The rattle is the fans. It freaked me out when I opened my new system up and heard it rattle.

Well I just got from Best Buy and I am not happy. I went up to the customer service desk and told them that I bought the 360 from them a few months ago and it keeps freezing on me and I got the warranty for it. The lady looks at my reciept and then goes and talks to some guy behind the desk and comes back saying that I have to call their 1-800 customer service line and then mail my 360 out and blah blah blah. I was like I thought with the replacement plan that you guys would just exchange it for another one and she said not if its been past 90 days. I didnt have time to argue with her since I was supposed to be at work in a bit and just left. Does that sound right? The only reason I bought the warranty from them in the 1st place was so I wouldnt have too make calls and mail out my system and wait weeks and weeks to get another, I might as well go with the MS warranty since it would be in better hands. Does anyone have any idea if this is what happens cause I know some other people on this board had no issue with getting a new one. Thanks

Exactly what I did, although they did opne the box, if just to check for the controller. I too kept the remote, although I have not even used it.

Well i thought it over and im going to try a different approach. My 360 has been on the bottem shelf of my entertainment center, in the horizontal position with my (Slim) ps2 sitting atop of it, the power brick was behind it against the wall with all of my other cables. Now, since I dont want to ship it out just yet, i am going to leave the xbox where it is, put the ps2 on another shelf and whenever i am using the system, will pull out the power brick and have it sitting on my floor in front of my entertainment center. Im hoping this will stop the freezing issue (since I havent had the 3 rings yet!).

I am no electronics expert but that does sound like bad news. The exhaust fan is on the back of the 360, so by having your power brick behind the 360, it is blowing hot air onto it. The power brick by itself gets pretty hot, so I would imagine if the 360 also blows hot air onto it, the power brick is overheating. As I said though, I am not an expert on these things, so I could be wrong. I keep both my 360 and power brick in wide open spaces and have never had a problem (except for freezing during Oblivion but that game is just buggy itself).

So I have been playing my replacement 360 this weekend, and it has made a funny noise on occasion. It makes a little buzzing sound, like something in the fan or something. But it only happens once in a while, usually when something is happening in the game.

Should I just wait it out and see if it dies? I can't really recreate whatever it is, so I think I would have a hard time exchanging...again.

Well I moved everythng around, pulled my power brick out and was ready to play some Chromehounds and when I fired up the 360, my TV could not find the VGA signal, I made sure the cables were all connected properly and restarted it again and sure enough... got the "3 Rings of Death". Now I have no choice but too call the Best Buy 1-800 number... yay for me!

Could it be the CD-ROM ramping up to access data on the disc? If it is I think this noise is normal.

I bought Dead Rising today so we'll see if it kills my 360

I bought my 360 in April this year and a couple days ago I had my first red light along with an E68 error message showing on the TV. I restarted it and it's been OK since then but my fingers remain crossed.

I beat that game in one sitting when I first got it and my 360 never even stuttered throughout the whole 10-12 hour session. I have played through the game 4 times total without a single problem any time. I think the reports of Dead Rising breaking 360s is overexaggerated.

In other news, I did have my first dirty disc error today while playing Ninja Gaiden. I hope my 360 isn't on its way out.

Maybe. I never noticed with my old 360, so maybe it is the new drive. It sounds kinda like the disk is spinning and hitting something (Bzzzt) but I looked at the disk and it didn't seem to have marks on either side.

Well Best Buy is sending me a box in which I am supposed to ship ALL of the items that originally came with the system and mail it back to them for in which they will send me a gift card that is of the amount i spent on the system and I can just go in a buy a new one. Im happy that I dont have to wait weeks and weeks for a new system or wont get a refurbished system back... But I will die before I end them my HD. Ive unlocked so many achievements and gotten so many points on it. To be continued...

Your achievements and gamerscore are not stored on the hard drive. They are linked to your gamertag username. When you get the new 360 with hard drive, just log onto it using your current username and it will retrieve all your achievements. The only thing you would really lose by sending in your hard drive is your game save files.

And he will have to redownload everything. Games, themes, gamerpics. It's all free to d/l again, but a hassle if you have bought a lot.

Well does it matter if I dont have my 360 connected to the internet? I have only been online with my 360 once and that was when the demo was released for Dead Rising about 2 months ago. How are my achievements and such recorded on Live if there is no connection??? Im sorry if that sounded a bit rude... And by points I mean gamer points not xbox live points.

I just got mine back today. They got my xbox and sent it back the next day in the morning. Does anyone know what they do over to have such a fast turn around time? I thought it was going to get a refurb but I got mine back with the same serial # unless they swapped the casing and put in different internals?

You got yours back? Damn. Lucky bastard.

Strange to see such a fast turn around time for anything. They got in at noon time and the next morning I have email stating its shipping back to me. Anyone know what they do to *fix* it?

Well, these returns should be drying up as they solved the problem. Probably a dozen showing up a day which would lead to a quick turnaround. Not to mention the tech guys could probably do this repair in their sleep now. I would think if you have a launch system and it hasn't effed up yet you are probably in the clear.

I sure did miss my 360 though. Luckily the UPS guy came right before I went to work. I wonder if anyone can provide insight as to why so many 360's got the red light and what there instant fix was.

I got mine in March (month of Australian release) with a 5 year warranty. Got the 3 red rings this Tuesday morning, got it swapped over that day. Took it home and the new one worked for about a day before having intermittant dirty disc errors. Got the new one swapped over on Thursday and am yet to test the new one.
Glad I work in a retail store that sells these things, otherwise I would have had to send the first one to MS for evaluation before a repair/replacement.
I'm not angry or anything. I just want the damn thing to work now.

OK, so I sent mine in September to get fixed (3 red rings of death). The replacement I got seems to be faulty as well. The disc drive makes loud clicking noises, and eventually gives me a "unable to read dirty disc" warning, then I pull the game out and it has a perfect circle of marks on it. It did this to a brand new game. To say I'm not happy is an understatement. Do these replacement boxes have a warranty? Can I return it and get another replacement? I've been busy the last 5-6 weeks, so I didn't get a chance to test out the replacement box as much as I should have right away.

If you have the extended warranty, then yes, it does carry over to your replacement console. Theoretically, you get unlimited repairs/exchanges for the full 2 years.

Well, just thought I would follow up to this. I called the same day about this(8/19) and they were going to ship me an empty box. I figured, whatever, they aren't going to fix it free and I'm out shipping. The guy was persistent though and was determined to send me a box. Best case, the damage is covered and they fix it no charge, worse case they want money and I'm out my 360 for a "week."

The box arrived two days ago. It only took 2 months to get an empty box to me! Like I want to ship them my system now, who knows when I might get it back. I still don't think it will be worth the shipping cost, but maybe once I get my Wii, I'll do a minimal ventilated Dead Rising marathon to try and kill it anyway. I'm at a loss. This should be on their dime not mine. Sending out broken refurbs. A*holes.