to release the new consoles with an additional heatsink, 2 for the graphics car and one for the CPU.. which with any luck will help the failure rate decline.You didnt mention the error that you were having, or if it was the red rings. In my experience, even once you get the secondary error code the problem is almost always related to the same thing. So far that thing seems to be the GPU (graphics card). Again I must re-iterate I am not an expert, these are soley my opinions from what I have seen and/or read. Microsoft is using a lead free solder to connect the chips to the motherboard, the lead free solder cannot with stand the extreme temperature fluctuations that comes from the 360 (cold when off, hoter when doing less graphically intense things like music, and quite hot for games). The soldered connections start to break and the cards start to lift (if you google this, you can probably find xray photos of motherboards showing this). Adding to the lead free solder issue is the X-Clamps they use to hold the heat sinks to the chips and board. The pressure coming from these bends the board during play or when the machine is hot.. even a slight warping can damage solder joints and wires (traces). When "repairing" a 360 I generally take the x-clamps off, replace the thermal paste with a very high quality one, and I do NOT re-attach the x-clamps, instead I have found building support posts with regular nylon washers for the legs of the heatsinks works very well, without adding to board warping during temperature fluctuations. This may have gotten a bit complicated and for that I apologise. If it isnt against board rules, I would be happy to share in more detail HOW i replace the x-clamps and thermal paste. Or feel free to PM me for me details. I hope this has helped somewhat.Oh, last thought, if your warranty is void, there are plenty of websites and physical stores offering 360 repair for a relatively low fee of $50. Google should bring up plenty!

[jopak134 0]

have heard too much stuff about the 3 ring of death too bad microsoft cannot solve this one fully even with their new released consoles.

[saitunes 0]

Just with the experiences (PC software related) of having to to talk to microsoft and get them to solve a problem, not fun at all. A few of my friends have X-boxes and had problems, the ring of death and such and have also had very painful experiences with their customer service/tech support. To be honest until Microsoft improves their service, and greatly improves the quality of their products I will not be buying anything from them. (Thank god I own a mac otherwise this vow would shoot me in the foot)

[rpgsearcherz 5]

I've heard a lot of bad things about consoles. The issue is generally that they overheat....It'd be best to get one of those cooling things...I can't think of what it's called off the top of my head but there are third party coolers for things like the 360.As far as I know that's what causes all of the issues, is overheating. Also, ensure that it's not in an enclosed area or the air can't get to it and it will overheat as well.

[AbdurahmanL 0]

I've had my Xbox 360 for almost a year now, and I sometimes go on 8 hour playing sprees on live, and I never get overheated! After the 8 hours I touch the 360 and it's only warm to the touch. I guess having the smaller size cpu really helped avoid the red rings of death! I think all of today's 360s have the smaller size cpu. Or maybe you got really bad luck and happened to get one of the originals? hehehehehehehehehehehehe

[samlockart 0]

Ok, I heard it is every 1 out of 3 Xbox 360s. I have one and I have gotten it. What causes it is a loose solder on the motherboard from it getting hot and cooling down. If you search Red Ring fix or something similar on Google they will tell you to wrap a towel around it, this will cause the solder to heat up and reconnect temporarily. What bothers me though is when everyone is saying 'microsoft is so s**t they can't even make good consoles!!?!?' Microsoft makes amazing consoles with the best functionality ever, but they decided to rush a little and didn't get everything right. So that's why now they are spending over 1 billion on repairing these faulty Xbox's!Sam.

[AbdurahmanL 0]

Yeah, I think the Xbox 360 is the best console ever invented! It has all the cool functionality of live, which I don't mind paying for, but I wish it was free, and all that cool downloadable content like demos and stuff. By the way has anyone played that new Battlefield Bad Company demo? I just got to downloading it today, and I must say, it's SO AWESOME!!! The destroyable buildings and craters that you can make with explosions just make this game a million times better!

[samlockart 0]

Just for the record, every one of my friend who have owned a 360 HAVE had the red rings lol, sometimes more than twice. Lucky the repair service is great, well in Australia anyway, it only takes around a week to get it back, and usually they place new components in it. Like for me a faster DVD drive and new cooling which is much quieter, now it's only as load as a PC booting up Send it in and expirience UPGRADED 360!!!!!Sam.

[rpgsearcherz 5]

I've heard that a lot of people get the "red ring of death" but I haven't ever heard of any that live local to me...Most of the people that have them live elsewhere,lol.Always thought it was a joke before until going online and searching and finding out how many people do get it. It's something about a wire that was put in wrong is my understanding though, and there is a clip to fix it.Question though, is the "RROD" only in the older systems, or do the newer ones suffer from the same issue as well? It seems like maybe it was just a beginning production issue that was fixed over time.

[Cloudd 0]

I think that microsoft has fixed most of theproblems with the Xbox 360, but no matter how many fixes they make there will always be something wrong, it is like that with evry system. Although the Xbox 360 has had problems i still consider it the best console out there right now. The Xbox 360 has more benefits than problems. The biggest benefits of the 360 is Halo 3 and Xbox Live. These two things alone could make the Xbox 360 worth buying in my opinion even if there were no other things that came out for it. Thats just my opinion though. Microsoft has been speeding up their customer service for those who have bnought faulty Xbox consoles. Instead of taking up to more than two weeks for a console to be repaired and sent back to its owner thay have fixed consoles and sent them out in as low as one week inside the states.. I think that is a great improvement considering how many systems get sent in.

[Utah 0]

I recently purchased an Xbox 360 and it began to work slower and slower until it finally stopped working, later that week i was talking to my friend about and he said that 1 in 10 do this, why?! If Microsoft knows about this problem then why don't they fix it? Then my friend said they would send me a new one if I just shipped them my old one, I then called the support line and they said I needed to send my Xbox in the box it came in. (i didn't have it because i didn't know about this problem.) I asked her if they could ship me a box so that i could send them my Xbox to them to have it replaced, they shipped me one but it took about 2 weeks to get to my house. When i shipped it to them I was hoping they would send back a new one, ready to play, but they sent my old one back with a "Void Warranty" note stuck to the side of it My question is, why don't they just fix this problem, it would make their customers more appreciative of Microsoft, please comment on this with any experiences you have had with this problem. Thank you and have a good day

The earlier generations of xbox 360s tend to have the most problems. Where did you buy yours from?
There's a possibility that your 360 is an earlier generation console.

Also, here's a few questions:
+Has your xbox fallen since you bought it?
+Have you moved it around a lot or traveled with it?
+Have you been poking around inside of it, or tried to fix it yourself? (Cause microsoft obviously thought you tampered with it, and voided your warranty)

Also, Jopack 134 The red ring of death is completely gone in new consoles. That is a problem only existing in the older generations.
So, any new console you buy (all new generations come with a HDMI port, a good way to tell the generation of the console) will not have this problem.


I've had my xbox for two years now, and I havent had any problems. :/
Edited August 23, 2008 by Utah (see edit history)