Everything was
going so well. You were destroying every zombie in sight and now the
only thing that’s moving on your system are those three red lights
where there used to be four green ones. The screen has frozen and
the system refuses to reboot. What now?
Over 30% of Xbox360 users have encountered this problem. The
flashing red lights tell you that the system’s hardware has failed
because it overheated. The system wasn’t designed to be able to
dissipate the heat it generates effectively enough, so those
amazingly powerful processors that give you that great quality of
play can only go for so long. If you play for an extended period of
time or the processors themselves are defective in some way, you end
up with three flashing red lights and not much else. So what are
your options?
What really needs to be done is to make sure that the unit can cool
itself adequately, so here are the various options open to you.
1. Microsoft’s extended three year warranty covers this error so if
you are still within the warranty period, you really should send the
unit back to them and have them repair it. This is because if you go
to it yourself you render the warranty null and void and then if
another problem comes up you will have to pay Microsoft to repair it
for you.
2. If you are no longer within the warranty period, there are a few
things that you can do. If you don’t fancy trying to repair it
yourself, send it out to someone who can. Quite a few repairers have
popped up since the three flashing red lights problem became ever
more widespread. For instance, there is someone on eBay who
advertises their services specifically for this problem and my
personal experience is that they definitely know what they are
doing.
3. If you do fancy giving it a go yourself, you can find various
repair guides for this problem on the internet, easily downloadable
and for free. Put "Xbox 360 3 red light repair guide reviews" into
the search engine of your choice and a number of sites will come up
– check these to find out which guide is considered the best, but be
careful, the sites are often not objective. Many of them are simply
advertising a particular guide sold via that site for the benefit of
the site owner. The guides usually come with a video, so you won’t
actually need to look at the guide itself at all.
4. The final possibility is to get a fan and put it right on the
unit itself. This will physically pull the hot air out of the unit,
rather than it having to cool just by letting the hot air rise
naturally out of the holes in the top of the box. An add-on fan will
set you back around $40 and reviews are mixed as to whether they
work or not. In the end, if the processors inside your unit have
been damaged by the excess heat, they will no longer work however
much you cool them now.
Any of these possibilities should get you back on track within a
reasonable amount of time. The wait isn’t fun, but machines are not
perfect. They do break down so just work out the best option for you
and apply it.
