Red ring of Death

[hallsofvallhalla]

My xbox Red ringed last night. I was quite drunk on tequilla so it didnt hit me until this morning....This is my 5th one to red ring. So sick of it. Going back to the PS2.

[OldRod]

Is there something that makes some red-ring more than others? My son has had his about a year and a half and no problems.

[Callan S.]

I'd wonder about climate and dust levels? Basically I heard a heat conductive paste on the cooling fins boils away and drops the unit self cooling capacity considerably.

[Jackolantern]

Earlier systems have something like a 10000% higher chance of red ringing than systems made after the 3rd year mark. I had some serious, serious issues with red ringing on my ~2nd year XBox 360. And even if you bought it last week, there is typically no guarantee it is not an old one (unless it is one of the Kinect packs). I had 5 RRoDs within 6 months, and 95% of that 6 months my console was either in Microsoft's care or in the mail. So basically it would only work for about 2 hours each time they mailed it back.

I finally had to go nuclear on them and tell them I was throwing it in the trash if they did not actually replace whatever was the problem or, failing that, give me a new console. I asked to talk to a support manager, got everyone's names, extensions, direct lines, etc. It took about 2 weeks, but after it came back I never had a problem with it again (knock on wood lol). That was over 2 years ago.

[hallsofvallhalla]

This is an elite and is about 2 years old now. I got it on the 9th of September and the manufacture date was the 5th. Literally hot off the press

I am sick of the RRoD and worrying about. May get a PS3.

[Jackolantern]

That is odd, but the Elites still had some issues. I believe I saw the stats as being about half as likely as the first runs. The newer Kinect one basically has 0% chance of RRoD with normal use.

Microsoft has it in their power to fix it for good, because they did it for me. Just raise some hell. However, I do love my PS3 as well. The media options are lightyears beyond the Xbox 360. But if I had to choose one just for gaming, it would have to be the 360. The Xbox outsold PS3 by leaps and bounds in the US, and it shows in how many more games are coming out for the 360 compared to the PS3. And that also means most non-Japanese games are actually developed for the Xbox 360, and then ported to the PS3, which makes itself apparent in quality discrepancies between the two versions.

I suggest trying to get the Xbox fixed for good.

[hallsofvallhalla]

There is no permanent fix for the xbox. Even the new ones "red ring" but they dont actually have a red ring. It instead displays green lights. They did not send you a un-ringable xbox you are just damn lucky . At some point it will. It is the nature of the design. My brother in law bought an elite right before the new ones came out and it red ringed. It is number 13 for him. Yes 13. On the other hand my nephew has a xbox from like 06 or something and it has never red ringed. Depends on conditions.

Even PS3's have issues. It is packing all that hardware into a sleek design then running it at max all the time. A PC sits idle or close to it for much of its life.

[Jackolantern]

Well, of course it is not necessarily perma-fixed, but it can be made much harder to occur under normal conditions. And I guess it is worth noting that the red ring of death that I experienced over and over was all of the lights lit up except for the upper-right quarter, which is a hardware failure. As with most consoles, the first runs had the most problems and RRoD'd the most often, and the issues have gotten much better with the newer releases (oddly enough, the first runs of PS3 with the original HDD sizes seem to be the most hardy, then dropping down with the 2nd version and going way back up with the newer ones). The supposed Xbox 360 "Jasper" chipset version was supposed to have addressed the RRoD hardware failures, and while they don't tell you what they did to fix it, I am assuming they changed out some parts on mine after spending a fairly good deal in shipping alone to shuttle my system back and forth.

It is just hard for me to believe it was just luck, considering every time I was polite and just said "Ok, I'll mail it back", it broke again within 30 minutes of being played, but then when I laid into them, they keep my console an extra week, and now it has been fine for over 2 years for fairly heavy use. But again, I really don't know what they did. I have talked to several other people who had about the same situation though, where their system now seems fixed long-term after months of back-and-forth problems, which would lead me to think that Microsoft at least has a way to make the chances go way down.

[hallsofvallhalla]

you could be right. I do have the jasper one but I think they all run the risk. I actually found a guy at the flea market that fixed it in 1 hour for $30. Who knows how long it will last but hey its worth a try.

[Jackolantern]

It could also be that the rash of RRoDs that plagued earlier consoles were mostly for the same issue (which was some kind of coolant issue, I think having to do with a sealant), and yours is a different issue. The 3 lights is just a "general hardware failure", which would mean we would actually be having completely different issues. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I think that could be it. The much-publicized RRoD problem supposedly dropped way down with the Elite pack, so I would think yours may be different from the coolant problems I experienced. The three-lights is just a catch-all for everything that doesn't have a set error light configuration already.

You could always be a jerk and get it back, test that it works, and immediately turn it off and sell it! "What?! I never had a problem with it! It must have been damaged in the mail. Here is the info to contact the shippers about a claim"