I've had enough. My 4th has died.

[gazebee_]

grow up....god

I think he made a point. After all, the topic starter was extremely frustrated, but he took the time to snap a photo, then upload it. I would've just stated my problem.

Back on topic; 4 times is alot. You should really consider something else. like a Wii

[Defiantly]

I don't know about the Wii. I sold my Wii to get the 360.

...but, the lesson here is get a coverage plan. In all honesty, other than the 2 week turn around, who cares how many systems we go through?

[Nashy]

Yes. Its a terrible console.... riiiight.

How many sold compared to how many broke. THIS SHOULD BE EXPECTED.

There would be PS3s in the same boat.

[r47xdy88]

Got mine back from repair a few days ago. Hope it's not a sign of things to come.

Must say the service from MS was pretty good. They got DHL to pick it up for free, and I had it back in 2 weeks.

Are you serious every time I had to drive it to the UPS depot and the all took ~ 28 days to get back. On top of that I live 30 mins from Microsoft.

I wish their customer service was like Nintendo's.

[ThisSiteHasLostItsCharm]

i've used mine about 1-2 times a week since i bought mine, no probmes atm, touch wood!

4 times man that blows.

[DELTETHISACCOUNT]

Launch console here (silver HDD). I play almost every day. No problems. Hopefully none in the future. :(

[WalMart_Worf]

When I'm done, i wanna shut the thing off and leave it. If you have to go through an entire shut-down procedure everytime ... What does that tell you about the quality?

it tells me that sometimes the retainer is put on loose. the high (non-microsoft) estimate is 3% of consoles will eventually encounter the rings.

its just a precaution & a helpful hint, its not like MS is going to read this thread and decide to totally revamp their production process. whats so hard about taking the disc out, hitting reset and then coming back to turn it off? its not like you have to sit in front of the console for 5 mins staring at it. at least I was being HELPFUL.

[Mistwaver]

I'm still on my original one bought January in 2006. :D

[Shadrack]

mines never died, bought it 6 months after it was launched.

heres a trick. when youre done w/ a game, take the disc out, reset it and leave it alone for 5 mins. then turn it off.

the ring of death is almost always because of chip creep. which happens when it cools too fast. because some of the retainers are loose. this is why the elites have the cpus epoxied in.

the noise is just the DVD drive, not fans. the earlier models had no noise dampening. the newer BenQ ones do and are nice & quiet.

Good tip, but you shouldn't have to do that.

4th XBox 360? Wow, you must beat the hell out of your 360 after getting your ass raped at GoW. J/k. Some people (read: idiots) still think the only way XBox 360's are dying is due to abuse by the user. On the contrary: MS has produced crappy piece of **** hardware that is prone to death.

[magik]

Man that sucks. My original launch console was still going strong when I sold it to buy the Xbox 360 Elite. Both have been fine so far. Three of my friends (RL) have 360s with no problems so far and I don't know anyone, personally, who has had a problem.

Although it is a great console overall because of the experience and games, it is worth it to backup your investment with some kind of warranty for sure. I have a 2-year warranty direct from Microsoft so I'm not worried. :)

[Andrew Lyle Global Moderator]

im on my second after a year and a half... and i abuse the CRAP out of this thing.. long hours on weekends.. weeks without turning it on, a baby brother.. constantly moving around and playing all sorts of games (local 4 player).. and it's never died

[Huleboeren]

It is obviously your own fault - look where put your X360! It's too confined! The air cannot get to it :o

:rofl:

I feel for you - I lost my X360 a few months ago due to a power surge :( it still hurts

Anyways, I like your setup - very simplistic :yes:

What keyboard is that?

[fascist]

My 360 died a week ago. I should be getting a box any day now... Today though my 360 started to turn itself on and once I turned it off a minute later it would come back on. Lets just sayI unpluged the possessed machine.

[neoadorable]

call the major's personal exorcist.

[WalMart_Worf]

Good tip, but you shouldn't have to do that.

4th XBox 360? Wow, you must beat the hell out of your 360 after getting your ass raped at GoW. J/k. Some people (read: idiots) still think the only way XBox 360's are dying is due to abuse by the user. On the contrary: MS has produced crappy piece of **** hardware that is prone to death.

no the 360 is a great console w/ great games, however whoever designed the retainer should be fired. 3% of conosoles failing isnt that bad. and if they will fail they will fail early (unless you play it like 10 mins a week). so you can get it replaced, only they replace it w/ other previously-failed consoles usually, which means the retainer could still be loose. but after that its probably closer to 1%. thats still quite a bit 100,000 out of 10 million. but if youre not dumb, there are easy fixes. like buy it from costco or sams club where there's a free or insanely cheap extended warranty where you can just bring it back and get a brand new in box console if it ever screws up.

if you dont like games, then dont get it. if you do, then get it and be smart about it. the world will never be designed to pamper you, its your obligation to look out for yourself. if theres something you want, but theres a risk, find a way around that risk. the end

[kylejn]

I'm on my third system. The first one was a Premium launch system that got killed when I tried adjusting the screen size in Castlevania. Three red lights of death. The second was an Elite that, when I put Crackdown in the drive, sounded like somebody stuck a metal rod in a wood chipper. Took that back, and now I'm on a second Elite, and it's working fine so far. I have the extended warranty, just in case, so if there are any more problems, I'm covered.

[cosine]

Mine's at the repair center for the third time now. Yawn. It's incredibly sad that this is what you're getting yourself into if you want to play current video games. I like the console, I like the games, but the build quality and reliability is abysmal. This is honestly the first time where I've owned a console and religiously saved every 5 minutes because I was worried about my console crashing. It was especially bad in Gears and Oblivion. When you actually have to worry about your console taking a gigantic thermonuclear dump in the middle of a game you know there's some problems.

I'm really starting to become disappointed, to be honest. The entire reason I got into console gaming was to get away with all the terrible baggage that comes along with PC gaming. Namely, cheating (it's a whole lot easier on a PC than a console, obviously) and the terrible attitude of PC developers (no need to test the game we can patch it later hurrrr). Most 360 games have had a patch to address bugs, some serious and some not. Some still aren't fixed (I haven't played Gears in a while but I assume the permanent roadie run bug is still unpatched). And now they're pushing this Live for Windows BS, which means we'll be stuck playing with PC gamers. That I don't mind in itself, but it's going to make cheating on Live rampant, guaranteed. PC people will find a way eventually, and since most games let you play online for free with Live Silver, they don't even have to worry about getting banned.

So, as I sit here console-less, still not able to play the Halo 3 beta, I'm thinking of my 360 as a $400 PC more and more. A poorly made one, at that.

[magik]

^ You can't play online with Live Silver.

Also, I don't think cheating online with Live for Windows will be a problem at all. If it's one thing Microsoft knows how to do, it's software, and I'm sure there will be extra measures taken to ensure that the multiplayer portion for both PC and Xbox 360 are as cheating-free as possible. Of course, there will always be ways around it, especially on the PC, but detection is something that is unavoidable and the ban-hammer will come out, you can be sure of that.

[cosine]

^ You can't play online with Live Silver.

On the PC, you can.

[magik]

On the PC, you can.

Only for PC-to-PC gaming. For PC-to-Xbox gaming, Live for Windows is not free.

[etempest]

It could be the xbox360 repairs or "reconditioned" replacements are not up to par.

Part of me thinks it could unclean power in our home.

This may sound odd, but if you pick up an UPS with line conditioning (UPS = Uninterrupted power supply) and run your next xbox360 (if there's a next), that may help, if it's issues of brownout or power spikes.

That being said.... the though of having to have a UPS on a game console sounds very bad. It would be the 1st that the console is that sensitive to it.

Brownouts could be spotted if you noticed lights "dim" on occasion, or when a large appliance is turned on. Brownout and Power spikes (over time) do damage electronics components... usually seen in computers.

And 1st to 3rd version hard ware designs can be bad

Early Playstation = Optical Lens over CPU Heatsink... heat failure issues

Early Playstation = Optical Lens moved... but two air vents removed... heat failure issues

Early Playstation 2 = Optical Drive lens going out of alignment

Early Xbox = Dvd Optical Drive scratching disks, optical drive failure, shoddy soldering at power supply joints and cord socket (with band aid cable fix approach, one model with blow dryer curcuit breaker cord fix).

Highly suspect early / recent Xbox360 = Overall running too hot, keeping air flow around *very important* for it to last. I think the Xbox360 elite does have some hardware revision changes to fix things they found after the fact.

Edited May 29, 2007 by jstillion

[Guest]

I'm on my second 360 now. My first (Bought Dec 2006) died over the weekend.

[mycoolkim]

haha for a second looking at the picture, i though your monitor died hahah XD

[DrCheese]

The console is just poorly designed internally.

The way the CPU/GPU heatsink is mounted is silly, with upward force holding it in on the center of the chip rather than downward over the whole chip, which really doesn't help when the board heats up/cools down, warping horribly until the GPU or GPU loses a connection or two on the edges, because of poor quality solder(so I read anyway) A little bit more thought/time during the design process would have helped and they would have still beat the PS3 to market by under a year.

Irrtating thing is tho, its just so damn good for games at the moment, so you kinda have to live with its problems if you want to play these games. I am surprised tho that no-ones class actioned MS or dev's smacked them around yet tho. What bugs me is that MS still haven't properly solved these issues.

And no, people who keep apologizing for MS need a slap. I am bored to hell of the "zomg you must treat your 360 like trash" "ZOMG you clearly didn't let it breathe" "Zomg only people with broken consoles complain".

[Berserk87]

quiet a few of you got your from best buy, maybe theres just retards, and are chucking em around in the backroom, and dropping them off trucks =\