travis' brain dump

well… it happened to me… the dreaded XBOX 360 RRD (Red Ring of Death) …

Tried to get on to play FFXI the other night and my 360 locked up… this happened once before and I did the same thing I did last time, rebooted it… no biggie, it’s a computer right? Anyway… it hung on the boot-up. I pondered to myself and thought, this can’t be right. I restart one more time and there it is, staring me down… the RRD that everyone fears… 3 quadrants lit up and flashing right at you like a giant neon sign. 🙁

Well, being the “geek” I am, I log onto the internet and start lookin this bad boy up.  I found myself out on xbox-scene.com’s forums (http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=484726) (actual link to the thread) and I figured out the way to get the secondary post codes (when no error comes up)

I get code 0102 — thought to be the following as per the site:

0102 unknown error – literally means the console does not know what is wrong. possibly a short or cold solder joint somewhere. So far there is 1 major theory for what causes most of these errors is that the Ram, CPU, or GPU are not soldered properly to the mother board This can be solved by re-Heating the chips DO NOT attempt this if your console is still under warranty. If your console is still under warranty return it to the store where it was purchased or call MS to have it replaced.

Yay. The worst one on the list. haha Well, thinking this might not be the cause, I decided to play around some with the box and try to clear the thing up… I got the thing to come online and work well all night. Great, I fixed it… not at all. The next day it did the same thing during bootup and by now I’m thinking this is insane! So i leave the box running and call Xbox support. I go through their steps and such (remember box is still on when i’m not rebooting it) and nothing seems to work. Now I sit on the phone for about a half hour while i’m talking to them setting up to send it in for fix. I finish up with them and get it all setup for a servicing from MS and hang up the phone. I go back upstairs and for grins I reboot it again… TADA all working fine, ALL night. WTF!?

Well, tonight I did the same thing, except I let it sit running for about 20 minutes before I rebooted it. Amazing, it works fine. So, I come back to the internet post that talks about the error code I was getting and find that there is a “fix” by reheating the chips (i assume to make everything settle into place or something like that) and it clicks… what’s my 360 been doing while its been running while i’ve been waiting? heating up!

Now this doesn’t mean i’m going to crack open my 360 and start using a heat gun on it, but it just leaves me thinking… shouldn’t MS be doing something about this since it is obviously a manufacturing defect? Pretty lame if you ask me. However, I hear Sony isn’t doing so great either, lol. These new consoles just put out some friggin heat for sure! Guess on the box i get back from MS i’ll put that cooling system on it… rawr!

That’s my rant for the night. *shrug* At least I’ve got a PC version of FFXI. 🙂