Subscribe by EmailHOW TO: Fix The Xbox 360 red ring of death
August 13, 2007 by Kiltak |
Yes folks, it is possible to fix the Xbox 360 red ring of death using towels. I had two friends try this trick, and on both occasions, it made the red ring disappear. Unfortunately, this fix will only make your 360 usable for a few days and the red ring of death will eventually reappear. Please take note of the warning in the video and be sure to have a fire extinguisher handy when try this out.
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Has anyone here heard about other tricks that might fix the red ring problem temporarily or permanently?
Yeah; you send your console back to Microsoft… who then replace or repair it for free.
Of course, but what happens if your warranty is over?
I heard about some other people fixing their unit with a hair dryer..
Microsoft says that they have extended the warranty on all xbox 360 by 3 years for the red light problem. So if you have a xbox with this issue they will fix it for free but you have to call them at 1800-4myxbox
I’m in the process of doing this now.
Hope it helps
I have read about modders fixing the system themselves. It definitely voids the warranty, and there’s always a risk of permanently bricking your system. The theory I’ve read about describes the systems motherboard being improperly affixed to the chassis on the sides only. The motherboard becomes warped when the system overheats repeatedly. Not only does warpage occur, but the non-lead based solder used for attaching the central and graphics processing units (CPU, GPU) to the motherboard can melt at these temperatures. The combination of warpage and melted solder causes the processors nodes to detach from the motherboard. Modders have supposedly been able to re-solder the processors and affix the motherboard in more places. I’m not taking that risk though. I’m sending mine back.
That is the point of the “trick” here. You WANT to melt the solder. In an attempt to be “environmentally friendly and do so by an insanely set date for the EU and approaching ones worldwide, Microsoft has used lead free solder which behaves differently and is years behind its lead based counterparts in the electronics industry. The red ring of death is almost exclusively caused by problems related to using lead free solder. If Microsoft had been able to stick with lead solder, there would have been only a minute amount of returns for this general error. Surface mount technology is great and all but when you have poor solder connections to begin with, it is only a matter of time after heating and cooling down, even if you are using liquid cooling as I am, that the connections will deteriorate and become incapable of passing electric current and therefore data along the contacts between the motherboard and CPU or GPU. Tiny droplets are attached to the chips in an oven kept at 220 degrees Celcius and the chip is then placed onto the motherboard where the receiving socket is heated to 220 making the two bond together as it rapidly cools outside of the oven leaving the soldered connections intact. Motherboard warpage does not help but the X brackets are an obvious attempt to compensate for that warpage but can in no way compensate for the bad solder connections. If the ovens had been kept a little bit hotter (the chips and motherboard can handle 240 for up to 40 seconds and even higher for shorter durations), we would not have had these problems even with lead free solder. No doubt, the factories were trying to save money on their power bills by not having to keep the solder ovens as hot all day long. This was a very bad computational error and has cost Microsoft millions as well as individual gamers a ton of grief, money, and satisfied gaming time.
Lead free solder could have still been used if the cooling solutions had been a little better designed and the initial manufacturing with the wave guide soldering line ovens set at only about 4-5 degrees higher.
Even with using liquid cooling for the last 6 months and one of the best thermal conductive lacquers on the market, a dual fan cooling base and higher air flow exhaust fan, and even individual heat sinks added on the video memory on the top of the motherboard I still got the red ring of death.
I would have gone with a better cooling solution from the factory if I had been allowed to design it for Microsoft; like one using R-134a in the heat pipe instead of water under a slight vacuum in a weak attempt to use liquid and phase change cooling on an undersized heat sink with an underpowered exhaust fan pulling air across it.
Anyway, bad solder compounded by low temps caused bad solder connections which is why it has to be reflowed in order to make the connections good again. If you heat the chip and motherboard locally up to 225 for 10 seconds with a heat gun, you should be able to fix most ring of death problems which is what I will do. I am a trained electronics repair technician and have worked in this field for 17 years at the component level and have found half of the problems I encounter can be found by looking for damaged or cold soldered joints.
Y would u want to modify you xbox with a liquid cooling system. granted microsoft have tried to cut corners which has cost them millions and rightly so. however, like a high performance car they have spent millions of pounds dollars wot ever designing and creating the Xbox 360, if you spent £10k on a car would u mess with the engine?! NO you wouldnt its the same with the consoles. if it breaks send it back. and keep sending it back and everytime it has to go back u demand they give u a good will gesture! your still getting the rings of death mate cos u messed with the internal hardware! my question to all of you, if you have a problem take it to professionals, dont ask people who think they are pros just because they have nothing better to do than sit in front of a TV screen getting sqare eye!
thank you and goodnite!
um, dude the reason you dont mess with an ezpencive car engine is because it is made well in the first place…
Xbox360 is NOT made well. dont defend it, they have never done anything for you as a consumer other than make their product extreemly expencive and poorly made.
and who are you to judge peoples life choices? they post on this forum to help those who have spent a hell of alot of money, and to provide some sort of hope! as the old saying goes, if you do not have anything nice to say kindly shut your mouth!
I don’t know why they don’t show the new trick a lot but it only takes 5 seconds. When you have the ring of death turn off the xbox unhook the video cable leave the power cable in and turn on the xbox you will have 4 flashing lights instead of 3 but the 4 lights only last for 2 seconds, quickly plug in the video cable while the four lights are on and the xbox will come on.
you are a genious
Wat da hell does one red light mean in da corner
honestly does that work and also im geting the elite for shristmas but i realy dont want to get ring of death does buying those fans and keeping it well away from walls e.t.c work
+does the take out the video cabal method work permently or like the towel only for a few days
that wont work if you have a true ring of death, mine is 3 no matter what.
it wrked but how long will it wrk? good idea dude
Does that realli work?
http://editorials.teamxbox.com/xbox/1651/The-Red-Ring-of-Death/p1/
it tells you what each light means and how to fix it
try this…
1. if the red ring is showing turn off xbox
2. unplug xbox from the wall
3. remove hard drive from the xbox
4.double check all cords to make sure they are plugged in
5. plug xbox back into wall
6. turn it on…if its gone which usually it is then turn off the xbox unplug it and put the hard drive back in and plug it back in wall and you are good to go
if the red ring is still there than unplug it again put hard drive in and plug xbox in wall and turn it on
this has worked for me every time i have got the red ring of death
You can also try this.
Go outside naked on a rainy day, but only when there is partial sunshine and a rainbow in the sky. Now go streaking in the middle of a nearby road while yelling 3 times “I love Bill Gate”.
Now, get back inside, turn your xBox on, and Voilà.
Muhahaha
Just the fact that you told us to keep a fire extinguisher handy is enough to make me not want to try this at home.
Regarding the Xbox 360 warranty, Microsoft extended it to 3 years from date of purchase. However, the extended warranty is only for the red ring of death.
http://www.engadget.com/2007/07/05/xbox-360-warranty-extended-to-three-years/
http://www.xbox.com/en-US/support/systemuse/xbox360/resources/warrantyupdate.htm
Quote from xbox.com:
REDMOND, Wash. — July 5, 2007 —Microsoft Corp. today announced that it will expand its global Xbox 360™ warranty coverage. Any Xbox 360 customer who experiences a general hardware failure indicated by three flashing red lights will now be covered by a three year warranty from date of purchase. All other existing Xbox 360 warranty policies remain in place.
lol i found that video educationel and hillarious at the same time. Robo cop joke..you better thank god it didnt work otherwise the whole beginning would not have grabbed me. great video..i dont have the ring of death since i have boughten it which was in may about. I was wondering..you said something about smaller nano chips, that prevent the ring of death on NEW xbox360’s. What was that about?
The “smaller nano ships” is about MS shipping the x360elite machine (and probably the regular ones soon as well) with a smaller CPU produced with 65nm (nanometer) process, that makes the chip smaller, and it generates less heat at the same clock frequency. At least that is what people are hoping for.
The heat problem on older machines is going to get worse though, as dust starts to collect on the cooling fins, they are going to loose more of what little efficiency they had in the first place, and xbox’es are going to die in droves. The dust problem is only going to get worse over the years, especially after the three year warranty is over.
I can’t believe you paid $150 for a toy gun.
hahaha, one of the best unedited “make it yourself” vid’s out there i think, btw. that robocop gun looked like the only thing worthy of being extinguished :P. its great with those guides by amatures for amatures, it provides the necessary info to fix things in the most unusual of ways, i work in the computer repair industry so i’ve encountered a lot of strange problems, and solving them aswell as telling the stories about what was needed to do is all a great pleasure, i even get paid for it HA! microsoft shouldn’t even try to make consoles, let them make OS’s for all types of machines but NOT consoles, besides, the only reason im getting a 360 is to chip it to get past all the crap MS put into that pathetic little box of anti piracy. Well done, thanks for the vid
Nice Pink Towel
Neat trick
anthony pittarelli
This doesn’t work. Watch the red ring of death when he puts it into the towels then when he takes it out.
One XBox has 3 quarters lit up.. the one coming out has 2 quarters lit up. And he stops again before booting up for real.
When the xbox reaches the overheat point the indicator lights switch from 3 lit to 2 lit. If he had wrapped the xbox in such a way that you could see the lights while it was overheating he could have stopped as soon as it switched to 2 lights instead of waiting 25 minutes.
“Towels are the most useful thing it is possible to have handy in a crisis.” - The Hitchhiker’s Guide on Towels
Josh, that’s cuz the 3 quarters are the RROD (red ring of death), and the 2 quarters signify hot components which shuts it down automatically. that’s why he had to let it cool down for 10-15 minutes.
Actually this trick does work. I have done it before microsoft extended its warranty. Took the towels off and 360 worked fine. Problem was is that a week after I had done this trick Microsoft extended its warranty for the red ring of death and I now had a perfectly working console. I did everything trying to get the red ring to come back so I can send it in and nothing seemed to get the ring back. Finally after 3 weeks the red ring finally came back. I then sent it in and they sent me a new one 3 weeks later saying my old console could not be repaired and attached a 1 month xbox live card for my troubles.
its crazy that people figure this shit out!
I don’t even own an Xbox 360, but I still watched the whole thing cause it’s funny. Plus the guy is cute, if a bit goofy…I wanna rub his bald head
=)
I friend of mine bought the Elite 3 months ago, and just 2 month after, it showed up the RROD. Microsoft Repeird it, but this told me taht this newer version is as the same of the older ones, just with color.
We have to wait ot the 65n.
I just had my 360 do the Red ring of death, i did the trick and it now works great.thanks for the video.
The easiest thing is to get rid of the Xbox and buy a PS3
ROFL.
This absolutely DID work. Now I have to figure out what to do when it happens again, on the eve of Halo 3 release.
That’s the funniest stoner laugh I have ever heard when he couldn’t power up through the towels. I want some of what they get to smoke, all i get is mexican mummy wafers straight out of a ditch.
wow that work on my 360 thank you man
he has got two wiis in the backround a ps3 and a 360 thats what i call a gamer
I tried the trick and it just shut off after 10 min. what went wrong?
what you need to do is make it so your xbox doesn’t automatically turn off in your settings
How exactly is one to do that when the xbox is dead??
the av trick worked
I tried the towel trick and it worked for a little while but the red ring of death came back…Microsoft sucks and are charging like 140 bucks…Any new tricks would be sweat…
YESSSS i love this guy it worked perfectly for me
yeah dude you rock my xbox is working agin
[...] I found this video on geeksaresexy.net that basically shows you that by wrapping your XBox360 in towels, leaving it on for 20 minutes and [...]
ok, i have an idea for a cooling mod that should keep the red death at bay. (if you do it before the console dies) i wanted to replace the gpu heatsink with a standard cpu heatsink and have the dvd drive exteranl. i just need to know what the gpu socket size is. i can say for sure its not 775 i bought a socket 775 heatsink and it was too big. does anyone know the socket size?
………>_> why does he have 2 nintendo wiis
yea i noticed that too thats wierd.
I bought this for my son who is a straight A student and I felt he deserved it. Lot more money than I wanted to spend but what the hec. Had it for around 8 months and OH NO, dreaded rings of death. Sent it in, listened to my son complain for about a month and finally got it back right at a month later. Everything was going fine until…OH NO, dreaded rings of death again!!! Now to a 11 year old this is the end of the world, especially at Christmas when 90% of his Christmas list was XBOX games. Called up support and they are sending us a box AGAIN and this time I demanded to talk to someone so I could vent. Spoke to a Matt, id# 6708 who asked me a question right away…is your unit plugged into a surge protector? I immediatley said yes, because it is and he informed me that that is the problem. Well, needless to say I got a little upset because as usual, somebody is blaming someone else for their problem. I asked why hadn’t anyone told me this before and why isn’t that on any of the sites I have looked at for suggestions on what to do and he informed me that it is in the manual. I proceeded to tell him “you mean to tell me that all of these millions of blogs of people like me complaining about this piece of crap product have all caused it themselves by using a surge protector” and he said yes, that most of them probably were. Well, I owe it to the world to let them in on this secret- that it is your fault, you the consumer who spent your hard earned money, you who wasted hours talking to XBOX support and weren’t told this secret, you, you are the problem!!! When I get this next unit back I vow to not plug it into a surge protector, I vow to leave it in a well ventilated area and I vow to read the owners manual as I was so smartly reminded by the XBOX support man, Matt id# 6708. This isn’t XBOX’s fault, this isn’t an inferior product, this isn’t a huge waste of money since they don’t send you a new unit, they just “fix” the one you have…which by the way, breaks again 3 months later…This is my fault and I accept responsibility…now its your turn!
Sherry: You mean that The Xbox, a state of the art piece of electronic equipment, breaks because people plug it in a surge protector, something that everyone should do to protect expensive electronic devices from power surges? Even if it’s true, all of this is still Microsoft’s fault and is caused by bad engineering / electronic design.
ur son is spoiled
this will give you all info needed to explain why the 360s die.
https://www.manncorp.com/expert_04.6x_xbox_repair_station/Xbox%20360%20Repair_071207a.pdf
pdf needed
The towel trick can be risky and is only temporary goto here for help on fixing it http://xbox-360-3-red-lights-fix.blogspot.com/
so i have heard about the extende warrenty but before i heard about that i cracked my 360 open to look inside…then about a week after that they extended the warrenty will they fick it even if i opened it or will they say no
my xbox isn,t working when use this trick. i guess i,ll heat up more. I toll my stupid friend playstation is better.
zomg ok important to add to your STEP LIST.
I tried this first time for 15 minutes.
no go
I let it cool down completly for 20
I try again for 10 minutes with towels this time.
no go and I give up. for 2-3 hours before the tv makes me insanely bored.
Round 3 BABY !!!!
I use 4 towels this time and I left it on for 20 minutes.
It was really hot this time and I swear I heard something click?
I wait 30 minutes for it to cool off and this time BOOM ITS ON AND NO GRAPHIC GLITCHES FREEZES ETC.
I made sure to unplug it from the wall this time once it was time to cool it off also.
So if you fail at once or twice get nuts with it a bit add more towels and leave it longer.
I was sure mine wasn’t getting hot enough once I wanted to try that 3rd time cause even after round 3 I never got the reduction to 2 lights on rrod cause of an overheat but if 20 minutes was long enough without causing the overheat alarm then I’m happy cause I probley fixed it without other parts being at too much risk. And if anyone is wondering MS will still fix it if u use this trick, just obviously dont tell them u tried it lol. This is xbox #2 and the previous one I used trick and they still sent me another xbox so use it at caution only cause u might burn something else up but if u do it right its not risking anything hardware wise otherwise MS wouldve seen i tried on xbox 360 #1 and just sent it back to me.
Heres the run down.
————-
If it doesnt work at 15 minutes let it cool completly then try 5 more minutes with an extra towel.
If you get to the point were it is definetly overheating as per only 2 lights on console instead of 3 and it STILL isn’t working THEN you need to stop trying cause thats the limit u reach for damage.
But if u can fix it without getting to overheat status with 2 lights then your even BETTER off.
in my 2nd try i meant to say i tried with “3″ towels this time not just with towels lol.
And yes its working still WOOT
It really did work! Thanks so much for the video!
and just to elaberate on above comments, these quick fixes like put them in towels if u get the ring of death.. ok they might work for a short while but u still have the same problem as before the fault has not been fixed. the red lights are caused by many problems on of which is the mother board warping due to overheating.. wrapping the console with towels will fix it periodically but use common sense, wrapping it up restricts ventilation which in effect will cause these consoles to overheat more! think of it logically, wen your cold u put on more clothes and when your hot you take them off,, if u wrap ur console in towells wen it gets hot it cant remove them which will inevertably cause more damage taking longer for your console to be repaired cos microsoft repaire center will have to do more trouble shooting to find out the cause!!
before tryin these medicra techniques ask yourself.. how much do you love your console are u willing to risk it just because one person said it works..
people lie on here just to uspet ppl… think before u try anything people. i wouldnt do it. !
its a different xbox, when he intially leaves the first time to let it settle for the 25 mins you can clearly see different creases in the towels. but who knows maybe it does work.
hey guys….I got the ring of death and fixed mine by taking it about, all the way down to the main board and applying thermal paste to the cpu and gpu…. it fixed it for about a month or two! but today I just got the rind o death again!
i want to know how to make mi 360 get the ring of death
is it just me or is this guy really an asshole?
hey men ,u pulled off the trick.the video was really educating and quite funny with the robocop gun. how long do i keep doing dis to my xbox360?
thanks for the video on the towel trick.
u’re great! keep it up and keep us informed on ant new ways to get the problem solved cos we’ve spent alot acquiring these machines.
thanks