Red Ring Of Death
Move over Blue Screen Of Death I now fear the Red Ring.
I always thought a Red Ring Of Death was an over active take away condition. To my miss guided truth it turns out to be the reason I can not play Splinter Cell Double Agent.
Friday was a bad enough day at work, so harsh that I decided to treat myself to a copy of the new Splinter Cell game; Double Agent on the way home. Because Lucy does not really take to me spending money on my own I left it in my bag to start with when I got in. She proceeded to tell me about how her day was and then hit home hard with “the xbox is broken!”
Turned out she came home and wanted to carry on with the Lego Star Wars game and turned the machine on. It booted but then the screen went all ‘funny’ (her exact words) and froze.
Sure enough it goes all funny (my words now) and will not load. I removed all the storage devices in a hope that this was hindering the booting, now I had a flashing red ring!
Many attempts at trying to solve this only resulted in the same; red ring of warning. To which I could only conclude; “dat’s propper fooked!”
Time to dig out the paper work. We had actually bought the machine second hand from PC World over 9 months ago. To which I had very limited hope in getting a replacement.
Regardless we made the trip there and then and proceeded to explain the problem to the overly qualified, supper skilled, social machine behind the counter.
We are not sure if the problem of ‘funny’ screens is outlined my Microsoft’s return policy or whether we just looked like a disparate pair but we walked out of there with a brand spanking new Xbox!
Now that is customer support and for once I was impressed by PC World. Now all I need to do is find the time to play that damn game!
Feedback
26 Comments So Far
Lucky you….I got the red ring of death today (treated myself to Gears of War yesterday!) and I have to send the bugger into Microsoft for repairs.
You got lucky with PC World….HMV didnt offer any such support (bought mine in April 06).
Want it back by Xmas !!!!
Harsh! You don’t need that when you have Gears Of War.
To be honest I was very lucky with PC World, guess it pays to go late on a Friday night. A friend had the same issue as you, send it back to Microsoft and sit and wait for a replacement.
Good luck!
Interesting, I got the Red Ring of Death last night. The console has been crashing more often the last month or so but last night killed it. There I was, waiting for the gf to go to bed so I could carry on with Gears of War, which she finally did about 11pm. So I cracked open a beer and power up the console, it all signed into Xbox Live fine, but within about 30 seconds of playing GOW it crashed. Restarted, same again, and again.
By now I was panicking! I tried to send a message to a mate who was online, an SOS, a cry for help but it was no good! Before I had even hit send it crashed again! Nooooooooo! Then I powered it up again and there she was, the Red Ring of Death.
I’d never heard of it until then but after a quick trip to my PC I read all about it & was gutted. All my Xmas presents are 360 related, games, steering wheel, wireless headset. Man, I need it fixed.
So I contact MS today, they will email me with a returns number and a courier number I need to contact. They told me this could take upto 48 hours – just to email me! Man, talk about wasting time! I’m hating this!
I bought a busted 360 from e-bay, guy said it had red rings of death. Sure enough it did.. 3 of them actually, general hardware failure. found a site which described a fix using hot air gun to resolder the mainboard, this I did and worked perfectly — until I put it back in it’s case, Then 3 red rings. many strip downs proved that it worked fine for hours on end out of the case, but immediate failure once reassembled. I found that when I tried to refit any one of the 3 case screws directly under the memory slots, it instantly died. Solution, leave these 3 screws out and it’s been fine since. Good luck
I have allways babied my 360, it’s in a well ventilated area I try not to leave it on for too long and stuff. Never before have I seen the ring of death(three green lights)untill that is I played GoW. So I was all psyched to play GoW. I rented it and poped it in, I played only a few minutes and it freezes up. So I turned it off and restarted and the loading screen wouldnt even come up! I tried all night to play it wouldnt read the disc. I figured out to turn it on with out the game in the cradle then once the loding screen was up threw the game in. I was able to finnish the first few levels this way (40min of game play) then a freez up THEN RING OF DEATH!!!!!
Why does GoW seem to screw up everyones XBox ? As I said in my earlier post, that was the game that gave me the three red rings. Coincidence I’m sure…but everyone else seems to be saying the same thing. Anyways, just to let you know I was fairly happy with the Microsoft repair service….sent it in on a Monday and it was back on the Friday the following week (11 days). Think I’ve got a new one back (well it is definately not the old one)…..no free game though! (as if!)
Don’t bother getting any info out of the call centre while waiting though….hopeless.
I was hoping it would be quicker than 11 days, but I guess in the run up to Xmas it is a fair effort.
Hope you had a merry “red ring of death free” Xmas!
its not GoW its the november 30th online update that killed mine
it was fine upon til then
my box is over a year old & microsoft fetch out a dodgy patch thats bricking xboxes
& their keeping stum about it.
I read about the patch messing up a load of box’s.
My brother machine went down over Christmas, this was just a fried graphics card but still not fun!
Oh my god I’ve just had the ‘red ring of death’ too! And guess what Its Gears of War thats done it – just crashes in the scene where you’re in felix’s house trying to stop the Boomer knocking down the front door – absolutely fuming, nothing will get it past this bit of the game. Not sure whether I’m happy or sad to see so many of you on here with the same problems – guess its a call to Microsoft gor me. Do you honestly think its the Xbox 360 itself or the game thats causing the problems – I popped in pro evo and also the old faithful ghost recon and no problems whatsover. Put Gears of War back in and the thing freezes straight away! Help?????????
wow thats weird i jsut got mine and ive been playing gears of war alot like 5 hours straight and no rings i hope to god i never get them
Well the reason all your Xboxs froze and broke waz cuz you ain supposed to buy em wen they 1st come out…
You wait…
until they have time to make changes..
I bought mine in DEC and it has nver misfunctiones
Well the reason all your Xboxs froze and broke waz cuz you ain supposed to buy em wen they 1st come out…
You wait…
until they have time to make changes..
I bought mine in DEC and it has nver misfunctioned
Wait until December ? Man, thats more than a whole year after it originally came out.
I think buying it early and only missing 11 days while it gets replaced with a new one is better than missing out on 12 months of gaming on what I think is an awesome console.
I got mine on December 16th 2006, and guess what it got the Ring of Death, the manufacture date at the back of the console is 2006-08-28. So don’t just assume this happens to the first bunch of 360s.
By the way mine froze first time while playing Burnout Revenge.
My xbox just messed up too… popped in GoW and RROD! I hate MS… I have a PS3 and a Wii no problems…. My PS3 has been running since release date and it still works to perfection… FUCK MS
this is really strange, because when I popped in GoW a few days ago when my brother finally got off from his Halo 3 and I got my go…the screen went all fuzzy and pink…and froze. So I turned it off and turned it on again and 3 rings. I left it off for about an hour turned it back on again and it was fine…a recent update I installed like 2-3 days ago and since it has been acting up…but I seriously doubt the update has anything to do with it.
I deciphered what my 360 was trying to tell me but now its just a matter of trying to fix it…I hear their is a manual available online but you gotta pay for it and I’m too lazy for that and honestly dont have much money on me…
If anyone knows how I can fix this, pleas please please email me! I will be ever so grateful and happy! =]
xxx
You need to contact Microsoft to do this the safest way. I dont know the exact details, but they have extended their warranty to cover the ring of death so you should still be covered.
not sure how old your 360 is, so may be covered anyways.
You can try reverting to online manuals etc, but is probably easiest to contact Microsoft since they wont charge you if you are still under the warranty period, which you more than likely are.
So close to xmas….sucks eh ! good luck.
@reida, as Pez King said your best bet is to take it back to where you purchased it or talk to Microsoft.
I got mine second hand from a game store and they did not even blink when I took mine back. There is such a problem with the first batch that I think they replace them without question.
I got mine early december (waited for the elite) and what happened this week?? oh yes, i got the three red rings.
What i wondered was if they only offer you a replacement 360 and not to actually have it fixed because i dont really like the sound of them giving me a brand new one as that might just bugger up about 7 months down the line.
anyone know?
Got the 3 red lights last night playin rainbow 6 vegas, pissed off likes ive only had the console for about 4 months u would be lucky if ive turned it on 50 times! the worst game was oblivion, it kept crashing like it couldnt even handle the game!
I don’t get it ive had my 360 for about 2-3 years and nothing went wrong with it until now. If u get those 3 red rings apparentley its because something inside melts from over playing it. So my mate told me if you get 2 thick towels n wrap them round your console it melts that thing back into place… Ive not tried it yet but will let ya know if it does
i hope if they make another xbox that it wont have the 3 ring of death like this one because if it does i will never buy an xbox again and i will have to go to pc because the playstation 3 sucks BALLS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I have just bought SoulCalibur 4. Put it in the xbox 360 and it asked me to install an update. i done this as i always do when asked then almost straight away the screen froze. I put in another game and it was fine so i took SC4 back to the shops and replaced it with another one.Played it for 10 minutes then it crashed again. I turned it off then on again then i saw what i was dreading. 3 red lights. I always thought it would never happen to me. Oh well gonna send it back to Microsoft as they said they will fix it for free. I hope it comes back in time for Fifa 09 otherwise people will see a grown man cry.
hiya
i just got 3 red rings were should i get it reparied. i live in england.
if u no email me at
chatterbox_hannah_101@hotmail.com
hiya
i just got 3 red rings were should i get it reparied. i live in england.
if u no email me at
chatterbox_hannah_101@hotmail.com
Your best bet is to contact Microsoft directly and go from there.
It will depend if your machine is still under warranty or not.
Leave Your Own Feedback
Please keep the comments related to to posts.
Whilst posting you can use the following XHTML tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong> to style your post.
This site does use post moderation and spam filtering, if your post does appear straight away don't worry!
If you have ever wondered about those little pictures next to peoples names, go to the Gravatar site for more info.