# ....My true love gave to me, The Red Rings of Death
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-true-love-gave-to-me-the-red-rings-of-death/431153
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [December 24, 2007, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-true-love-gave-to-me-the-red-rings-of-death/431153 "2007-12-24T19:55:57Z")
**Posts on this page:** 16
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)
#### Post date: [December 24, 2007, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-true-love-gave-to-me-the-red-rings-of-death/431153/1 "2007-12-24T19:55:57Z")
Right before Christmas. No Mass Effect. No Call of Duty 4. No Orange Box. Merry Fucking Christmas.
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### Author:  [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)
#### Post date: [December 24, 2007, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-true-love-gave-to-me-the-red-rings-of-death/431153/2 "2007-12-24T20:11:32Z")
Ouch.
For those not int he know, the Red Rings of Death means “general hardware failure” in the Xbox 360. Early models apparently had one of those ticking timebomb hardware defects like the PS2 originally had.
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### Author:  [@Sierra\_Indigo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sierra_Indigo)
#### Post date: [December 24, 2007, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-true-love-gave-to-me-the-red-rings-of-death/431153/3 "2007-12-24T20:12:52Z")
Oh god, my heart is breaking for you.
You’ll be in my Christmas prayers!
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### Author:  [@Malodorous](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malodorous)
#### Post date: [December 24, 2007, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-true-love-gave-to-me-the-red-rings-of-death/431153/4 "2007-12-24T20:13:34Z")
Ah, thanks for clarifying **bandit**. I was thinking his true love gave him some horrible sounding STD.
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### Author:  [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)
#### Post date: [December 24, 2007, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-true-love-gave-to-me-the-red-rings-of-death/431153/5 "2007-12-24T20:17:30Z")
[QUOTE=Malodorous]
Ah, thanks for clarifying **bandit**. I was thinking his true love gave him some horrible sounding STD.
[/QUOTE]
Not this year. [Here](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360_technical_problems) is a better explaination. I had to run out and get a few cheap old games for the PS2 so my son would have something under the tree he could play.
But forget about him, what am I going to do for the next month or so?
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### Author:  [@Cleophus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cleophus)
#### Post date: [December 24, 2007, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-true-love-gave-to-me-the-red-rings-of-death/431153/6 "2007-12-24T22:03:02Z")
Did you try unplugging the unit, removing the hard drive, then reattaching everything? For some reason, the preceding fixed (well, maybe not “fixed”, but it worked afterward) my 360 when it red-ringed a couple of months ago.
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### Author:  [@Least\_Original\_User\_Name\_Ever](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Least_Original_User_Name_Ever)
#### Post date: [December 24, 2007, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-true-love-gave-to-me-the-red-rings-of-death/431153/7 "2007-12-24T22:24:10Z")
Run the console nonstop overnight. Maybe you can generate enough heat to bring the bonds back and make it work again.
I’ve heard of it happen before Either that or the towel trick.
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### Author:  [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)
#### Post date: [December 25, 2007, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-true-love-gave-to-me-the-red-rings-of-death/431153/8 "2007-12-25T01:56:19Z")
[QUOTE=Cleophus]
Did you try unplugging the unit, removing the hard drive, then reattaching everything? For some reason, the preceding fixed (well, maybe not “fixed”, but it worked afterward) my 360 when it red-ringed a couple of months ago.
[/QUOTE]
Went through all that with Bill Gates on the phone. No good. They are sending a travel box in a couple of days and they will either fix it or replace free of charge. Won’t help me for tomorrow. Probably won’t get it back until sometime in February.
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### Author:  [@Ranchoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranchoth)
#### Post date: [December 25, 2007, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-true-love-gave-to-me-the-red-rings-of-death/431153/9 "2007-12-25T02:50:03Z")
Did you try baiting the Gremlins with gingerbread? Or possibly use a [force-fire](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force-fire) ritual…though that might be a little less applicable in this day and age (maybe if you have a pilot light…or one of those hand-cranked flashlights).
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### Author:  [@mobo85](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mobo85)
#### Post date: [December 25, 2007, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-true-love-gave-to-me-the-red-rings-of-death/431153/10 "2007-12-25T02:51:15Z")
Ah, now you will have to put it in the fire. It’s always the way, isn’t it, Weighted Companion Cube?
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### Author:  [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)
#### Post date: [December 25, 2007, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-true-love-gave-to-me-the-red-rings-of-death/431153/11 "2007-12-25T21:24:47Z")
If it makes you feel any better, ol’ Bill’s had to pony up a cool billion to cover the costs of all those units going tits up. While he’s probably got that much money rolling around in his couch, it did a number on MS’s stock price when it was announced what the tab was going to be.
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### Author:  [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)
#### Post date: [December 25, 2007, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-true-love-gave-to-me-the-red-rings-of-death/431153/12 "2007-12-25T22:37:44Z")
[QUOTE=Tuckerfan]
If it makes you feel any better, ol’ Bill’s had to pony up a cool billion to cover the costs of all those units going tits up. While he’s probably got that much money rolling around in his couch, it did a number on MS’s stock price when it was announced what the tab was going to be.
[/QUOTE]
My only console-lation is that it happened yesterday. If it happened today right after my son put Mass Effect in then there would have been a disaster of biblical proportions. At least he had some time for it to sink in before he opened his presents. (and I opened mine ☹ )
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### Author:  [@Amp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amp)
#### Post date: [December 25, 2007, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-true-love-gave-to-me-the-red-rings-of-death/431153/13 "2007-12-25T22:58:40Z")
Happened to me after playing a three day non-stop Halo marathon. Total turn around time from me calling up to getting the box back was three weeks. Microsoft sent me back a new unit along with a one month free card for Xbox Live for the time I was not able to play. An OK experience overall. One thing of note, when I dropped the box off at the UPS store the girl behind the counter just looked at me and said, “Xbox 360 huh?” Seeing as the box was completely plain white with no markings and she hadn’t even looked at the shipping label I asked her how did she know. She said she was getting two to three a day.
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### Author:  [@sturmhauke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sturmhauke)
#### Post date: [December 25, 2007, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-true-love-gave-to-me-the-red-rings-of-death/431153/14 "2007-12-25T23:52:24Z")
I got my 360 about a year ago. Lately it’s been freezing up every once in a while, and sometimes getting “this disc is unreadable” errors. Is that a precursor to the Red Ring of Death?
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### Author:  [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)
#### Post date: [December 26, 2007, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-true-love-gave-to-me-the-red-rings-of-death/431153/15 "2007-12-26T03:33:15Z")
[QUOTE=sturmhauke]
I got my 360 about a year ago. Lately it’s been freezing up every once in a while, and sometimes getting “this disc is unreadable” errors. Is that a precursor to the Red Ring of Death?
[/QUOTE]
Not for me. I put in Viva Pinata for my daughter and it went red. No warning.
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### Author:  [@Sierra\_Indigo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sierra_Indigo)
#### Post date: [December 26, 2007, 5:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-true-love-gave-to-me-the-red-rings-of-death/431153/16 "2007-12-26T05:05:01Z")
[QUOTE=sturmhauke]
I got my 360 about a year ago. Lately it’s been freezing up every once in a while, and sometimes getting “this disc is unreadable” errors. Is that a precursor to the Red Ring of Death?
[/QUOTE]
Not a RRoD, but yes, it’s the precursor to a major crash.
That happened to our box, over about a four month period it gradually started freezing more and more often. The killer was the day I got Halo 3, put it in and could not get any further than about five seconds into the opening cut scene. After that nothing would play for more than a minute before freezing - games on disk, games on the HD, nothing.
Did all the pulling out of the HD, cleaning with canned air, putting up on a shelf (off of the floor), moving the power box around etc etc. Nothing worked. So I called Microsoft and spoke to a very nice Indian fellow, he took about five minutes to confirm I’d followed all of the troubleshooting steps then sent me an email with my case number and instructions for shipping the box back. We had it sent away and returned within 2 weeks and since then it’s worked absolutely fine on all of our games.