The Xbox is Dead. Long Live the Xbox (Part 1)
So, my Xbox 360 red ringed today, and I thought my widely unused Vox blog would be a great place to document my attempts to get it fixed, hopefully via Microsoft.
So, a little backstory. I got this 360 for Christmas 2006. Ran great, loved the thing. No problems what so ever. While my friends who have had theirs at launch are on their second or third 360's, I'm loving mine.
Yesterday, I boot up MLB 2k7, and it tells me there is an update. I download the update, everything goes well. Go back to playing the baseball, and then everything goes to hell.
There are these bizarre graphical artifacts all over the screen. I escape to the dashboard, and its the same there. Rebooting fixes the problem, but it happens everytime in MLB 2k7, about 15 minutes in.
I assume its the recent update, so I clear the cache and try to backdate the updates. Works good. I play some Hitman Blood Money. No problems, back to the good Xbox 360. Then, I get the same graphical artifacts, albeit, a little differently, in Hitman.
Since this is now a 360 problem, not a MLB 2k7 problem, I turn to my unlimited research library (aka google) and start searching for problems. I quickly discover, that this problem is semi-to-less common, and its usually caused by the heatsink on the GPU overheating. Since the GPU isn't 'critical' thats why it can spazzz out and the little red ring finder doesn't trip for it.
The most common cause seems to be too much dust in the bottom air intake. So, people exchange stories of using compressed air or small vaccums to clear the dust off the heatsink. I decide to do this, but since its late, I wait for today.
I wake up this morning, decide to try it, and uh noes, I get a red ring. Lower right quadrant. E74 error, which is...
A) Bad AV Cables (not true, I tried them with my two sets of cables. Same Problem)
B) Scaler Chip Error
C) GPU Error
Considering I don't want to void my warranty by opening up my Xbox 360 to try to install some cheap Chinese GPU or Scaler Chip, I'm forced to try to call Microsoft.
Its June 30th, 2007. Has of now, my Xbox 360 is dead, with the red rings. I am going to contact Microsoft later today, and hopefully they'll give me a free-shipping-free-repair deal, since mine is under warranty, and I didn't put mayo in the DVD drive or anything.
(Thats my little journal thing that will hopefully make up the majority of the Xbox is Dead things. Notice how I bloded the text, right? Nice, I know.)
