Has anyone ever sent an Xbox to Microsoft for repairs?

The Game Room
1

Over the weekend, the Xbox 360 we’ve had for about seven months suddenly stopped reading our game discs. We get “Unrecognized Disc” whenever we put in a disc, and we get this for all our discs, so whatever is wrong it’s with the console, not the discs.

We went through Xbox’s online diagnostics, ruled out all the easily-fixable solutions, and were left with the “send in your Xbox” solution.

We Googled around for other solutions, tried the easier ones (didn’t work), were afraid to try the harder ones, and balked at buying “cleaning” products that may turn out to be ineffective for our problem.

So we’re considering sending it in. It costs $79, which is cheaper than buying a new system, assuming they’re able to fix it.

I wanted to find out if anyone has any experience with sending in their console – what to expect, how long it takes, if it actually fixed the problem – that sort of thing.

And if anyone has any recommendations for our specific problem, we’ll take that too. (We’ve tried the envelope thing).

Thanks!

2

I did about a year or so ago for the classic red-ring-of-death. The only hiccup was that they detached and lost the HDD from my unit. After several calls to help support, they eventually found it and shipped it to me 4 weeks later.

It isn’t obvious, but you can pop the HDD free from the side of the unit.

3

I had the ring of death years ago, after it was out of warranty. I sent it in and they sent me another one. It took a few weeks (3 or 4?), but otherwise I had no complaints; it’s worked just fine since.

4

Yeah. It takes time, but it works. I had no issues.

5

Many years ago we got the red ring of death. It was about 3 months out of warranty at the time. We sent the old one off (minus the hard drive, which would end up failing a few years later, alas, but I digress…) and got a replacement about a month or two after. As others have said, it was an easy and largely painless process.

6

Yeah; The popular advice that I have heard is REMOVE THE HARD DRIVE FIRST.

I’ve heard stories of people sending 360s off to get fixed and instead having MS send them back a different one…with a different hard drive.

Just save yourself the worries and pull the disk.

7

Also the advice Microsoft gives you when they tell you how to mail the console back to them.

8

And yet we already have someone in this thread who didn’t, so I think it bears repeating.

9

Another person who had the RROD. We removed the hard drive, sent it in and got it back with no fuss in three or four weeks. I was extremely pleased with their service, but I admit I sent mine after many other people had already sent theirs, so perhaps they had it down to a science by then.

10

I have had one that I sent in for RRoD and received a new one in about 3 weeks. Other than the wait time it was a pretty painless process.

11

Thanks for all the responses! Looks like that’s the way to go.

I’ll definitely remove the hard drive first.