Tech Stuff
woohoo! (xbox story continued)
by Travis on Dec.22, 2006, under Tech Stuff
so, apparently i’m getting my money back from microsoft! this is awesome
 REDMOND, Wash. (AP) – Microsoft Corp. is extending its warranty on the Xbox 360 video game console to one year from the previous limit of 90 days. The change announced Friday applies to future and present owners.
The one-year warranty matches what Sony Corp. and Nintendo Co., already offer on their latest video game consoles, the PlayStation 3 and the Wii.
Microsoft said it extended the deal to make its U.S. and Canadian warranty consistent with what it offered in many other countries. Customers who already have paid repair bills on Xbox consoles that they’ve owned for less than one year will automatically get refunds, Microsoft said in a statement.
This autumn, Microsoft acknowledged that a glitch in the Xbox’s online update system damaged a small number of customers’ consoles before the problem was quickly fixed. At least one customer has sued over the incident.
gotta stay on these mofo’s for this. lol i’ll post up my experience with this as well.
my xbox 360 repair story…
by Travis on Dec.05, 2006, under Tech Stuff
Allright, so here’s my thoughts. I’ve seen so many posts all over the internet with horror stories and success stories of everyone’s xbox 360 repairs.. so here’s the list of mine. This won’t be published until this is over with, so i’m keeping this as a draft until it’s finished. Keep in mind as I found out something new or did something directly related to this issue, I updated this.
Friday, November 17, 2006 – Xbox displayed the red ring of death. Contacted Microsoft support and setup to have my 360 sent in for repairs. I got a reference number and shipping instructions and got the box prepped up to be shipped out Monday.Â
Monday, November 20, 2006Â – Shipped out the Xbox via FedEx Ground (10 bucks as opposed to 30 bucks for 3-day or 45 bucks for 2nd day). Fedex estimates the box will arrive on Monday November 27, 2006.
Monday, November 27, 2006 – Arrived at McAllen Service Center – It appears my Xbox took a little side trip to North Platte, NE — wonder why that happend, lol…. either way, despite its field trip to the middle of nowhere, it made it on the day FedEx said it would so here we go…. let’s see what happens now. I think I’ll call them tomorrow to get a status report. 🙂
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Date/Time |
 | |
 | Activity |
 | |
 | Location |
 | |
 |  | ||
|  | Nov 27, 2006 |  11:38 AM |  |  |  | Delivered  |  |  |  | McAllen, TX |  |  |  |  |  |
|  | Nov 25, 2006 |  4:43 AM |  |  |  | On FedEx vehicle for delivery  |  |  |  | WESLACO, TX |  |  |  |  |  |
|  |  |  1:49 AM |  |  |  | At local FedEx facility  |  |  |  | WESLACO, TX |  |  |  |  |  |
|  | Nov 23, 2006 |  1:16 AM |  |  |  | Arrived at FedEx location  |  |  |  | FORT WORTH, TX |  |  |  |  |  |
|  | Nov 22, 2006 |  6:48 AM |  |  |  | Departed FedEx location  |  |  |  | HENDERSON, CO |  |  |  |  |  |
|  |  |  12:13 AM |  |  |  | Arrived at FedEx location  |  |  |  | HENDERSON, CO |  |  |  |  |  |
|  | Nov 21, 2006 |  7:34 PM |  |  |  | Departed FedEx location  |  |  |  | NORTH PLATTE, NE |  |  |  |  |  |
|  |  |  9:50 AM |  |  |  | In transit  |  |  |  | NORTH PLATTE, NE |  |  |  |  |  |
|  |  |  8:42 AM |  |  |  | On FedEx vehicle for delivery  |  |  |  | NORTH PLATTE, NE |  |  |  |  |  |
|  | Nov 20, 2006 |  5:35 PM |  |  |  | Arrived at FedEx location  |  |  |  | HENDERSON, CO |  |  |  |  |  |
|  |  |  2:17 PM |  |  |  | Package data transmitted to FedEx  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
|  |  |  12:17 PM |  |  |  | Picked up  |  |  |  | HENDERSON, CO |  |  |  |  | |
Tuesday, November 28, 2006 – Allrighty… Called into support today, just to check on status and they confirmed my system has been received by the service center… today… funny i thought it was delivered before lunch yesterday!? *shrug* ok… whatever. the guy on the phone informed me (thankfully I got a decent English speaker this time) that it takes about 2-3 business days for ‘repair’ — so it takes 2-3 days for them to switch my case off my unit and put it on a refurb? wow… and I thought i was a slack-ass. So, it looks like I’ll be calling back in on Thursday to see if they’ve sent it back out. Yay for me. :-/
Friday, December 1, 2006 – Status update. Called into support today since I was too busy yesterday and here’s the latest. According to them my box was “repaired” yesterday and has been shipped out today. A tracking number should be available to me tomorrow. Looks like the guy was right, it *does* take them a couple days to switch the unit. lol
Saturday, December 2, 2006 – Wow, internal communication must be a real pain there… lol SO…. I called in today to get my tracking number, and the number I got said that the package was actually shipped out on November 29th and my XBOX is sitting in Commerce City, CO right now with an expected delivery date of the 4th… Well that sucks… I’m on hold right now with UPS, I’m gonna see if I can drive out there and will-call it. 🙂 At least this one didn’t take a field trip to Nebraska like my other one did, lol.
grrr … this sucks. they won’t let me do a pickup today. I can do it if i schedule a pickup for Tuesday!? WTF?! for the record… UPS SUCKS MICROSOFT, WHY DO YOU USE THEM!? Oh well… guess I’m waiting till Monday, this friggin blows! *sigh*
Monday, December 4, 2006 – Delivered! Setup & Testing…
Tuesday, December 5, 2006 – All seems well with it so far… It played a game last night no problem and a DVD so we’ll see how this one does… They sent me a completely different unit, so we’ll see what happens. hopefully i don’t have any issues with this one or someone’s goin down. need to get my extended warranty crap figured out now.
So, it appears this story wasn’t a nightmare this time around… It just took forever to ship everything…. Hopefully everything continues to go smoothly with it. If not, there will be another blog… lol
the xbox has left the building…
by Travis on Nov.20, 2006, under Tech Stuff
well its off to texas for my 360. we will see how this works out. i’m working on another post that will follow this entire story from the beginning to end since it seems there are mixed reviews about the process. hopefully this will be a good story to tell, not a nightmare. we’ll see what happens and i’ll post up the history of this ordeal once its complete. 🙂
now i’ve just gotta fix my sound drivers on my vista machine so that i can play FFXI with sound. the beta drivers timed out and the latest release doesn’t work too great… so frustrating.
360 DOWN!
by Travis on Nov.18, 2006, under Tech Stuff
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…Â 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. 🙂
