Blog:Ellis

My Xbox 360 is in it's 3rd year of entertaining me now and has been great at doing so, what with all it's Fifas, CODs and Guitar Heros. Unfortunately it has recently been reluctant to do anything in it's old age and instead of displaying glorious High-Def gaming on my screen, it display the "red ring of death" around it's power button.



Reminiscent of Windows' Blue Screen of Death which still haunts my copy of Vista Ultimate to this day, it seems Microsoft just can't keep anything working for extended periods of time. Apparently they have extended everyone's xbox 360 warranties due to the widespread nature of this major malfunction, that is, if your warranty was intact in the first place. Mine was void the moment I 'accidentally' opened and flashed it to allow me to play game 'backups', so now the problem is mine and mine alone.

Lucky for me then that there's a couple of solutions on the Internet. The first being a £5 kit from eBay to replace Microsoft's idiotic, egotistical X-shaped heat sync. With that on the way to my door I looked for some temporary quick-fixes. The one that sounded the silliest seemed to be the one with the most success... Wrap your xbox 360 in towels....


Now I know when I was Ill as a child I was told to keep warm but
this seemed ridiculous. Apparently though the solder on the motherboard can crack, disconnecting joints, so by wrapping towels round your xbox for 15 minutes you are basically overheating it to the point where the solder melts a little and rejoins. Then unwrap and leave to cool for 15-20 minutes (Yes I realize I sound like the instructions on the back of a ready meal).

Anywho i tried it and no success, the next logical step then was to increase the number of towels and length of time, regardless of the fire hazzard. This time the fans stopped spinning at 19minutes so I quickly unplugged it and let it cool, fearing it would never light up again. Half an hour later... Success! I fixed my xbox with a towel! I Played for an hour with no problems, lets see how long this lasts...