<rant>
Despite the fact that I have two Xbox 360s (one upstairs and one downstairs; I am not very good at sharing), last night I played Halo on my 180. Why you ask? Well let me tell you. First I am going to go take a dose of my blood pressure medicine and perhaps dig around for some Valium as well.
I have been busy working on my Guitar Hero goals (which currently include finishing my expert career and also five starring all the hard songs) and have been making some great progress lately. I recently got past Crazy on You on expert and have spent the last week working on Freya. So last night I pop in my GH2 disc and get ready to rock out. About half way through the first song, my 360 completely freezes. That hasn’t happened before so I turn off the console, wait a second, then boot it back up. I load up another song and I am happily jamming away when it freezes a second time. This time I say a potty word before rebooting.
I have had a few consoles red ring on me already. I am very familiar with the process leading up to the red ring. First you start freezing a lot, then you begin getting unreadable disc errors, and then the thing just completely craps out on you. Lovely, I know.
So after the second freeze, I think to myself, third time’s a charm, right? I decide to give Freya on expert another go. I have been working on this song for about a week and haven’t passed it yet on this difficulty. I’m rocking out and I get past all the hard solos. I skate through the end and I complete the song, in green bar none the less! I am seriously stoked. On to the next category of songs, or so I thought. My 360 freezes at the end of the song before it hits the newspaper screen so it didn’t save. DAMN IT. Now I’m mad.
I turn it off and hope to myself that the problem is the Guitar Hero disc. I have some friends on Halo so I decide to give that game a go. I sign in, go to my friends list screen, and guess what happens? I bet you have no idea. My 360 froze. For the fourth time in about 15 minutes. At this point the potty words are freely flowing and I know where this is going. The red ring is stalking me but having some fun toying with me first.
So I go upstairs to get my other 360, I switch the hard drives so I have all my data and I figure I am good to go. Right? Wrong. The upstairs 360 occasionally gets stubborn and won’t open her disc tray. There is no rhyme or reason to it. The majority of the time she works perfectly, other times she just won’t open regardless of what I do. So I take her downstairs, get her all set up, and guess what? Yup, she won’t open. I just sit there staring at her, wondering why the video game gods hate me all the sudden.
I try to open her for about 10 minutes to no avail. I finally decided to go upstairs and get myself a “beverage” to relax. After that I go back and try again and by some miracle she opens. Thank you video game gods. (I will take the sentence back here in two minutes.) I load up Halo and at this point, I really need to frag some people. I successfully log in, only to be welcomed by the corrupted download content error. What. The. Hell.
I go to a custom game to find out what maps are corrupted only to discover that all the new maps are gone except for Tombstone and Desolation. Where the other maps went I just have no idea. I take a deep breath and head to the download content area. I figure a quick redownload will solve the problem. I couldn’t remember if I redownloaded them after they were patched anyways on the upstairs box so I assumed that was the issue. After waiting a few minutes while they download, I am ready to log in again. And once again I am welcomed by the corrupted download content error. I download the maps two more times and each time they are corrupted. Freaking bullshit.
I turn 360 #2 off and load up my trusty 180. At this point I really just needed to play. Of course I didn’t have the new maps on the old console so I had to sit through the download again but it worked on the first try. Thank you sweet 180. I load up a custom game so I can figure out the old controls again, and then I am ready to play. I am angry and I am in the foulest mood ever, but my friends are kind enough to put up with me. I kept my mic muted the entire time, it just wasn’t a good idea for me to even open my mouth. I said a quick, “I am having 360 issues and don’t want to talk about it” and they were kind enough to leave me alone.
So that is where I am at. Unfortunately sleeping last night didn’t improve my mood any. I am still grumpy as all heck over this. I can’t send 360 #1 in until she red rings so I have to put up with the freezes and not being able to do anything on her until she completely craps out. I am going to spend the afternoon rehooking everything and seeing where we are at. Then I will have to dig around for warranties and receipts.
Damn it.
A word of advice : Avoid me at all costs for the next few days. I have nothing nice to say right now. I need a real life mute button. Freaking bullshit 360s.
</rant>
EDIT : She has officially red ringed. I have been troubleshooting this afternoon and she has given me the red ring 6 times. I have gotten her to boot up 3 times but she froze within 2 seconds each time, not even making it past the green initial screen. Welcome back red ring of death. It has been a while.
Do we need to send you one of your condolence cards?
Better now than in 37 days…
Looks like you are not the only person ranting. It must be that season. I understand how frustrating that is. I’m quite terrified of my 360 going boom boom one day myself. I just don’t understand why xbox360’s like to piss of the nice people. Let them go after the douche bags. I still have my xbox 180 hooked up to live as well, because its great for playing my old ddr ultramixes, and as well for halo 2. I honestly think some games are killing our 360’s. I hope there will be a good resolution from this: oh yeah, you get to go to pax<(*-*<) lucky! But honestly, you have been through enough 360’s already! Microsoft needs to fess up and tell that many 360’s they produced were defective and garbage, and not hide the statistics. If you do get red ringed, try the hot towel trick. You take off all accessories and the hard drive, wrap towels around your 360 and turn the power on for 15 minutes. This heat will “kill the virus” and your 360 just may work after this. I personally know a few people who have tried it and said it works, and also it was featured in OXM. Good luck with all your endeavors my friend : )
you’ve probably seen this from all the other gaming blogs out there but a song dedicated to you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wc9jmZ28D5c
ouch, that’s a bad one
I’ve been thinking about buying a 360, but I absolutely refuse to buy what I’ve dubbed the old RROD (red ring of death) model. Once the Elite and/or HDMI premium model is easily available in Australia, I’ll give it some more thought.
@ johpan
I actually hadn’t seen that video yet! LOL … That is pretty funny. *sings along doing a head bang
@ Spyder
You guys just got a price drop, didn’t you? Anyways, here’s a pretty cool article about how to tell if your 360 has the new heatsink in it or not.
http://benheck.com/08-02-2007/see-if-you-have-the-new-xbox-360-heatsink-without-voiding-the-precious-warranty
I really could be worse off. As long as my other console is ok, I shouldn’t be out of business. The disc tray won’t open a lot of the times but I can manually open it so it is just a hassle more than anything else. And I will always have my trusty ol’ 180 to fall back on so bare minimum I have my Halo. : )
That sucks.
Does Microsoft allow upgrades to an Elite if you pay for the difference? I heard on G4 that the Elite is way better in terms of reliability.
We will all see you on Halo then! Good way to put some time in on the old Xbox before it will become completely useless on Sept. 25th. (See, I guess you can look at it in a somewhat positive way I guess.)
My wife will have to give her trusty Xbox the “break-up” talk then too.
Aah! That youtube video is scary! Oh noes! Eeek!!
Sorry, I think I cursed you since I’ve been keeping tabs on your blog.
Well, my luck really is that bad, but seriously, you’ve gotta be kidding me. I got it on the 17th, then you get it 2 days later? And “welcome *back*?”
If and when the warranty runs out on my 360, I’m definitely ripping this sucker apart and putting it in a modded PC case with proper cooling. Seriously, could it have hurt Microsoft that bad to add 6 inches to the height of a vertical 360 so they didn’t have to cut the heat sink of the graphics LSI chipset in half? I digress…
Yes! I finally have someone to blame. It is officially brainwreckedtech’s fault!
It was “welcome back” because this is not my first experience with the red ring of death. Or my second. Or my third. Could be my fourth. Or perhaps my fifth. I lost count a while ago. Someone suggested I write an article detailing my various experiences with this phenomenon. I am afraid it would be too long for anybody to read the whole thing through.
Oh I’m so sorry BS… damn, you have the worst luck it seems.
My 360 occasionally refuses to open up as well… but as long as it only freezes once in a while, I am not going to complain. If my new elite does it as well… well, then, someone at Microsoft is going to DIE.
Not that I’m passionate about gaming, or anything.
*sniffle* She died so young!
My condolences. Moment of silence for another red ringed 360…
… I hope you get back up and running soon. September 25th is quickly approaching. I am half-way through on my pre-Halo 3 goals. How far are you?
I wonder if it is a coincidence that I got my red ring of death when I was trying to play Guitar Hero? hmmm… Conspiracy theorists run with that one and let me know what you come up with.
Uuummm, I have gotten sidetracked by Hexic 2 as far as my pre-Halo 3 goals go. If I add that to my list though, then I am rocking it out! LOL … I have made good progress on my Guitar Hero goals, and have spent some time on Condemned and Lost Planet.
As far as this episode of the red ring of death, it has hit me rather hard this time from a Microsoft consumer standpoint. I really feel like they just couldn’t care less about all these failures and issues we are seeing. I am upset right now, and I see them as only looking at the dollar signs instead of their consumer’s satisfaction with their product. I haven’t been this bitter before, and I’m not sure why it is cropping up right now, but I am one unhappy gamer.
wow, I’m sorry to hear about your 360’s. They are the best consoles out as far as games go (Bioshock is gunna be freakin AMAZING) but they lack quality. Damn Microsoft.
PC gaming FTW!
It’s cheaper, and easier to fix when things go wrong.
Wow. Utter BS bs.
Achievement Unlocked.
You just opened your 10th 360.
4-5 RROD’s? Wow, that’s the worst story I’ve heard yet, next to the tale of 11 RROD’s from 1up:
http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3160603
It’s really a pretty pathetic situation for Microsoft…
Yeah, Australia had a price drop (the core system is now the same price as a wii). Price doesn’t matter that much to me though, if I wanted a 360 that badly I would already have one
Yeah, I understand. All too well unfortunately.
: )
Awwwww! Nooooooo! Just when I am getting mine back! And I’m complaining because I have it dropped off at my house-and I am not here to get it-and have to wait until they can’t deliver it 3 times so I can go physically pick it up. Then I’ll be at PAX when that happens! I might have to make a trip down south just to pick it up.
I don’t think any words can bring any comfort at these moments.
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