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My 360 (which I haven't used in a while) has started reliably crashing. After about five minutes, the whole thing locks up with the video output frozen. Restarting it results in the opening 'zomg xbox' ball thing being slow, jerky and eventually locking up again.

It looks like PC graphics card problems. It happens to all games (indeed, even NO game). It's vaguely intermittent, but I can't actually play anything in the 5/10minute slices of time I get. Time for Xbox 360 number 3?

I would say a new Xbox. I've never heard of this problem before. You checked the website, right? Not much good though. If you can't fix it with something more complex than unplugging it, they don't tell you what to do.

Yeah, but it's clearly the GPU locking up (you can even see the 'no texture' checkerboard pattern on the 360 logo on bootup). It's been fine until now, I was curious if there was any way to workaroundo or fix it.

Gotta say I'm glad I bought a 3yr over-the-counter replacement warranty.

so if you do switch it out, will you lose all of the data on your harddrive? or is there a way to transfer it to the new one?

Yeah, take the HDD out and not exchange it. It's worked before.

I'm just blown away by what is apparently a GPU failure during the coldest winter in AU I can remember. I mean, my 360 is up high, on it's side, heaps of ventilation etc, but it's clearly overheating it's GPU and getting failures. The design (or components) must suck ass.

360 is crashing, but no ring of red? Don't worry, expect a ring of death soon
(mine started with crashing too, a week I later I saw the Ring)

When you return it ask the clerk to give you a replacement from the latest batch they have in stock, you might get one of the new 360s with improved heat sinks and stop it happening again.

Personally I'm hoping mine holds out until the 65nm process refresh units start appearing. It's already started becoming louder than usual though, which probably means the internal fans are starting to fail. Pretty lame, you shouldn't buy anything for this expensive and expect it to catastrophically break multiple times as a matter of course.

I'm not sure if you're aware, but MS just extended their warranty to three years, all expenses paid. So if the store you bought it from gives you any shit, go to xbox.com and send it to MS.

You know I keep hearing about these things dying on people and I have to wonder is it worth the hassle? Microsoft really needs to deal with this quality issue on their console. I haven't heard anything like this from the Wii and I've had my PS2 now for over 3 years and no issues, my PS1 before that is stored somewhere in a closet and never gave me issues. I'll pay extra for reliability instead of hoping my $400 console doesn't turn into a paper weight at any given moment.

The PS2 had some reliability issues as well; mostly related to the DVD drive.

That was more specifically concerning PS2s from about the point of launch, wasn't it? I know there was the gradual "blue disc" compatibility issue that some launch PS2s would eventually succumb to, as well as some general "wearing out."

Other than that, I don't recall anything particularly widespread for the PlayStation 2.

And for all the negative press the PlayStation 3 gets, I've heard almost nothing concerning widespread reliability or hardware issues (at least, not yet).

The past couple of weeks in particular have definitely been a hideous publicity period for Microsoft. I would almost venture that if they proceeded with an "Xbox 3," it might take the form of a more reliable and robust incarnation of the 360, version 2...

The fuck did you get that avatar from spanky?

The Internet.

TheFeniX wrote:I'm not sure if you're aware, but MS just extended their warranty to three years, all expenses paid. So if the store you bought it from gives you any shit, go to xbox.com and send it to MS.

When I bought my 360 MS had been ignoring these problems for some time, hence why I bought a 3-year, over-the-counter, don't-deal-with-Microsoft warranty.

Could you put a desk fan pointed at the back of the thing? I've done that for "Supplemental cooling". Just wherever the intake is, point, set the thing on high and Ba-da-boom.

You guys were all right - this morning I figured I'd watch the Mass Effect trailer, and got the Ring of Red. Huzzah! Now I can get a new one.

Stark wrote:You guys were all right - this morning I figured I'd watch the Mass Effect trailer, and got the Ring of Red. Huzzah! Now I can get a new one.

Told you.

How long do they tell you to wait untill you get a new one? I was out for 3 weeks

Like I said, I have an over-the-counter replacement warranty. I'll have a new one as soon as I get time to take it back in, so I'm quite happy to go through as many 360s as I can.

Stark wrote:Like I said, I have an over-the-counter replacement warranty. I'll have a new one as soon as I get time to take it back in, so I'm quite happy to go through as many 360s as I can.

You know, Microsoft is spending literally millions of dollars to fix broken consoles. You could just RMA it to Microsoft, have them fix it and never have that problem again.

Same thing happened to me too Stark.

I have to say MS's process was no where near as bad as I thought it was going to be. They sent me an e-mail that said 4-6 weeks, its been 2 and I just got an e-mail that says it should be here Friday, just over 2 weeks since I put the request in.

Dalton wrote:[You know, Microsoft is spending literally millions of dollars to fix broken consoles. You could just RMA it to Microsoft, have them fix it and never have that problem again.

They've spent about a billion dollars replacing systems. That's a significant sink of money. They don't repair them, really. At least, they don't repair them and then send them back to you. They replace it wholesale. They might then repair it and then resell it or save it for a replacement.

Dalton wrote:You know, Microsoft is spending literally millions of dollars to fix broken consoles. You could just RMA it to Microsoft, have them fix it and never have that problem again.

What's the difference between sending it to Microsoft and just getting another off-the-shelf console? Do the warranty repair guys fill it with Sensible Cooling and Reliable Hardware? RMA = don't have console for weeks (perhaps months), over-the-counter = instant replacement. For Microsoft there is no difference: my dealer is just going to send the faulty unit back for RA themselves. It's a *consumer convienience* that the dealer handles the RA without the consumer having to be put out. Do you have any evidence for this 'RMA then never have a problem again' claim?

I just spent hard cash on a 360 today, actually; I was hankering for an over the counter warranty (two years!) but did not have that cash on me. With any luck, I won't end up with 'reliability issues'.

Ford Prefect wrote:I just spent hard cash on a 360 today, actually; I was hankering for an over the counter warranty (two years!) but did not have that cash on me. With any luck, I won't end up with 'reliability issues'.

I changed my first 360 for relatively minor issues (like noise, heat, etc) - it didn't actually fail. My current one was fine until it failed completely over the course of a week. It's a lottery, it seems. Extended warranties are usually a scam in my opinion, but knowing the dodgeyness of 360s I was happy to buy one.

I changed my 360 today, and this one is one of the 'loud smelly' ones. It also hates my wireless controller - anything with a cord works fine, the IR remote works fine, but it refuses to connect to the wireless controller. Connecting it to my PC shows that it works fine and has a full charge.

I've tried pretty much every permutation of the two connect buttons possible. They 'find' each other (change from circling quadrants to flashing ring) and then the wireless controller isn't given a quadrant slot and sits there flashing the ring slowly. A 360 controller shouldn't work better with a PC than the console it came with.