Another One Bites the Dust

But in a whole new way! I've been gaming on an Xbox 360 Pro console since December 2006, and just after noon today I received my very first three flashing red lights.

I was playing BioShock 2 and had just finished protecting a Little Sister as she gathered some Adam, and when I pressed "X" to pick her up, my console froze on me. A reboot brought about the three flashing red lights.

I then went online and used the trouble shooting tool here, and reconnecting the power supply resolved the three flashing red lights however about every 10 minutes or so my console would freeze, be it in BioShock 2 or simply at the Xbox 360 Dashboard itself. I then used the screen freezing trouble shooting tool here and cleared my System Cache and removed my HDD, but still no luck.

Now, my three year general hardware failure warranty is over, so that means I need to pay for a repair or buy a new console, so before making that decision I wanted to confirm the repair cost and contacted Xbox Support.

The rep was from the US, and he was very polite and courteous. I told him the issues I was having and the steps I already attempted, and aside from being impressed with how thorough I'd already been, he asked me to try a different game to see if that would freeze as well. So I popped in Halo 3: ODST and went to load up a game of Firefight and right as the match started and I left that first door, bam, she froze on me again. He asked me to reboot the console and once again, three flashing red lights.

Now the interesting thing is his records show that my console's three year general hardware failure warranty expires on June 1st, just over a day from now, so I lucked out big time and I'm still covered under warranty. I'm now waiting for my return label to be emailed to me, and I need to snag a box to ship the console out in.

So, I'll be Xbox 360-less for about two to three weeks, but thus far this repair process has gone great. I am toying with the idea of buying a new Xbox 360 Arcade console, as that way I'll have a full warranty, newer hardware, and an HDMI port, and I can also sell some peripherals to recoup a little cost.

This has been my first service order process in about two years, so I'll keep you all up-to-date on how things are going.

Update: Received my email with the label a few hours ago, so I need to print that off but I won't have time to hit a UPS Store until Saturday, so I've got a week.

I did decide to purchase a new Xbox 360 Arcade console, however, and I'll be setting that up shortly. Odds are good the replacement console Xbox Support sends me will be similar to mine, manufactured around May 2006, and I figure I'll be better off with new hardware. I'll likely set up the replacement console at my folks' place when it arrives.