HELP! Red Ring of Death!

[Mr Light]

For six months my 360 has sat there perfectly fine. I finally go to play one of the three brand new games I bought tonight... I dust it off, use the air can, set it up... three Red Rings of Death. It won't even open the tray.

What do I do???

This isn't a first generation 360 or anything. I bought it about 3 years ago to replace the first one that RROD'd.

This was going to be my entire holiday weekend man

 

[Turd Ferguson]

That sucks, dude. Unfortunately, I think the only options are to send the 360 to Microsoft to fix for $100 or buy a used one and just swap your hard drive (assuming you have one of the Elite models, and not one of the new slims)

It's weird but the one 360 I had Red Ring sat for a while too. Same with my two PS3s that yellow lighted. You'd think they'd only do that if you played the hell out of them

 

[Amaris]

If I had to guess, I'd say the lack of use lets everything settle, so that when it all warms up again, things don't "fit" in their sockets like they did before. It happens to computers after being inactive for so long.

 

[Dexter Remmick]

You could attempt to fix the console yourself. There are quite a few instructional vids online that walk you though the process. Though it may be impracticable if you do not have the necessary equipment on hand.

 

[SPCTRE]

No amount of trouble is worth the investment at this point, as your system is quite old.

Get a new one.

 

[Viper78]

No amount of trouble is worth the investment at this point, as your system is quite old.

Get a new one.

I would agree with SPCTRE on this. Unless it's a special edition xbox system that you really want to keep I would either buy a new 360 or buy a preowned system if your planning a next gen upgrade soon.

 

[Mr Light]

Yeah, I can buy a used 360 at Gamestop for $90 so I'll just do that. It just really sucks because these were the final three games I was ever gonna play for this system. There's no new games anymore. And my receipt for the games expired 1/24 naturally.

And it further sucks that I couldn't just buy an XBOX ONE since it's not reverse compatible.

Is it hard to swap hard drives? My RROD'd one is 120GB and full of my save games.

EDIT: Never mind, the top popped right off. I guess I have an Original version since it's a huge top section.
http://support.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-360/system/add-remove-hard-drive

So I should buy the cheapest 360 they have then with the lowest memory since I'm just sticking my 120GB drive into it, right?

 

[SPCTRE]

Go for the most barebone one available, yeah.

Cross-gen games are petering out now, true, but there are some new games coming out, that may or may not be of interest to you. Keep that in mind.

Also, take the plunge for current-gen as well, no matter which platform. They all have very good libraries by now.

 

[Mr Light]

I looked at the calendar for 2015 games. Nothing for 360 that I'm interested in. I only buy like four games a year.

 

[Mr Light]

HAPPY ENDING! I went to GameStop and bought a new console for $100. On a whim, I plugged the new power cord into the "broken" console. IT WORKED! So I returned the console and bought just the power cord for $25!!!

 

[Aldo]

HAPPY ENDING! I went to GameStop and bought a new console for $100. On a whim, I plugged the new power cord into the "broken" console. IT WORKED! So I returned the console and bought just the power cord for $25!!!

Nice! Yeah, people attribute the red rings of death mostly with circuit failure, but in this case it was just a simple hardware failure.

I'm really glad it worked out for you.

 

[Mr Light]

It's really bizarre. WTF would cause the power brick/cord to go bad after six months of just sitting there?

 

[Turd Ferguson]

It's really bizarre. WTF would cause the power brick/cord to go bad after six months of just sitting there?

Maybe a power surge? A bolt of lightning hit near my house one night and fried my 360 power brick (granted, I WAS playing it at the time, probably not the brightest idea). Do you have the system plugged into a surge protector? Was it plugged in for the six months?

 

[Mr Light]

It was unplugged all that time!

 

[SPCTRE]

The old power bricks had a lot of points of failure. They even required active ventilation, which should tell you they weren't a very sophisticated design

So yeah, a brick failing is nothing out of the ordinary.