3 Red Rings of Death

anyone else have trouble with vf5 freezing their console? sometimes when i played music off my external hdd it would freeze up loading character data or stages..

this time it froze as i switched from XBLA to vf5.. froze on the white vf5 title screen then beeped before it froze on the main xbox load screen.. been red ringing me since then..

its been givin me 2 red rings (overheating) a lot recently.. sometimes after only a few minutes of play.. never had problems before the 'fall update' and now BAM!! ive got a $400 red and white brick in my living room


im so upset right now my hands are shaking.. im gonna go break something

UPDATE

so it finally booted upt after i put my $400 Xbox 360 in the REFRIGERATOR!! not exactly a reasonable way to keep it running..

either way, this isnt my first 3 ring circus so im sending it back to m$.. hopefully it bricks in their possession cause if im out a console for a month just to get the same one back with no changes im gonna lose it again..

not that you guys need a play by play but imma need to vent regularly or i might end up breaking something.. im rather violent when it comes to service outages and hardware failures..

 

Mine freezes sometimes too whenever I try to play music off of my ipod connected to it.

That's the only time it happens though, that's pretty much the only time 360 freezes is when I'm trying to play music off of my ipod with it. Also though it's been freezing due to the dashboard messing up cause of how xbl has been acting lately.

This is also my 2nd 360 and I got it in October, I didn't send my old one in yet cause I figured they'd send me back a fixed one that might RROD on me again, I'll probably send it in though within the next month or 2, and then sell that one.

 

yea.. im definitely having a similar problem.. just bricked it again tryin to load music off the external.. not even gonna bother refrigerating it again, obviously not a good idea..

imma study some vids and shadowbox with my controller and the command list.. might have to force my friends kimura11 to boot up his xbox and fight me at his house instead of at my house..

maybe ill figure out how to convert these damned mkv files so i can have a few more hd movies ready when the xbox gets back..

 

My NES works fine.

 

NES FOREVER!

GE

 

i want my carts back.. never did beat Crystalis

 

Since my xbox died last sunday (going on 2 weeks now [tears]..) ive at least 3 other ppl on my friends list have seen the red rings of death.. most of us had consoles made in 05, one in early 06.. i think RRoD is a contagious pathogen..

despite my separation anxiety i still love my xbox.. i miss playin so much i had to get a Vf5 fix playin offline at a friends house today.. i want it back so bad ive started shadowboxing with my controller while watching vf5 replays off youtube (yea.. its that bad)..

im bored out of my mind.. 3 vicodin later and im still awake spamming the boards lookin for something to kill the time my xbox used to fill..

WHY!?!?!?!?! damn you m$..

 

Mine never freezes. I heard XBOX360 is the worst designed console out of the three (Xbox360,ps3 and Wii). Majority of them break down within a year. Hopefully my one doesnt turn out like that. /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/smile.gif

King Jae

 

My 360 is in the shop for red rings of death -- 2nd time in 1.5 years. /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/smirk.gif

It's still worth it to me (because the games are FUN) but goddamn what a shoddy product.

 

2 words: Towel Trick

I personally know people it worked for. YMMV

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Don't feel bad after a Rumble with Denkai my Xbox grew 2 rings on the left side. I put that bitch in the Window while it was snowing to cool it off. 1 hour later its still did'nt work. I clean it off and everythingnand manage to chat a little while. I haven't cut it on in 2 days but i hope the overheating problem it has is just a Safe shut down. I had that machine for 2 years so i guess it live to be 105 in M4 years.

 

With my old 360 I tried that and it worked, but thing is I think i had it under the towel for too long, and it started freezing later on. I got a new 360 a few months ago, and I'm going to send the old one in later, and either sell it or give it to one of my friends.

 

The red rings of death happen due to thermal expansion: The board bends from the heat, and thus the GPU loses contact with the heatsink. I got the ring off death this saturday morning. All you have to do is get a radioshack screwdriver with multiple heads, use the star shaped heads to open up the 360. Look on the bottom of the 360s motherboards metal plate: There are 8 black screws there. remove those screws , reseat the heatsinks and retighten them as much as possile. put it back together and Viola: RED RING OF Death is GONE.

Anybody can do it: Im playing my 360 today, without involving M$ofts shitty customer service.

 

You're half right. Worse than loss of heatsink contact, is that if any of the connections from the GPU to the motherboard were poorly soldered (a common manufacturing defect), then the solder can actually snap due to the motherboard slightly bending. It has been conjectured that the towel trick actually heats the solder up enough to slightly melt and you get the connection back (but it's still a crappy connection, and will snap again). If that's the problem, you can't really fix it yourself.

 

Yeah the solder snapping is a SEVERE 1sf degree case of rrod. I personally would never use the towel trick. Even if you manage to remelt the solder that way, the heatsink will STILL be making poor contact and you'll get the RROD AGAIN. Not to mention the heat from the towel trick can fry other essential components.

If my GPU's solder contacts fail I'll have to buy a special wrench that bends at a right agle to remove the brace on the GPU and resolder it myself. I have been installing modchips in my systems for years. It would be childs play, and not such a HALF-ASSED, WRECKLESS fix like the towel trick.

 

Why bothering with risky DIY methods of fixing up the X-Box that won't last long or that could even breach your guarantee for the console? There is a reason why Microsoft has given additional support of three years to the Xbox 360. Their customer service belongs to the best on this Earth. Why not taking full advantage of it when having problems with regular lock-ups?

When my 360 was scratching my game discs, I called MS up, and they would exchange my Xbox within 2 weeks without if's or when's. It's working like a charme now.

 

Because MICROSOFT sucks ass and TAKES TOO LONG TO return your system. That two weeks could be better spent racking up battle points in ranking. The heat sink is SO FREAKING thin on the GPU. The CPU has a heatsink 3 times lager. Plus the fans are 5 inches away. On the OLD XBOx, the fan was ONE inch away, and the cpu had a fan on top of it like it SHOULD ON 360. ANYway, DONT do the towel trick, put half the fan on top of the CPU, and block the half that would cover the GPU, leave it like that for 10 to 15 minutes, and that will create the same effect of the towel trick, melting the GPU solder again. without FRYING the whole rest of the system. I wedged an EXTRA AMD heat sink onto the GPU heratsink to increase the surface area, put extra heatsink paste on the GPU and CPU, and put spacers between the board and the x clamp to hold the heatsink down TIGHTER.

Its ugly, screwed up looking, but HOPEFULLY its RROD proof.

 

Whoa!

I don't think the 3 rings thing happens on the PS3. Whoa! This is unbelievable. Do all Xbox 360 players have to endure this?
Whoa! Is this the cost of playing VF online? Every now and then
I wonder whether I should try an Xbox. Each time i do, I get some reason that says no. Whoa! this absolutely does it for me.

I've never had VF5 freeze. Now I've froze as a result of getting my !@# kicked by better players, but I've never had the game freeze. Whoa!

 

Well mines the opposite. The 360 version of VF5 has never froze but my PS3 version froze once. I'd just won the black ponytail item to make my Lau look like the old style Lau and it crashed. I never won the item a second time. /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/frown.gif

It was due to the (terrible) PSNetwork signing me out randomly while the game was loading a fight.

 

None of my systems 360 or PS3 had an issue aside from the faulty HD that came with the 360 I bought, I changed it out and worked as good as new. I even dropped them both once even thought I didn't intend to but oddly enough they both had games in them. The PS3 continued to play the game as normal while the 360 scratched the game disk inside of it. I even bought the first generation PS3 and it works great too with no major glitches. I guess I was lucky.