Yes, I got the dread Red Ring of Death. I’ve been looking around for fixes that don’t involve sending the XBox off to Microsoft for 3 weeks and perhaps incurring a $120 repair bill for what appears to be their negligence. Even if it’s a free fix it’s still almost a month out the door.
The fixes that I’ve seen seem to be pretty easy for someone of at least modest skill. I’m a bit better than that, but only just, and I don’t have the collection of tools that I would need to properly do the job (the towel one is just stupid).
So I look on Microsoft’s website, and they tell me that I probably need a new power supply. I got an orange light and it didn’t change when I went to a different outlet in the house. I called Gamestop, and guess what? That’s right, they didn’t have any for sale. So, do I order one from Microsoft, paying for something I may not need?
This is annoying. Very, very annoying. I am not happy with this turn of events. I don’t have the money or inclination to replace the XBox, not even with a used one (that’s probably banned from Live anyway for mods).
I did some more research and found out that the code displayed indicates that it’s the whole smash, it’s not the power supply. I need to call Microsoft to find out whether or not the repair will be covered. Otherwise, looks like I have to pull it apart and do the whole heat-sink X-clamp repair.
As good as the XBox is for gaming, they sure did a bad job in building it. I can’t believe that Microsoft would use the customers as beta testers for something like this, and then refuse to cover it when it breaks. They extended the warranty to 3 years, but the word I get now is that they no longer fix RRoD issues for free, now it’s a $100 repair.
If its covered by Microsoft (your last post doesn’t make it clear), I would totally say just send it back. I had this problem, and heard all kinds of horrible things about Microsoft. I sent it back, however, and in less than 10 days had a replacement Xbox, back, with some free Xbox live points and lots and lots of help from customer service in gettting our gamer tags + their history transferred over. In short, I had an excellent experience with them.
If you are covered by the Xbox extended warranty (RRoD should be 3 years…I just missed my 3 years earlier this year with mine) be sure to remove the HD before you ship it.
If MS will cover it for free or at a nominal price, just send it in. You are just shooting in the dark trying to fix it yourself because there are so many possible causes. The x-clamp might work if it’s just a matter of motherboard warpage, but it could be non-uniform solder bumps, warped substrate, brittleness of non-eutectic solder, etc. You just don’t know, and most home “fixes” are just temporary. If you send it in, you may even get a board revision.
If you are sending it in for repair, make sure to pop the hard drive off of it first. It wasn’t obvious that I was to do so before sending it in (it looked like an integral piece of the unit), and they shipped me back the new XBox…minus the hard drive.
It was a pain in the ass of long off-shore customer service calls and 3 more weeks to get my hard drive back.
I got mine fixed for, I think $40, and within about 30 minutes or so by a guy I found on Craigslist. Now of course I can’t vouch for everybody on there advertising the service, but he passed the sniff test on the phone and I was very happy. Not really any down time at all, I was back playing Red Dead very soon afterward.
Actually, the problem seems to be very well known and the fix is very well documented, so I don’t see it as “shooting in the dark”. I have no desire to give Microsoft another $100+ of my money when I can fix it in an hour for $10 in parts.
That said, your points are worth considering as well.