Xbox 360 Red Ring of Death Still a Problem?

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redring.jpgI was shipping a few packages at the UPS Store and noticed two unrelated individuals in the store with XBox 360s on their way to be repaired. I asked them about it and they both said their XBox 360 quit working and they were experiencing the “Red Ring of Death.” Then the UPS guy behind the desk said there had already been four others that day sending in their 360s with the same problem.

This surprises me because I thought Microsoft had worked out the issues. For those of you who haven’t heard of the Red Ring of Death, check out this wiki article. It says the red lights on the indicator “ring” represent “general hardware failure” and is known by gamers as the infamous “Red Ring of Death.”

Anyone else seen this problem on their XBox 360? Is it only with the older units?

Check out more of Brent’s reflections on tech, gadgets, software and media at Brent Evans Geek Tonic.

60 thoughts on “Xbox 360 Red Ring of Death Still a Problem?”

  1. I think most of the root causes have been taken care of with currently shipping hardware. However, there’s tons of potentially flawed boxes floating around. In fact, this summer Microsoft set aside over a BILLION dollars to extend the Xbox 360 warranty and in anticipation of repairs/replacements.

    So far I’ve been lucky – I’ve had my 360 over a year and it hasn’t died yet. Knock on wood.

  2. It is true that the red ring of death has been a huge problem for microsoft, but now that the new line of xbox’s with new processors they are suposed to run at a much lower temperature and speed. Hopefully it will be the fix they need to stay in the console wars. Personally i love my xbox 360 and wouldnt give it up for the world. I bought mine last christmas and have not had any problems though.

  4. I got the RRoD a bunch of times, gave up on the 360 because of it, plus the whole HD-DVD is extra mess.

    But its OK, Metal Gear Solid 4 is almost here, time to buy a PS3.

    For Sale: (1) Xbox 360, can only play for one hour, then hardware crashes. Make offer.

  5. I’ve only had my xbox for abou 6 months now, really heavy use and no problems… course i keep it in a cool room.

  7. I have a unit that is a little over a year old that failed a couple months ago. I got it back, and I’ve had one failure since then, but it has worked since. I’ll probably send it back sometime during the warranty extension.

    My brother just had his 360 die a few days ago.

  8. most people who get the RROD are modding thier xbox’s firmware and then when it crashes they get pissed and cry wolf. BOO HOO poor baby…..maybe next time you’ll figure out it is less of a hassle to buy the game instead of modding your xbox to play free games.

  9. Mine suffered the RRoD about this time last year but the replacement has been solid. I haven’t known anybody else who have had to replace theirs though.

  10. A friend of mine just had his go down the other day after just under a year of ownership. Just got one myself and am a little fearful.

  11. I had an original one too and it just kicked about two weeks ago right after I installed the fall update. I did not get the three red lights that make up the RROD just one in the bottom right quadrant and a E74 error code. When I was able to get it to fire up again it was artifacting all over the screen, I guess the video chip had an issue. Xbox customer support wanted to charge $100 to fix it, they said that this error was not covered under the extended warranty. Every one else I know that picked up an original 360 had theirs die long ago, I guess mine was lucky to last just over two years???

  12. Xbox 360 RRoD is still a problem. The 1 billion dollar is there to ensure that many Xbox that had already sold will be covered, so we will be seeing them coming back at different time and day…The Time To failure for RRoD can be predicted based on the returned rate from Microsoft, which they reluctant to review.. and based on Serial Number…

    But, the damage has already been done and the new design and etc, still need to be proven out..We shall wait…

  13. @stu padasso: No, I disagree. The friends I have with 360s (four people) have all had the RRoD and had to send the machines back.

    Not one of them has attempted to mod their 360 (though one of them heavily modded his original Xbox).

    If the RRoD were simply due to modders, MS wouldn’t be setting aside the amount of money it has to deal with the issue, nor would they be dealing with it for free and outside of the warranty period.

  14. I purchased an Xbox 360 elite this past Saturday with a manufacture date of 11/5/07. Within a few minutes of turning it on and going through the setup, it shut off with 3 of the 4 lights flashing red. I had it on top of my HTPC, so it may have been too much heat for the Xbox. I have since moved it and I haven’t had a problem. But that is still not a good sign for it to indicate hardware failure so quickly out of the box.

  15. I had mine repaired (replaced with a refurb) a few months ago, and it’s been working fine since. Supposedly mine has the newer stuff inside of it, but I have no real way of confirming that.

  17. “most people who get the RROD are modding thier xbox’s firmware and then when it crashes they get pissed and cry wolf.”

    Utterly ridiculous. You are so far from right you can’t even *see* right. I’ve personally had three boxes go RRoD. I never even thought of modding any of them. I’ve not heard of anyone RRoDing their box due to a mod. *Ever*.

    You just made that up.

  18. I got my 360 for Christmas last year, and so far it’s run pretty well. I had disc read errors until I moved it to a more ventilated place in the home theater setup, and it’s been mostly smooth sailing…until a few weeks ago. I got the RRoD and immediately seized up. I reluctantly trudged online to follow the instructions for sending it in, but I really didn’t want to, what with Mass Effect coming from Santa. After following the website’s instructions to unplug EVERYTHING and remove the HDD, then try again, it came back! For the last few weeks, it’s mostly worked, but every once in a while I get the RRoD…I suppose I’ll have to send it back at SOME point. Maybe if I wait long enough, they’ll burn through all the V.1 hardware and I’ll get one with an HDMI port.

  19. I had my 360 for about 6 months and it died, although it was previously owned for a few months before that by someone else who took good care of it. That was last December I got my xbox, and about Juneish time it died.

    I had my 360 sitting on a shelf below my television, completely open to air and it still died.

    I live in Scotland so my bedroom is somewhat freezing, pretty much all the time because I like to keep it colder in here since my PC tower and 360 combined can heat the room up in no time at all if the windows are shut. This one hasn’t died yet.. but I have a funny feeling that it will sometime soon, I have 3 years of warranty to find out.

    I suppose all 360 consoles are just ticking time bombs, cause turning them on is always a game of russian roulette, will it work, will it not?

    I dread the day my 360 fails again. Even though it took just 7 days to get it repaired last time! Which is stellar compared to half of the other complaints about the consoles taking up to 3-4 weeks to be returned to their faithful and now completely braindead owners.

    To anyone who’s followed the Microsoft Technet stuff.. 9/10 it probably won’t work, even if you phone them they will try and make you do the same thing. I phoned them and asked for a box to send it back, but here’s the beauty of it all.. In the UK they don’t send out boxes, they send you out a god-damned sticker and you have to provide your own box for your 360. How much hassle is that? Luckily my friend had a 20″ LCD Widescreen monitor box with all of the original packaging still there and it fit like a glove. As for now, I’m keeping the box that my 360 had when it returned from Hells Workshop.

    As for failure rates, everyone I know that has a 360 has had atleast one RRoD.. and that’s including having random conversations at college etc. But seriously, the failure rate is something so extremely embarrassing Microsoft won’t even publish it and I don’t think they will. They probably don’t even know what the failure rate is since a lot of people can get theirs repaired locally, or pay for a cheaper service online if their warranty has run out.

    An in depth explanation of the RRoD:

    One or many of the silver balls on the underside of the GPU has either cracked and/or dislodged. Yup, all it needs is to be one little ball bearing to become loose before you see those 3 red rings. This is the main cause of the RRoD (a.k.a overheating). Heat is a major problem for the 360, this also causes the motherboard to warp and bend, also helping the great cause of getting things loosened up inside.

    An unconfirmed, although very common one was when the “Fall” update was released and about a million consoles suddenly died. People all over the internet we’re flaring up that this update bricked their console. Noone really knows why, maybe unsupported hardware revisions? I don’t know myself even with my technical expertise.

    Now you hear of people that have done the “towel-trick” to make their 360 work again. Now what this means is that they are wrapping their 360 in a couple of towels and leaving it for about 10 minutes running. This mainly superheats the GPU and less mainly the CPU inside and makes the balls re-solder inside due to the extreme temps. This trick actually works, and it’s un-guarnteed how long it can work for. Days to months, there have been mixed reports.

    Good luck with your 360 guys! And I’ll hopefully see you on XBL :)

    If your 360 works afterall ;)

  20. I had my 360 die on me last month. Manufactured in March ’06, and only a few lock up problems until the RRoD last month. At first I was just getting screen freeze and screeching noise, but I kept messing with it until I got the RRoD so I could get it repaired for free.

    From the day I dropped it off at UPS it took a total of 14 days for MS to get it back to me, not too bad considering I sent it 2 days before Thanksgiving.

    As I dropped it off at UPS in its non-descript white box, the UPS person said “Oh another one”. When I picked mine back up, I saw another white box sitting behind the counter.

    I did get a 1 month Live Gold card for the problem.

  22. Got mine back yesterday (2nd time I’ve returned it). FedEx guy said he had seen a lot these white boxes this week. He thought MS was having a sale! :)

    New one is another refurb w/ mfg date of sep ’06. Only a matter of time before it dies again I’m sure.

  23. My son’s 360 has a date of Oct 2006 on it and was fine until we got Rock Band, the day it came out. After much heavy playing (through probably not that much more than the week of Halo3!), we started seeing the RRoD. I read about the extended warranty coverage on the web and we called support and got an RMA, the shipping box arrived 3 days later and it is now in Texas being replaced. Not the best time of year for this to happen, but hopefully he’ll get a new or refurb unit out of this.

  24. We got our Elite in June and so far no problems (knocks on wood)

    This summer they started selling 360s with better cooling capability (more heat sinks and heat pipes) and shortly after that they came out with the newer, cooler 65nm CPU.

    Now the 65nm CPU doesn’t make all that much of a difference since it’s the GPU that is overheating in most cases, a cooler CPU will mean less heat being generated inside the console which should allow the colling system to work a little more efficiently.

    I haven’t heard of any 360s with the improved cooling experiencing a RRoD, though Bernie’s comment above sounds a bit scary, hopefully it was just a random error that triggered in a brand new unit).

  26. >>>>>most people who get the RROD are modding thier xbox’s firmware and then when it crashes they get pissed and cry wolf. BOO HOO poor baby…..maybe next time you’ll figure out it is less of a hassle to buy the game instead of modding your xbox to play free games.

    Comment by stu padasso — December 21, 2007 @ 2:53 pm<<<<<<

    Where in the hell did you hear that line of crap. All 3 crashes of mine the two my sister got, the 1 from 4 different people i know and the hundreds of complaints online not one person had modded anything. In your thinking I guess were fighting a war in Iraq is because Germany invaded poland?

  27. Ha, I agree. If you MOD your Xbox and send it to MSFT to service….They would flat out junk it.

    The red ring of death is said to be caused by lead-free solder points. Lead free solder fails (cracks) at high temps. This also explains why if you perform the “towel” solution, the solder actually melts (at really high temps) and fills in the crack, reestablishing a connection. I’m not 100% sure this is the actual reason why this happens but it seems to be the most logical.

    My 2nd xbox just crashed yesterday after 1 hour of use. It was stored in a cool dry place, no where near any heat sources (other then itself), and on an a/v stand (not in a cabinet).

    I wrote a nasty email to the service center on how my initial system crashed as well as the refurbished one they recently sent back. I just received their generic response about how sorry they are and some tips to trouble shoot the issue myself. I plan on spending some time with the service center and some MSFT reps. I want answers. I love xbox but hating the hardware. I know each of you dropped your hard earned cash to only get a red eye staring back at you. They’ve got to rectify this.

    Ahhhhhh WTF…

    Happy Holidays !

  28. Just Monday I had the my third 360 console get the 3 red rings. This is the first time I’ve had to send it into Microsoft though. The other two were swapped out at Best Buy, but I was told this time that I would have to send it in. Love my 360, but I do not believe they have the issue taken care of yet. This console was new from Best Buy in August and still got the 3 red lights.

  29. I had got my first xbox 360 when it first came out. The system lasted about 8 months and then i got the red ring. I thought to myself it is the first line up so there is going to be problems no big deal right. Wrong the second unit i had got from ms got the red ring after 3 months. A little mad I sent that unit back and it took about 6 weeks to get one back. Now this is the third unit I recived from ms back in november with a date code of setember 6 on it and just the other day I’m back on the phone with ms again this would be the forth system in little over 2 years. After this one is repaired i think I’m just going to sell it and get a game boy lol.

  30. I was recently included in a CNBC news segment about the Xbox 360’s Red-Ring-of-Death issue. I’d had my console a little less than a year when I got the RRoD. Microsoft was great about getting me a refurbished unit quickly before Christmas time. They did set aside a ton of money to offest costs for the repairs. My brother-in-law go the RRoD shortly after I received mine. We got our machines for Christmas together. Hopefully they’ve worked through the issues, but I’m sure there are still lots of first issues that will end up having the problem initially. I setup a console tracker on my website for everyone that has experienced the RRoD and received a replacement.

  31. Just two days of xbox 360 Halo and up pops the red ring of death. My daughter was very disappointed. Not being a gamer and not knowing the history of the issue, I did some poking around the net. Amazing! The real story here is the arrogance of Microsoft trading sales for customer loyalty. Some of us do have a long memory. Hello, Mac.

  32. I love it when someone trys to say that it happens to “modded” xbox 360’s only. Mine died last night and I only play it a few hours a month and have never done anything more than plug the cables in. I did enjoy the $99 threat they gave me if it isn’t “general hardware failure”. I’ll buy a Macintosh if they are that stupid.

  33. Here’s an amusing visual. I was walking through Target yesterday looking for a Wii (yeah I know it’s wishful thinking) and I walked by the Xbox 360 display unit. Staring right back at me were three blinking red lights. I laughed and some guy looking at games looked up and asked “Red Ring of Death?”.

    I would say the problem’s still around.

  38. I’ve had my xbox for 2 weeks I hope I don’t get the RRoD ill be pist if I do I mean I was playing F.E.A.R nd it got frozen but I’m hoping it was the disks fault!

    Hearing all this stuff about RRoD makes me want to return it to Radioshack nd get a Ps3 but I love 360 nd ijust got halo3, bioshock nd cod 4 so idk

    BTW: MGS 4 might not only come out for ps3 so I got my fingers crossed they said that the devlopers don’t see the point of selling it only for ps3 when moslty every one in the world has a 360 imean when msg 2 came out it was on both xbox and ps2 so idk hope theii have it for 360 too (knock on wood ppl.)

  39. Gutted!

    Just had my 360 in for repair for a problem with the a/v socket. They replaced the console with a “replacement” (for this read reconditioned” unit. Turned it on, played for 10 minutes, got the red ring of death. Great. Another return, another 2-3 weeks without a 360.

  40. RROD after the Xbox360 did the required update in order to play Assasin’s Creed… game froze up very quickly and RROD shining bright. Good ventilation, not modded at all. Manufactured date 09/06. Waiting on the box to send it in as we speak…

    Pissed in San Antonio!

  41. iv just sent my 360 back to be repaired today i was absolutly fuming when the rrod appeared. i didnt want to go with out a 360 while it was being fixed so i went out and bought an other one and i wish i never now because iv just got this bad feeling that this one is going to crash. micro soft have got a lot to explain to their loyal customers who are all ready paying stupid money for their goods.i will never spend my money with micro soft again thats for sure…

  42. I think there is an issue with the power supply. On the second trip for repair they ask for me to include it. Just to update. I got my 360 back about a month ago and I’ve been taxing the shit out of to make the RROD appear. So far nothing………

    By the way, burn out paradise is sick!

  43. IM LUKKY I DONT HAVE THAT PROBLEM. AND MY XBOX 360 DIDNT HAVE THAT PROBLEM FOR 7 MONTHS I HOPE IT WONT HAPPEN TO ME FOR MANY MANY YEARS

  44. I had a pro that went T.U. after a year, luckily I had a replacement plan though Best Buy and got a new one right away, actually I upgraded to the elite for my new one. But this morning I got the new console update, it restarted and came back with the red ring of death. The new elites were supposed to be more resilient to failure, but this one didn’t last as long as the 1st. It’s not like a play it a lot, I have friends who play a lot more than I and theirs have always worked.

  45. Ok i have heard alot of speculation about the RRoD but i have found alot out about the xbox 360

    RRoD is caused impart by many many flaws in the xbox because Microsoft wanted to release it earlier!!! NOT BECAUSE OF MODDERS!!!

    One of the first flaws that leads to another one is that they made the GPU in house in other words Microsoft made it instead of a more experienced GPU making company. The problem that the first GPU they put in the v1 xbox is that it put off excessive heat.

    That heat leads to the next flaw. Because this device was going to be used by kids Microsoft wanted to make it lead free. Bad idea because lead free solder has a habit of cracking when disturbed, so the fractures or cracks form from overheating of the GPU or CPU. People have said that wrapping your xbox in towels is a fix. It is but a VERY BAD fix because all you are doing it heating up the xbox to try and remelt the solder in order to fill in the cracks.

    Another flaw in the solder is that it wasnt hot enough when applyed. If the solder isnt hot enough when applyed then you end up with a bigger likelyness that the cracks will form.

    As far as i have seen and heard the v2/falcon and v3/jasper have fixed this with better heat removeing techniques.

    If you do end up with the RRoD i have found this is about the best and cheapest way to repair your xbox if you have no warranty. http://www.instructables.com/id/Fix-the-Red-Ring-of-Deathwithout-towels/

  48. hey i have had RRoD for about a year now and i havent played it since… i tried it recently incase i had to use towels and :D what do u know it worked in time for me blockbuster rental GTA4 i hope if any of u read this it helps…

  49. man i just got my x box and i didnt buy a warntey and i got the 3 rings of death. but i guss u can fix it ur slef but every spot i go to get directions you have to pay its fukin fetarted

  50. could somebody tell me what should i do, i found a place close to where i live and they fix boxes so they clean put better things on the box and clean it from inside to outside and also it costs 45$!! But i figured out i still have guarranty for my xbox so should i give it to micrsft but its going to take over 20 days to get it back and i want to get it fast because that place gives it in 2 days help!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  51. im on my 3rd 360 and it just gave out …im done with it..its messed up because i love the system when its working but every one i’ve had didnt last longer than a year….fcuk you bill gates

  53. Don’t be fooled, I’ve had 3 consoles in the last year and a half and I have had 2 cooling fans on the bottom and back. I think the problem is just the same as it was when the 360 first hit the shelves which is a disappointment to say the least. I’ve always prefered xbox over playstation but I’m personally done and moving on to a PS3. If this was a car that had been in production for this long and still having the same problem it had from the start, somebody would be getting sued by now!

  54. I am gonna buy an Xbox 360 but I don’t know if it is going to last a year….I wanna play The Last Remnant so BAAAADDDD~ dam it! F**K YOU Square Enix for not releasing this game for PS3!!!!!!!!Never mind. I’ll just save my money for Way of the Samurai 3,Assassin’s Creed 2,Modern Warfare 2,Uncharted 2,GOWIII,and other titles this fall….

  55. I own a PS2 that has lasted for close to 10 years now. I decided to get back into hardcore gaming 1 1/2 years ago and a lot of my friends played xbox. So I went out and got an elite hoping that it would be superior and trouble free for the crazy price. Last night I got the RRoD and I am disgusted with Microsoft and their products. Macintosh and Playstation for me from now on. IT’S FCKIN CRIMINAL WHAT THEY GET AWAY WITH.

  58. My son, daughter and both neighbors got the red ring of death within in days of each other. Both of my kids’ xbox 360’s are less than a year old.

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