lotsofdvds

Delivered November 22, 2005. Died November 15, 2007.

I was hit with the dreaded Red Ring of Death the other day. I'd downloaded the multiplayer demo for America's Army and decided to try it out. One minute into the game, the system froze.

Now keep in mind that for nearly two years I'd never had one single problem with the system.

So I rebooted and tried the game again. And again, after about a minute the system froze up. But this time it wouldn't reboot. All I got were the three flashing red lights on the front of the console signifying a hardware failure. I waited a while, tried again, and managed to get back up and running. But after letting The Simpsons Game play for a minute everything froze yet again. After that, all I got were the three red lights.

Since then I've tried booting the system several times. Each time, no matter what I play, it freezes up in about a minute or two.

So I contacted Microsoft today via the website to request my coffin. My question to all of you is, what happens now? What happens to all my Live Arcade games and MS points that I have on the system (although technically they're on my hard drive, which is fine). Are they tied to my system or my gamertag? If I put my harddrive on another 360, will I still have all my stuff?

McHawkson

I already told my stories in other thread.

argh923

Yeah, there's a whole other thread devoted to this.

PopcornTreeCt

Everything's connected to the hard drive. You should be fine.

mr.snowmizer

Well, as always, XBLA games are also tied to the individual 360 upon which the purchasing was done. With a different, working 360 attached to your old hard drive, you must be logged into Xbox Live in order to play the full game you've paid for.

If your 360 is always online, you won't notice a thing; if you're not typically logged in, you'll be cursing Microsoft's DRM implementation as you call their toll-free number to start the process of having enough MS Points handed back to you in order to re-acquire them.

PopcornTreeCt

I've always been online. Never noticed it before. That does suck. I should call them up anyway and demand the points back.

The Bus

Your XBLA games are on the hard drive. Your points are on Microsoft's servers, as well as the fact that you "own" the XBLA games. So, even if you lost your HDD, you could re-download the games and you would still have your points. Game saves and the like, obviously, would not survive.

Generally expect the process to take about 3-5 weeks from the moment you make the call. With luck, you should have your Xbox back before Christmas.