Now that Microsoft has admitted that there is an issue
("Redmond: We have a Problem") with 360s by extending the warranty on units with this issue to a full 3 years (meaning every 360 ever made to this point) I'm just curious how many of you have seen this crop up on your machines? The fact that MS is taking an over One billion (like in "
Gigabucks!") hit on this means that it's a serious concern.
I actually had a 360 working flawlessly until about a month ago. It's a "Day One" model purchased the first day the 360 came out in November, 2005. I use it extensively (like an average of 3 hours a day, sometimes more) and have attached all the usual goodies to it (HD-DVD player, 120G HDD upgrade, etc.) It's in my equipment rack and the power brick is not buried under a lot of other equipment. In other words - it's not overheating.
Like I said, about a month ago my 360 began to freeze on certain games, then on a lot of different games (both disc based and XBox Arcade). Finally, one morning the dreaded three flashing red lights appeared for the first time and then went away upon re-booting. The second time it appeared (also at a cold start-up) I took out the manual and it informed me to contact Microsoft (I have the extended warranty) since three red lights indicates that something's wrong internally (in other words, not user repairable.) After talking to a tech person for about a half hour, he told me that since the 3 red lights weren't appearing "all the time" at this point that I should wait until it becomes a chronic problem before sending in the unit for repair/replacement (all at MS's cost under warranty).
I really should have been more insistent of resolving the matter immediately because I continued using my machine. Then something happened that really has me irritated (to use a family friendly word). I'm a major Bejeweled 2 Endless player. I was #20 globally (like in "world-wide") on the XBox Live Leaderboard with a score of over 90,000,000 which represents over 25 days - that's 24 hours a day cumulative!! - of time invested. (I told you my 360 got a lot of use
). Bejeweled 2 Endless is one of those non-pressurized (read: "Old Dude Friendly") situations that you can go back to time and time again to unwind. One evening all of a sudden my 360 froze and when I tried to sign on to Bejeweled 2 Endless my score had reset to 0! The leaderboard showed the 90 million + score but the file on my HDD had somehow become corrupted by the erratic 360. Since the XBox doesn't let you back up scores (at least not with Bejeweled 2) to any other device - including their own Memory Module (I own a 512Meg one) I was screwed. That's another issue that I have with MS and one that needs to be addressed in a separate thread which I will start. There are third party solutions out there (I've got an
Xport on order but that's something that's a bit late for me this time around.) And while my score still appears on the leaderboard the way it works is that you can only advance your score if your 360 resets when you have achieved a score higher than the currently posted score. That's another freakin' 500+ hours of play and not acceptable. I'm working on finding out if Xbox Live will implement downloadable leaderboard scores to the machine they came from in such an event. Another topic for another thread. A friend suggested that Bill Gates was at #19 on the Bejeweled 2 Endless Leaderboard and put the word out to stop HTRAF (my gamer tag).
For the purposes of this thread and its discussion, what have been your experiences with the 3 red circles error message? How many of you have experienced this? My unit finally bit the dust and MS sent an empty box for repair/replacement. The unit is on its way to MS (actually to Texas) and I hope to have it back within a couple of weeks.
What's your story?
Thanks.
) for this past Christmas (06). No issues at all so far, but it almost seems inevitable....?