My THIRD 360 just died - Page 3

You actually need a separate cooler for these things?

My second 360 is going in for repairs this week. It won't read the discs but it starts up.

I got lucky. Just got off the phone with MS and it's still covered under warranty. The trouble is now I'm going to be paranoid about it breaking again...

Hey Nate, would you be able to weigh your 360 before and after the repair process? We could find out if they're putting the new heatsinks in the UK refurbs.

No, that's just selling people snake oil. Sticking extra fans over the fans already on the back of the machine won't do much. Now the conversions I've seen of modded boxes with liquid cooling added...

Eh, it's probably been posted before but...

http://www.docadamsaudio.com/sarcast...asticgamer.mp3

I got my Elite shortly after it was released and it's still running good. A couple of lock-ups here and there but no red rings. Wee!

My Xbox has been gone for almost two weeks now. People with busted 360s, has it always taken this long? I figured they'd pop a refurb in the mail as soon as my console showed up.

It took almost three weeks to get a shitty refurb from the date of my first call. A week to get the box, a few days for the box to arrive in Texas, and a week to receive the refurb. The turnaround between receiving the system and setting up a replacement is fast but the shipping is killer.

Have you received an e-mail with the return tracking number yet? It took three days after receiving the e-mail for the machine to move from the service center.

The two refurbs I've received never took longer than a couple weeks.

That said, two things have changed since I used the service:

1- They stopped sending out a refurb instantly. Now they fix and return the system you send.

2- The new heatsinks we've seen pictures of. That would compound the repair time.

Probably best to give them a call though, make sure your system didn't fall off the radar.

Same deal with me.

I can have a go but I'll have to find some better scales first, the ones I can get my hands on are shit. Also if everyone else's stories are anything to go by, it'll be mid-July before I can give you an answer.

They usually do, but as GD said, when it gets packed up to ship it sits on a loading dock for a few days. The first time mine busted it was maddening checking the tracking everyday only to see "billing information has been recieved", but no movement. You should get it back next week.

If you want to know if your repaired system has the new heatsink, read this.

Wow that does work perfectly. I just checked mine (made in Oct '06, refurbed and received by me in Jan '07) and it doesn't have the heatsink.

OK, so I have Call of Duty 2- Game of the Year edition. Is this game known to cause problems with the 360? It's what I was playing when my second system died and last night, when I first loaded up the game, I got a weird "put this disc in an Xbox 360" screen. I ejected and put the game back in and it worked fine.

Is this the beginning of the end for ANOTHER system?

Not that I'm aware of, but I'm on my 4th system and I play CoD2 pretty much always.

I think that message usually indicates your system is about to stop reading discs.

Great.

Comparing serial numbers, my current system appears to be from same batch of systems as the unit I had that lasted almost a month. I've had the current unit about a month so that seems about right.

4th system!?

At what point does it become not worth it?

I still haven't had to pay for a repair/replace yet. Strange as I never had any type of extended warranty to begin with. I have a PS3 now as well, so when the time comes that they want to charge me, that's when it becomes not worth it. I really hope the new heat deal helps, as the games coming for 360 are looking incredible.

Hey, another busted system and you just might qualify for a free month of Live! A month! Free!

That makes sense, but 4 repairs gives me no consolation on my 360's future endurance.

This is what kills me. As pissed as I get for spending $400 on a piece of equipment that barely works, the games I have and that are coming down the pike are so fun and entertaining that I don't want to just give up.

If this systems dies (please, Joe Pesci, don't let it happen), I'll be sending a letter to Ballmer and Gates. Sure, it will most likely accomplish nothing but it will make me feel better.

Where's my membership card, cause I just joined the club.

Sayonara 360, two months after the warranty ran out, darn it. Although, to be fair, I've been having freezing problems for a while that I ignored until the thing wouldn't boot up and I got the three red lights of death. I'll get my coffin (supposedly) on Monday.

It's not the money, it's the goddamned hassle. I finally arranged to have two buddies available to play R6 and Gears of War tonight, and I had Children of Men waiting for me on HD-DVD through Netflix.

*vomit*

I had the original 360 when it hit - no issues, but sold it for an Elite.

With the Elite, I bought the two year warranty that starts after the automatic manufacture one.....so far, no issues

If I had my third 360, I would opt to pay for the insurance.

Same boat

My Xbox just died too, I'm calling tomorrow. This just sucks ass.

Okay, is this a vocal minority at work or not? This is pretty damn ludicrous.

Can we get a show of hands of people who've had no problems with their 360's?

The one I've been playing on(I don't own one) has been going strong for six months. Only problems so far were some game freezes and my friend can't play his first garden in Viva Pinata for more than 15 seconds before it locks up.

*knocks on wood*

Return it. Mine started with minor problems like that as well.

God I know I'm gonna hate saying this, but I've not had any problems at all with the one I got at christmas. *looks to the heavens and prays for 360 stability*

Of all the regular CHUD gamers, I think B Metal, Singer, and maybe one or two others, are still on their first unit.

I better get one of these newfangled units with the extra heatsink, or there will be hell to pay. And by hell, I mean ineffectual whining.

People ask why I would try to get a 360 for free by doing silly referral offers or playing silly games on Club Live Search. THIS is why. Because if I get a 360 and it dies on me, I want to at least be able to say that I didn't drop $400 on it. I only dropped my time, energy, and dignity, and those weren't worth much to begin with.

Add me to that list.

That's... unsettling...
The freezes, other than Viva Pinata(his second garden runs fine), were similar to freezes I've experienced with my other systems, and about as frequent(not often).

I once thought as you did. You have been warned, and I wash my hands of the situation.

<knocks on wood> Yep, still on my LAUNCH DAY 360. Been working like a dream. Just had marathon sessions with Call of Juarez, POTC (don't judge me, dammit!) and the backwards-compatible Crimson Skies. My HD-DVD player is working beautifully too, I might add.

So, um, neener neener, I guess...

Singer, you have titanium balls.

Here comes a new member to the club. I bought it back in May 2006 and it just died a couple hours ago. My little brother was playing Shadowrun when the game froze and the screen went black.

Just in time for The Darkness.

Singer neglects to mention that he has to sacrifice a virgin to his 360 on the third Friday of every month.

So if he invites you to his home...he knows.

You guys have got nothing on this this guy.

For a guy that helps run a podcast called "Aggrevated Gamers", he seems very laid back about the whole experience.

That being said, while he's probably an end of a curve of malfunctioning 360s, there is obviously a problem with the way the machine was put together. What specifically? This, specifically. So why are there a few people that are still on their first? My guess would be that they have excellent ventilation (plenty of space for the console to "breathe") and keep their homes at a cool temperature. Of course, that's just conjecture on my part but I think it's pretty clear that the problem is heat.

Mine's elevated in an media cabinet with tons of space around it and lots of air under the shelf it's on...plus lots of space behind the cabinet. The tv and cabinet are cattycorner in a corner, so there's a wedge of heat-escaping space behind it that's pretty sizeable.

That said, it's probably just waiting til I get Mass Effect to break down.

You're probably right. We keep our house cool and I run a "box fan" while I'm playing my 360 mostly because I thought heat would be an issue. Still on first box. However my wife can't be in the same room when I play without being bundled up in a comforter. That should tell you how cool you have to keep your room to keep your 360 running.

*prays that 360 doesn't fry because I have unleashed it's secret.

I keep my 360 on a hot plate, so that may have something to do with my three dead consoles.

It's more likely all those Ninja Gaiden stickers covering up all the vents.

I purchased my 360 in November 2006. When the Best Buy cashier asked me to buy the warranty I laughed and did my usual dismissive wave to let him know I couldn't be bothered by such an idea. Buying an extended warranty.. preposterous! The cashier said, "Well, ok, but we've had a lot of people bring them back or wish they bought it." Yeah right I thought, your bonus for selling one of these damn warranties can kiss my ass.

I then went home, set it up in my home theater, and watched in horror as it refused to read any disks. It gave me that glorious message saying I was trying to insert disks not made for the system or some crap like that. Obviously the unit, a brand new recently made unit, was DOA. So I took it back to BB with my tail between my legs (and purposely avoided the cashier as I refused to concede that he was correct and I was a jackass) and swapped it out the next day for another new unit. And I purchased the two-year extended warranty. No issues since that time. I use my system to watch more HD and SD DVDs than to play games these days.

I did recently move my 360 and the attached HD-DVD drive out of my component rack and onto an open shelf. In the rack with the doors open the unit would still run the fan loud enough to bother me. My wife closed the doors during a movie we were watching and the HD-DVD drive (not the 360, but the external) overheated and shut down with the nasty red light. And the main unit's fan was loud enough to wake the dead when the doors were closed. Since moving the unit to an open-air shelf it is now extremely quiet and I think I'll avoid any more fan/overheating issues with either the 360 or the add-on.

Just for the record, my 360 sits out in the open, on top of my PS2, and not inside an entertainment center of any kind. The power supply brick also has plenty of room to breathe.

360 number 4 decided to stop sending video signal to my TV last night. Awesome! I really only like hearing games anyway, the seeing part has always been secondary to me. It's under warranty, so I can just swap it out at EB tonight, but, you know, five 360s in a year and a half...

This was a separate problem of Xbox number 2 for me. The claim the problem was that the regional coding was incorrect. Anyway even if you get the signal back (which happened a few times before the rest of the machine went kaput), its still fucked.

I know you mentioned the PS3 option are you going to explore that?

That's actually good to hear, I was starting to wonder if it was the hard drive, and the console I have now is a core unit (no HD under warranty). Did your system work fine for awhile and then just not? I was playing Wednesday night with no issues, Thursday night it's busted. No red rings, just no video signal. I was scared it was my TV, but I tried multiple ports and still got nothing.

I have a PS3 now. When my last console died I used some store credit to get a 360 Core. When my unit came back from Texas I just bundled it and a bunch of old junk and picked up a used PS3, keeping the new 360 Core, old HD, and warranty.

NEVER poke fun at the 360. It knows.