XBOX 360 Three rings of death

[triggmiester]

Hey there

 

Got the dreaded 3 red rings of death on my 360 on the weekend. Short of sending it back to microsoft for a warranty repair, anyone managed to get round this? I have seen a few links on google about how to get round it but didnt know if anyone had tried this?

 

Thanks in advance

[Geoff]

Just send it back. It's a relatively painless procedure.

[EvLPhenom]

I looked at this when it happened to my box, i seen that people was doing all sorts to try and avoid sending them back including someone purposely over heating the system for some reason.

 

Personnely i would just send it back as at least you know it will be fixed properly as mine was.

[Little-Miss]

My friend returned it to the game shop he got it from and that was painless enough.

[Michael]

I didn't know there was anyway around the RROD. It's related to overheating of the GPU (I believe) and newer consoles come with a larger heatsink.

[ZeroHour]

Also when you get a replacement you may get a hdmi port on it if its a newer refurb/replacement

[AngryITGuy]

I didn't know there was anyway around the RROD. It's related to overheating of the GPU (I believe) and newer consoles come with a larger heatsink.

 

Would disagree with you regarding the larger heatsink on newer consoles as my Elite just got the dreaded RROD over the weekend, so I am not pleased

 

With regards to RROD fix I have a friend who fixed his before trading it in for an Elite. It involved him wrapping his 360 up in a towel and switching it till it overheated and switched itself off. He then let it cool down before switching it back on and amazingly enough it worked. Not sure how long for though because he traded it in the same day!

[mrforgetful]

It depends.

 

If it's out of warranty, you're pretty much limited to buying a new one or trying to fix it.

 

I did the overheating trick (wrap in a towel, tuen on for half an hour, unwrap and let it cool) and that worked for a week or two then it went again so bought a new one.

 

Or you can look up on the internet and there is some kit for about £20 that you can use.

[Little-Miss]

Right....dumb question, but why does making it overheat fix it?

[HodgeHi]

I thought that they re-designed the mobo for the RRoDs and if they had any in they swapped them over. Or was it just a rumor? if so then maybe they bloody should have.

 

It's amazing how frequently this has been an issue and that it is still going on, and even more amazingly that people still buy the flippin things even though they are bust! It's just a badly designed machine.

 

From the noisy drive, to the crappy over-priced HDD to the ultimate kick in the teeth for the hard-core gamer RRod. If this was Sega they would be out of the console business (oh, wait a minute...)

 

[HodgeHi]

Right....dumb question, but why does making it overheat fix it?

 

It must reset something in the system to say that the temperature has exceeded the norm and thus resets the error. That's my guess

 

Is there not a button combo like there was for the original xbox to get into the system engineer mode?

 

It's been a while since i looked at MS and their Xbox systems.

[Curt_LFC]

If out of warranty buy an xclamp repair kit from ebay which is what i did with mine at the weekend which got me back up and running. All it does is replace the existing fixings for the gpu "the xclamp" with some bolts and spring washers. Just clean off old thermal paste from gpu and cpu and the heatsinks then put new paste on and reassemble. Took me a bout an hour from start to finish and has been fine over the weekend and also a lot quieter as the fan isnt working as hard as it was prior to the 3 red lights as the gpu is a lot cooler now. The kit cost £4.50 and came next day!

[mrforgetful]

Right....dumb question, but why does making it overheat fix it?

 

I read somewhere it was that they started using some lead free solder, and the connections are somewhat lame. Heating the box up causes the solder to reseal itself.

 

Could be rubbish I don't know.

[ICT_GUY]

Also when you get a replacement you may get a hdmi port on it if its a newer refurb/replacement

 

can confirm this, my brother in law sent his off, paid his £65 fee got a brand new one back.

[tech_guy]

Would disagree with you regarding the larger heatsink on newer consoles as my Elite just got the dreaded RROD over the weekend, so I am not pleased

 

How old is your console if you don't mind me asking?

[triggmiester]

My console? or ICT GUY?

My console is coming up on two years old

[DarkLight]

It's still in warranty; all RROD errors are covered by an extended 3 year plan regardless of the 1 year standard warranty.

 

Just send it back - there's no point in beating around the bush.

[gwendes]

I've done the towel trick a couple of times and it's worked fine.

[CHR1S]

It depends.

 

If it's out of warranty, you're pretty much limited to buying a new one or trying to fix it.

 

I did the overheating trick (wrap in a towel, tuen on for half an hour, unwrap and let it cool) and that worked for a week or two then it went again so bought a new one.

 

Or you can look up on the internet and there is some kit for about £20 that you can use.

 

RROD warranty is 5 years now, iir. The towl trick works but only short term.

[Haptic]

I've done the towel trick a couple of times and it's worked fine.

 

 

i have a 2 year old 360 premium with ring of death ,

 

how long would you say to leave it on with the towel trick ?

[Michael]

The XBOX 360 is a poorly designed console from scratch unfortunately. The problem Microsoft had (ultimately) is the success of the Playstation2, so they rushed to get the XBOX 360 out before PS3. Ironically, PS3 arrived about a year later and is a much better console design.

 

On refurbished consoles Microsoft are/were definitely putting larger heatsinks on the GPU to keep it cooler. How much difference this makes in practice, I really couldn't say.

 

Finally however, Microsoft have started shipping new consoles based on the "Jasper" motherboard and comes with a 65nm processor. This should reduce the running temperature significantly and should hopefully mean far less XBOX 360 returns.

 

I'm sure Microsoft have learnt their lessons on this one. Hardware isn't as easily fixable as software bugs, so it's important to get it right first time!

[stu]

doing the towel trick and then replacing the fan helped my mates ( also made it little quieter, tho not much.)

[ZeroHour]

i have a 2 year old 360 premium with ring of death ,

 

how long would you say to leave it on with the towel trick ?

 

It started happening to me after the nxe update. Wrap it in a towel for about 20 minutes then turn it off. Leave it off for about 20 minutes and then try a boot. It lasts, for me, about a week before I needed to do it again. It has though started doing this again last night and while the towel trick worked it only lasted a hour or so before it happened again so for me its not a permanent solution.

I have registered my console and submitted it for repair now. All you do is fill the form in, they email you a sticker to use and you tell UPS when to collect it.

 

BTW it is still only a 3 year warranty for RROD so if you have the issue on a launch console submit it now for repair.

 

I will post how I get on with my repair but I am hoping the replacement has HDMI and the silent drive.

 

TBH no one should complain about 3 years and the console dies. PS2's were terrible for failing according to my friends that had them. Most of them literally had 2-3 ps2's because the cd drive would stop reading discs and there was no 3 year warranty there.

[AngryITGuy]

How old is your console if you don't mind me asking?

 

It was 13 (unlucky for some) months old when it all started to go wrong.

 

Gets very little use, in fact my 4 year old son spends more time on it than me.

[Little-Miss]

I've got one of these on order for my fella. Am slightly worried about all this now. Do you think its possible mine will be one of the new ones?