cloudswift's Blogs

I have become a victim. A victim of Microsoft, a victim of boredom, and a victim of Nintendo. Ok... a victim is a touch theatrical. For anyone that has experienced the Xbox's colour of blood also knows the large and empty hole left when the console dies, and the relentless bitter/sweet taste of addiction.

Unfortunately the Xbox 360 is vulnerable to certain technical faults indicated by a series of flashing and subtly intimidating red lights around the power button, and this little essay will serve to highlight a few of them:

One red light (bottom right) indicates a hardware fault followed by an on-screen error code (4); notable codes include E73, E66, E68, E69 (13) and this means not only are you f**ked because extended warranty doesn't cover one light, but you're going to have to buy a new console because we both know you spent far too long on that gamerscore just to let it go. Some websites claim they can fix this for a small fee, other websites claim swine flu is a government conspiracy and the vaccine will stop people having babies (so... erm don't believe the hype?). But a glimmer of shinning light occurred on April 2009 when Microsoft applied the extended three year warranty to cover the E74 error (14).

Two red lights (top and bottom left) indicate the console is overheating and will require a cuddle, soup, and a good nights sleep.

Four red lights indicate silliness, because you didn't plug your AV cable in properly (3); I experienced this when the power plug wasn't in properly, and I can't help thinking this was a precursor to the RROD because the same thing happened to a friend, and his console died a few weeks later.

Three red lights (top and bottom left, and bottom right) indicates you're Shafted and you have a general hardware failure; this is what cool people refer to as the RROD, where your Xbox essentially becomes an electronic door stop. Various sources have indicated the solder on the motherboard as a potential cause (5), as well as various heat related problems.

Ironically, the best red light array to have is the RROD (or E74), because this means you are pretty much guaranteed free postage and repair courtesy of the good guys at Microsoft. This wasn't always the case; possibly due to the high estimates of faulty consoles (from 16.5%/25%/30%-33%/54.2%) (7,8,9,5) and possibly due to a few lawsuits (10,11), Microsoft changed the warranty in July 2007 (12) from one years warranty to three years warranty specifically protecting against RROD (6). So don't be shy, get on the phone with your serial number and they'll kit you out, and with any luck you'll be thumbing away in 3-6 weeks.

As for me, i'm now stuck with the Wii that I bought after watching all those convincing marketing ploys. And it's not very entertaining, but it does have a half decent news channel.

1)http://support.microsoft.com/kb/907534 2)http://support.microsoft.com/kb/907533/en-us 3)http://support.microsoft.com/kb/906652/en-us 4)http://support.microsoft.com/kb/907536/en-us 5)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RROD#Three_flashing_red_lights 6)http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:_5EOULpo7LAJ:support.xbox.com/support/en/us/nxe/Hardware/Warranty/Warranty/ProductWarrantyNew.aspx+http://support.xbox.com/support/en/us/xbox360/hardware/warranty/warrantyfaq/WarrantyCoverageFAQ.aspx&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=nz 7)http://news.spong.com/article/9336/Xbox-360-Faults-Full-Report 8)http://www.xbox360faults.com/ 9)http://www.feedagg.com/feed/372551/Fix-The-Xbox-360-e74-Error-Fault

10)http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=183 11)http://www.pcworld.com/article/152463/californians_sue_over_xbox_360_flaw.html 12)http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2003776098_webxbox05.html 13)http://support.microsoft.com/kb/941377/en-us 14)http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=4152