red 3 ring of death last Thrusday.
I called MS and they are sending me a box. I'm having some serious withdrawal too. I picked up Halo 3, Blue Dragon, Orange Box and Overlord last week. Plus Puzzle Quest on XBL.


I just wanted to share my woe. Enjoy your 360 while you can, you never know when it will just crap out on you.

You're not the only one.

http://forum.dvdtalk.com/showthread.php?t=506342

I bought mine in March of 06 at Walmart and I didn't get any kind of warranty. I've been having problems with it for the past 8 months or so not loading games, freezing, etc... The day H3 came out I couldn't get the damn game to play. I took my 360 back to Walmart, with receipt from 18 months ago, and they gave me the Halo 3 360 even up. I haven't had one single problem with this machine yet. God Bless Walmart!!

I can feel your pain squidget. I just ordered Guitar Hero 3 and am playing through Gears of War and of course my Madden '08 which I can never seem to put down.

I've had mine since the first of July. Everything worked great. Until about three days ago. All of the sudden my games started freezine up on me and at times I get the three lights like shown above. If I turn my machine off, sometimes it will freeze again with no red lights, sometimes I get the red lights, and lot's of times I can get the game to play again.

Does this mean I'm pretty much going to suffer the same doomed fate as my fellow 360 addicts?? I've never had this problem. I've always been lucky with my systems. Do you have to constantly get the red lights before Microsoft will fix it??

This is exactly how it started its death throes. Some time around the Sunday before last, the screen would freeze during play. I couldn't turn it off via the controller, no sound and it was just lock. I would have to reboot it via the power button. Afterwards the system played fine so I thought it was a power glitch. However, after a couple of days rebooting didn't stop the issue, it would still freeze. Eventually it just turned to the above: the 3 red rings. I called MS and explained the whole thing. The freezing seems to be part of the same red ring problem. They had me start it w/o the hdd and also check the status light on the power brick. No fixes with their suggestions so they very nicely got my address and said they would send me a box. I guess now I have to play with my Wii. Doesn't Mario come out soon? Maybe that can tide me over.

The 2006 date is correct? It's not a launch unit?

correct not a launch unit. I purchased it in Nov. and the manufactors date is from August 2006.

Yes, my date on the back of mine is also August 2006.

Looks like I have some fun ahead of me then. Damn it!!!

Welcome to the club. I'm on my 3rd 360 and 2nd HDD already.

Same here.

My launch unit is still purring like a kitten.

vader "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

mine had an august 2006 date and it died about 3 weeks ago

mine is going back in now it will be the 7th one

That's a high rate even for 360's. Are you giving it a proper ventilation spot?

Seven? Holy crap! I was hoping this would be my first and last replacement unit. Rumor has it the units they replace you with are the newer ones with better parts/ventilation blah blah blah. Is this not true?

The units in stores now and the refurbished units going out should have the new heat sinks installed (which was the primary problem causing the cirque du rouge), however I don't think that has guaranteed a fail-proof system. It should, however, far lessen its likeliness to happen again.

Damn!!! I must have the mutant X of the 360 launch series. I've had no problems and it's been on road trips with me.

And to think that's the unit I originally purchased I could be going through what you are now but I bought that one from kmart and you ended up with the series of lemons

BTW did this one actually red ring on you? Because when you let me borrow it while mine was out, it made some clunky noises from time to time and was louder than all hell but it never froze up or anything. I assume you're just trying to get a new unit out of them.

So is it safe (relatively speaking) to buy a 360 now?

I'd say safER anyway...but it took 8 months for mine to die on me, so I guess we'll see what is happening to these new units this summer.

Well, my personal reasoning was that it was safe once they announced the three year warranty extension. Obviously, buying one now means less chance of actually having to go through the replacement process.. I do believe mine is an August 2006 system as some of the systems posted above were.

Psh, I think Xbox 360 is junk. I'm glad I bought Guitar Hero for PS2. I bought us an Xbox 360 and 3 months later, it stopped reading discs. I send it back and then sent me another "fixed" unit. Now, I CANNOT get it to play Marvel Alliance. We tried 2 copies of the game, both will not play. Other games will play, and it will play fine in another Xbox 360, so I have no idea what the heck its problem is. An Xbox 360 support lady called me a week ago and I told her about it and she said she would get back to me, but I haven't heard from her since! I will never buy another 360 ever again.

My launch 360 died about five weeks ago, and I received a brand new replacement (manufactured the same day I brought my dead system to UPS, coincidentally) about two weeks ago.

The only hassle in the whole process, personally, was calling in to go through the process of being able to play previously-purchased XBLA games while offline again.

The Indian customer service personnel stick right with the script for every technical step that has to be followed, and every one is one that we customers know is useless for this issue... being forced to do an Account Recovery [despite the fact that I had no problem accessing Live with my gamertag already], by itself, took at least twenty to thirty minutes... before being allowed to speak with a supervisor.

I'm still in the 5 to 10 business day window where I'm supposed to be getting a call back announcing they've somehow unlocked the games for me on the new machine. I had expected game-specific codes for each, in order to download them again, so I'm not sure if I've dialed 800-4MYXBOX for the last time yet.

wait, what? I'm keeping my hdd, I thought when I pop it on the new xbox everything would be good to go. Is this not so? I have quite a few xbla titles.