My Xbox red ringed... Has yours?

[LanTheWarder]

 

This is my first failure. Since there seems to be an huge amount of press about the incredibly large failure rate going around on the internet, I figured why not have a poll on f13.


1. How many people own an xbox 360?

2. How long have you had it?

3. Have you had any issue or repairs?


I have owned mine for about 7 months. I had infrequent disc read errors and freezing issues from about the second month I owned it. I would have to open and close the disc tray to get scratchless discs to read.

[schild]

1. Had 2. A launch one broke.
2. Second one has been around since 6 months ago.
3. Yes, I by mistake kicked it while it was patching. I was not shocked it broke. Completely 100% my fault. Not a single problem with either otherwise.

[Tannhauser]

Had one for about 8 months.
It broke (unknown error)
They sent me a new one.

[Kitsune]

Damn Lan, this is just not your week for hardware failures.  Sympathy.

[Rasix]

1.  I've got an elite.

2.  About a month and a half.

3.  One issue. Forza 2 would crash loading a certain set of tracks. There ended up being some crud on the disk and the issues disappeared when I cleaned it off. /big_sigh

[Ragnoros]

Got one in Jan.
See above.
Red Ring-O-Doom in April or May.

[NiX]

I've had mine since Sept of last year and I've never had a red ring or disc read errors. R6V has locked up, but the game is oddly buggy.

[squirrel]

Got my first in Feb/06. Around March/07 it started acting up (not reading disks, crashing). Shortly thereafter it went into red ring death mode. Second one is not a refurb and so far has been solid.

[Ragnoros]

Seemingly Gamespot has read your mind and is running this very same poll. That or they just steal all their shit from F13. either is fairly likely.

Nope.                                                             (40%)      3,493

Yeah, but I got it replaced for free.                          (15%)    1,370

Yes. And I had to pay to get it fixed.                        (5%)    469

Yes! Twice!                                                          (5%)    450

@#$% YES!! More than twice!!!!!                             (7%)      626

Pfft! You think I would actually buy an Xbox 360?    (26%)    2,262

Beings I suck at math and it's 5am I have no idea what those numbers mean. But looks like the failure rate is rather high to me.

[Trippy]

Bascially well over half the units represented in that survey have failed.

[vex]

Bascially well over half the units represented in that survey have failed.

Never mind I was really wrong.

[Big Gulp]

2. How long have you had it?

6 months when it red ringed, 4-5 months since I've gotten it back.

3. Have you had any issue or repairs?

One red ring, sent off for repairs.  Just sent it back on Monday again for a faulty DVD drive.

Microsoft has currently got the best overall game/online community going, but their hardware is complete and utter shit.  What really pisses me off is that they won't admit it.  I should at the very least get a free year of Live for sending my box back twice in less than a year.  As it is I wish I'd waited and gotten a PS3.

[murdoc]

Have had mine since March 2006, no issues other than the odd lockup with Oblivion after a few hours of play. 

[Bunk]

Got my Elite the week after they came out, only issue so far is one time it hung on booting. Turned it on and off and it was fine.

[Riggswolfe]

I've had mine since about January '06. I've had a red ring one time and that was when my house had a series of about half a dozen brownouts in less than a minute and I discovered the hard way my UPS was broken. I turned it off, left it off for about a minute, turned it on and I've never have another problem.

ETA: I don't smoke and no one in my house does. My 360 sits on a little wooden shelf that has widely spaced slats so it has alot of ventilation.

[Yegolev]

Five months.  One red ring that was caused by not having the A/V cable fully inserted.  Software lockups are negligible in quantity.  I keep mine hidden inside a cabinet.

R6V is pretty shitty software.

[schild]

Got my Elite the week after they came out, only issue so far is one time it hung on booting. Turned it on and off and it was fine.

It Hung or the graphics turned into a checkerboard.

If it's the latter, oh man, that sucks.

[Miasma]

I rarely turn mine on so I think that is why it's still going.  The only other friend of mine who bought a 360 had his fail after about two months.  I really hate playing on something I consider to be a ticking time bomb.  Sometimes I seriously consider buying a PS3 just so that I can play games without worrying that the console is going to crap out on me.  I've been very surprised that Sony seems to be doing well dud-wise, of course maybe the reason I don't hear about PS3s dieing is because so few people actually bought one...  My 360 was a housewarming present, I would not have bought one myself purely due to the terrible reputation it has for breaking down.

This guy has gone through eleven twelve.  He had to record a conversation with tech help because Xbox forum warriors called him a liar.

Someone here has gone through five or six, I think it might have been Morphiend.

Edit: Oh yeah, this story.  Someone found out that just in Britain Microsoft gets between 1500-2500 broken 360s sent to them every single day.

[schild]

You don't hear about the PS3 breaking because it's a fucking amazing piece of machinery. I'd be shocked and awed if any broke from launch other than people fucking up OS installs completely.

[Miasma]

You don't hear about the PS3 breaking because it's a fucking amazing piece of machinery. I'd be shocked and awed if any broke from launch other than people fucking up OS installs completely.

They should use that in a marketing campaign "Yes it costs 50% more than a 360 but remember you'll have to buy a new 360 every 14 months so it pays off!!!"

I'm only half kidding.

[bhodi]

Buried in the swamp that is the slashdot forums:

I manage the largest (AFAIK) Xbox360 error code list [xbox-scene.com].

Basically the most common error that people _REALLY_ have when they get the "3 red lights of death" is a 0102 which has been tracked down to an issue with the Graphics Processor. What happens is the processor runs exceedingly hot to the point where the PCB actually weakens and the solder in the BGA softens (it's eco friendly lead free solder too so it's weaker right off the bat). The heat syncs are held on by springy metal brackets referred to as "X-Clamps" mounted on the back side of the motherboard (so the screws go right through the mobo)... What this does is create a perfect storm for deformation of the motherboard and cold (figuratively of course) connections within the BGA.

Once a motherboard has been sufficiently deformed it doesn't really ever get better, like frame damage to your car it can be repaired but it's never quite the same again. A temporary fix is to pull off the heat syncs and reflow the BGA with a heat gun... but it only takes weeks to a month before you'll get the red lights again. A more successful fix is to remove the "x-clamps" [xbox-scene.com] altogether and bolting the heat syncs directly to the case chassis... This prevents the unnecessary flexing of the PCB below the GPU and even when the area gets hot from use does not deform the PCB and thus does not create cold connections in the BGA.

What does this have to do with the same person having 11 faulty consoles? Simply put... the consoles he's getting back are NOT NEW. He's not returning it to the store but Microsoft themselves and either getting his original console back "fixed" by Microsoft, or he's getting a refurb that originally belonged to some other poor schmuck who had the same problem... again "fixed" by Microsoft. Once a console throws that error it's prone to failure again and again...

I don't have a broken 360, mine has been working a-ok since I picked it up on launch day... but I know thousands of people who've experienced broken consoles and I know many people personally who take great care of their console and just had it stop working one day... and then the next one they got was DOA... and the next one only worked for a week... etc. etc. etc.

In most cases you either have had no problems at all or you've got through 2 or 3 or more consoles. The only people I know who have had to replace it only once after the 3RLoD were those who were out of warranty and simply bought a new one instead of sending it in for repair.

This is a known issue that Microsoft has been trying to fix, with everything from adding ginormous heatsinks to (in the new elite model) taking the entire joint and drowning it in epoxy.

[cmlancas]

All of this console shennanigry simply reminds me that I don't need any consoles for serious gameplay and my computer is just fine.  Plus, if I want to get drunk and play video games with friends, I'll just play Wii Sports. $250 for ridiculous amounts of fun. Yeah.

[Yegolev]

PS3 needs an actual marketing campaign, one that describes the reasons to get one rather than make me wonder just what the fuck they are shooting up in their marketing department.  Even though my 360 hasn't broken, I can tell it's shoddy just by using it... except for the controller.  The bumpers are rather off (TENCHU Z!!!), but on the whole the 360 controller is great.

Heat, I can see that.  I might want to cut more airholes.

Speaking of swamps, where is Zonk?  Did we scare him off?

[Morfiend]

I have gone through a lot of them.

#1 Started freezing, and then stopped working a week later.
#2 Was cracked and dinged up when I opened the box.
#3 Redringed in about 4 hours of gameplay
#4 Girlfriend was playing it with the glass cabnet closed. It overheated bigtime and melted down
#5 Ran very slowly, most games got aroun 10 fps.
#6 Ran perfect so far. I have had it for 4 months now.

These where all returned to Target, and they just gave me a new system. I kept my original harddrive, and I just pop it in to the new machines.

[SnakeCharmer]

2. How long have you had it?

6 months when it red ringed, 4-5 months since I've gotten it back.

3. Have you had any issue or repairs?

One red ring, sent off for repairs.  Just sent it back on Monday again for a faulty DVD drive.

Microsoft has currently got the best overall game/online community going, but their hardware is complete and utter shit.  What really pisses me off is that they won't admit it.  I should at the very least get a free year of Live for sending my box back twice in less than a year.  As it is I wish I'd waited and gotten a PS3.

What good would that do?  "Hai guys! Buy our shit!  Litterally!" 

Nothing like admitting your product is shit to inspire consumer confidence 



Anyway, 7 months, no problems. /knock on wood

[Viin]

I bought mine last December.
I had problems with R6LV and that hack-10000-monsters-repeat game, but everything else seems to run OK.

(But, I only play maybe 5 hours a month).

[Driakos]

It Hung or the graphics turned into a checkerboard.

If it's the latter, oh man, that sucks.

Checkerboard is what happened to me earlier in the week.  Previously turn on/off would get rid of the ring and the on-screen Predator (Yoo ahr one ugly muddafuckah) language.  Checkerboard was death.

[Driakos]

I got mine about a month after launch.  I forget when 360 launched.

Whatever Launch (- 1 month) to now is.

It's had power-up  trouble for a long time now.  Starting it twice (sometimes three times) was a work-around.  It broke Tuesday night for good.

[Big Gulp]

What good would that do?  "Hai guys! Buy our shit!  Litterally!"

Because I'd like to have some clue that MS recognizes the problem and has fixed it.  This "acceptable failure rate" bullshit needs to go away, and MS just needs to say, "Yes, we've had some problems with some of our earlier 360's but we've since resolved the problem and are trying to fix the faulty boxes currently out there".  Their continuing silence doesn't tell me shit.  Is every 360 out there potentially a piece of shit, even the "elite"?  How could I recommend the 360 to my friends when I have no idea whether that shiny $400 game machine they bring home isn't going to crap out on them in a week?

[Chimpy]

Microsoft has never had a good history of admitting problems with their products, even when they have fixed the problem in later versions and want people to upgrade to fix the issue.

Of course, very few companies do openly admit to mistakes in this day and age. It is easier to obfuscate or outright shirk the responsibility altogether.

[Miasma]

Do we know for a fact that the elite does fix the problem by adding a second, more powerful heat sink?

[Zetleft]

Roommate 'had' an x-box 360 for about 1 year.  Right after the warranty it red-ringed and they told him over 200 bucks to fix it.   So pretty much no xbox here anymore.   

[Tannhauser]

Which way should I set my 360, vertically or horizontally?  Which way protects the dvd drive more?

[bhodi]

Do we know for a fact that the elite does fix the problem by adding a second, more powerful heat sink?

No. They did some redesign to alleviate some of the warping problem (additional larger heat sink and more epoxy) but it doesn't "Fix" the issue for good -- it treats it with varying levels of success.  It's a design flaw that was not fixed in the current release version of the elite.

[Viin]

Which way should I set my 360, vertically or horizontally?  Which way protects the dvd drive more?

I suggest doing what I do, which is not use the dvd drive. Seems to last a long time that way.