I bought my 360 in February, it is the 3rd shipment and I have had no problems at all. I play it all the time, for hours at a time. The only game that has ever froze on me was Madden '06 but from what I've heard, that was the game, not the system. I sure hope they get that crap fixed on '07!!

1) It has to be in a WELL VENTILATED area. This is a fact.

2) Just keep your hard drive. Don't take any shit from anybody, demand to keep your hard drive. Tell the people at Costco or Best Buy or wherever that you spent a lot of money downloading stuff and you want to keep the hard drive. Open up the new one and swap the hard drive out. Don't take no for an answer. Microsoft told me to send back my hard drive. Did I? No. I was not going to loose all my stuff, and I knew that it wasn't the problem. You are dealing with people on a phone reading a script. Just take your HD off and send it in. They will fix it as necessary or replace it.

I think it was a really good idea that they made the HD removable.

You can recover your gamertag and points on a new hard drive. You can re-download everything you already purchased without a fee. You do however lose all your game saves.

My 360 is well ventilated and it still crashed and burned. :shrug:

Has it always had good circulation? Or have you tried experimenting by placing it in different locations/positions?

My 360 stays in the upright (verticle) position and it always has. The only difference is, when I first got it, I placed the backside about 2" from the wall behind it. I later found out how much air was being pushed out of the 360 (those fans are pretty strong). In addition, the air is very warm which indicates how hot it really gets inside the 360 housing. So now, I place it about 7" from the wall and the damn thing is running flawlessly.

Mine has been flawless since launch day. It sits on top of my old xbox horizontally, inside a cabinet with maybe 3 inches on either side, several feet behind it and nothing on top of it. the power brick is just sitting among a mess of cables in the back.

Burnout Revenge seems to be getting buggy on mine, Get can't read disc after 1 hour of solid play and save file was corrupted this morning. I'm using a Nyko fan on the back and a space fan in the front. Oh well,,,

I dunno.

I've had mine sitting by itself elevated off the ground and open on all 6 sides since the first couple weeks I had it (after seeing much online discussion of vertical vs. horizontal and air space). It only gets played 50 minutes a day.

Early on many people who seemed to know what they were doing were having problems. So I took extreme measures (it's in the bedroom so looking dorky isn't really an issue) and bought the extended warranty.

Still, 3 rings. Mine was not a ventilation issue. It just broke. It doesn't piss me off and I'm not bashing the machine. I love it. But if you check the other forums you will see there are many well ventilated machines dying.

Maybe it was just a portion of the early units (I got mine in Dec). I hope that's the case.

I will bash the fact that I called last Sat and still haven't seen my coffin yet.

I would not suggest passing on an extended warranty and hoping ventilation will keep it working.

I must say I'm underwhelmed by the turnaround on this problem. I called on July 2nd and they didn't ship the box until the 7th:

Scheduled Delivery: 07/12/2006
Shipped or Billed on: 07/07/2006

Don't get your hopes up on the 12th. My scheduled date came and went. They were, oh, about 4-5 days off. Took about 10 days to get to me. An empty box. Sad.

Where are you guys buying your systems? Because, I remember when I bought my Home Theather in a Box at Circuit City last year, I had a problem with it within a week. All I had to do was take it back to the store and they immediately exchanged it for a new one.

I would assume, at least, that they'd probably do the same thing if you bought an XBOX 360.

I think it's the game itself that has glitches. Not your 360. I've read about that problem on Burnout in other forums as well.

Yea gamestop guaranteed me with their warranty that they would swap out my old system with a new one if it ever died on me. No waiting for MS on this end :)

Here's an interesting editorial about this on teamxbox.com:

http://editorials.teamxbox.com/xbox/...g-of-Death/p1/

"Unless you are experiencing a problem with the hard drive of your console, all you typically send back is the system itself. Detach the hard drive, remove and store all discs, and keep all controllers and cords. There are warnings throughout the instruction page sent out that if you send in anything not needed, it might not be returned"

Well mine was a launch system that died after 6 months of use. I also bought it at Sam's club. So soley on those two points, returning it was not an option.

Same for me. After 6 months returning it wasn't an option. I did get the MS extended warranty but it sure doesn't expedite anything.

Well, my 360 just died. It locked up a couple of times a couple of nights ago when I was playing PDZ. I barely got the game loaded tonight and it locked up. I put in NHL06, and it didn't even get as far as reading it. Now I am getting the three red rings.

So what do I do now? Can someone post a link to the threads that discussed this in the past? I've done a search, but I haven't found anything, even though I know there have been a few threads about this issue in the past.

Did you buy the 2 year warranty from MS?

Unfortunately no :( This is my first console and I can honestly say the thought didn't occur to me.

So I am assuming that since it is now out of warranty, I will have to pay the $129 (I think) to get a refurb sent to me. Has anyone had any luck getting MS to cover consoles that were out of warranty? I can't fathom having to pay another $129+ to fix a machine that is barely 6 months old.

I've done some searching, and it seems like there have been a whole lot of posts in late June and early July from people who were the first people to get consoles that are now getting the rings of death.

And I still can't find any threads devoted solely to this issue (I am assuming it is probably covered in one of the huge Compendium threads but I am not sure). Were there any?

Thanks

^^When did you buy your console?

Look into the laws of your country or province. Hell, even if there's no law, just say that you bought your 360 at such and such a place and they are breaking local consumer laws. Ask who their liasion is so you can sic your local attorney general / ombudsman on them.

I don't think you'll be paying.

When I got my repaired I got the box in 3-4 days as promised and got the console back in 3-4 days as promised.

I posted in one of the big threads but I'm sure finding it would be a bitch.

First call MS and just see if you can buy the warranty. They seem to be quite hit or miss with people getting them after the initial 90? 120? day mark. Call back a couple of times and get different reps. You may get lucky and get one that will let you purchase it.

Second, take this with a grain of salt, when I had my issues (3 red ring), the CS rep said 3 rings is a sign of a faulty AV pack. :shrug: Didn't sound too bad to me, so I went to pick up a new set at BB while I waited on MS to send me some official ones at N/C.. It didn't work, and from that point on it gave me the 4 red lights which is their sign of a dead system.

Point being, if your options are limited, you could at least give this a shot and if it doesn't work return the cables. That's what I did. It wouldn't hurt trying.

Therw seem to be many instances of people on the forums on cbox.com and teamxbox.com getting their out of warranty repairs at half price by asking for a supervisor and complaining. If I didn't have the warranty I'd give that a try.

Good luck.

Mine died today as well. It had a manufactured date of 03-13-2006, and I got it about 4 weeks ago. I'm a casual gamer, and in those 4 weeks it probably only had 40 hours of usage. It's getting replaced under warranty (I actually bought the extended warranty after reading this thread).

I have to wonder if the problem is more widespread than MS will admit. I have two other friends with the 360, and one of theirs died recently as well. I know that's not a sufficent sample size, but it seems fishy that so many units are having hardware failures so early.

That being said, when the system is working it's pretty kick-ass.

Well here's an interesting bit for you. When mine went down in May all my friends knew, so 2 of the 4 of them with 360s called for a warranty. Last week one of the two that didn't buy a warranty got the red rings. Powered it up and down mutliple times and it didn't completely die(like mine) but the red rings remained. MS wanted $130 to repair it. ouch!

He kept it in what he thought was a well venilated area, but not wanting to spend $130 he figured he'd try a few things. He ended up putting the 360 and power brick near an A/C vent. The red rings disappeared and all is well again.

He did do some research online, and it turns out MS is using some kind of gel on a chip inside the box to keep it cool. This is a new process, presumably because of all the issues with all the early boxes. He was considering trying this on his own. :eek: I wouldn't know where to begin.