"Overheating" XBox 360 — it was the beginning of the end.

Played Bad Company two for about four hours last night. Went to bed dreaming of exploding copters. Worked all day. Came home. Lovely wife goes to put my daughter down for bed — when I usually jump on for a quick hour of gaming. I turn on the XBox and something doesn't sound right. I don't remember the fan sounding THAT loud. Especially since I installed the game to the HD.

About a minute later the screen goes black and the two left quadrants of the ring are flashing red. Restart and there's a message saying it shut down due to overheating. What?

My XBox is in an open shelf with air hitting it on all sides. It's not hot here. And, upon restart, the fan just keeps getting louder and higher in pitch. Within 30 seconds, it's really going and the machine shuts down.

Thoughts? I haven't found anything on the internet that sounds right. It doesn't feel hot to the touch. I started it cold, after it sat all day long. Could this be a problem with the fan? Is a new XBox in my future?

Depends.

I've had this happen probably three times over the life of my Xbox. It happened twice in summer when it was hot (we don't have air conditioning here). It happened a third time during winter and was due to dust. I took the Xbox apart and cleaned it out.

You may want to try that. Youtube "how to take apart your xbox." It is actually pretty easy and just requires a few tools, a can of compressed air, and fifteen minutes. Of course it voids your warranty, so if you are still in warranty you'll want to think about if you'd rather make a warranty claim.

Of course it could be that a fan has failed or something is wrong with your heatsink, in which can you're in trouble if you're outside of warranty. You can potentially resolve the issue by taking the Xbox completely apart and replacing the fans. Not easy though.

Faceless Clock wrote:

Depends.

I've had this happen probably three times over the life of my Xbox. It happened twice in summer when it was hot (we don't have air conditioning here). It happened a third time during winter and was due to dust. I took the Xbox apart and cleaned it out.

You may want to try that. Youtube "how to take apart your xbox." It is actually pretty easy and just requires a few tools, a can of compressed air, and fifteen minutes. Of course it voids your warranty, so if you are still in warranty you'll want to think about if you'd rather make a warranty claim.

Of course it could be that a fan has failed or something is wrong with your heatsink, in which can you're in trouble if you're outside of warranty. You can potentially resolve the issue by taking the Xbox completely apart and replacing the fans. Not easy though.

I'm far out of warranty. I'm just wondering how it could actually be "overheating." I'll look into opening the machine up and removing dust.

Turned into a full-blown RROD today. It's out of warranty. I need to feed by BC2 addiction. $199 for a new Arcade... snap on the old drive... good to go.

Sorry to hear.

MannishBoy wrote:

Sorry to hear. :(

Well, I got three years of use out of the first one. If I get three years of use out of the next one, $199 is nothing.

See you in the battlefield tonight.

Be sure to register the console on xbox.com. It will clear up some license issues with DLC. You will probably be good to go as long as you do that and sign on to XBL. If the old one is dead, might as well go ahead and transfer you licenses to the new console while you are at it. That should clear up any DRM issues...in theory anyway.

My launch day unit red-ringed before they announced a warranty extension. Since I was out of warranty, I repaired it using the Llama kit and it worked great... until about a month ago. It's RROD again.

I'm debating whether or not to try to repair it again or just give up on this thing and let it go to the big console playground in the sky.

Microsoft will fix the console out of warranty if it is a RROD.

A couple of months ago my 360 did this, and I bought a new 360 before checking. They fixed it even though it's 2 years out of warranty. Now I have two 360s. (And in fact they didn't fix it, but just sent me a new one, but it is the older Zephyr type according to the voltage panel).

If anyone wants to buy it, I haven't got round to ebaying it yet.

lostlobster wrote:

I'm far out of warranty. I'm just wondering how it could actually be "overheating." I'll look into opening the machine up and removing dust.

I guess it depends on which fan's giving you the trouble. Just because the XBox isn't hot to the touch or blowing hot air out the back doesn't mean there isn't something deep inside there that isn't getting really hot, really quick, and not getting the cooling it needs. If you don't believe me, just try running a computer with no heat sink on the processor (DO NOT DO THIS).

DudleySmith wrote:

Microsoft will fix the console out of warranty if it is a RROD.

A couple of months ago my 360 did this, and I bought a new 360 before checking. They fixed it even though it's 2 years out of warranty. Now I have two 360s. (And in fact they didn't fix it, but just sent me a new one, but it is the older Zephyr type according to the voltage panel).

If anyone wants to buy it, I haven't got round to ebaying it yet.

Yeah, I'm going to give it a go and see if they'll fix it. If they do, then I'll probably give it to my neice and nephew.

Hell, I'm (almost) happy to spend $200 just for the quieter fan!

Did you already get/order one? Dell has the Arcade for $160.

I'm pretty sure he was in BC2 last night so I'm assuming yes.

He's right. I was the one bleeding out on the ground over and over and over again.