Anyone Experience this? (Faulty 360)

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pkScary

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 11, 2004
Messages
286
My friend's 360 keeps freezing after 5-10 minutes of play. My diagnosis, after trying numerous games off the HD and DVD drive, is at least one of the fans is broken, and the 360 is shutting down to prevent hardware damage via heat. One of the things that supports this is if we restart immediately after freezing, the 360 will instantly freeze on the startup screen again, but if we wait a little to restart again it will take 5-10 minutes again (time for it to cool).

Anyway, it's out of warranty and he didn't purchase an extended warranty (I know about the extended warranty), and he doesn't want to pay to have MS fix it and wait a long time to get it back in the mail. We'd like to fix it ourselves. Any ideas as to what might be wrong?
 
Unless your friend got it for Christmas last year or earlier it is still under warranty. The warranty was extended to one year instead of the paltry 90 days.

If you think one of the fans is dying, and it really is out of warranty I would do two things. First. open up the console and replace the fans. Lots of modding sites sell replacement fans, you can even get cool guy LED fans. The second thing I would do is take off the heatsinks on the CPU and the GPU and replace the thermal compound with something better like AS5 or Ceramique.
 
Yeah, he got it for Christmas last year, it's out of warranty. I've never opened a 360 before, so I guess I'll be checking out some modding site tutorials in the next few days.
 
I would point a big external fan towards the system before bothering to open it up and replace the fans. If overheating really is a problem, that will fix it and then you can always replace the fans.
 
Have you tried calling MS? My friend had an xbox that was manufactured 10-15-05 and MS did a warranty repair and even gave him a november 06, brand spanking new box in return.

I've had my 360 since Feb and it recently started freezing up on me.. I just uses my Bestbuy warranty and got it switched for a new one. While the new one is a bit louder when idle, it hardly gets hot like my old one and the blades and guide blade are much more responsive.
 
I would call and at least try. Who knows, maybe it'll work, and you have nothing to lose by trying except for maybe a half-hour of time.
 
Thanks guys. He ended up going to Costco, buying a premium (he had a core), putting the broken 360 in the premium box, and he took the broken core back. Very questionable, but it ended up working out for him. He didn't even buy the original from Costco...he got it from EB.
 
Questionable? That's stealing $100... Questionable would have been buying another core and switching that way, but switching it with a premium is straight up stealing. Hope he gets caught.
 
pkScary said:
Thanks guys. He ended up going to Costco, buying a premium (he had a core), putting the broken 360 in the premium box, and he took the broken core back. Very questionable, but it ended up working out for him. He didn't even buy the original from Costco...he got it from EB.
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um, wow.
 
What the hell... yeah, questionable is an understatement. Your friend is a criminal.
 
Yeah your friend shouldn't have done that. Anyways Microsoft is servicing pretty much any X360 right now. I just sent my out of warranty X360 to them. They said that they where servicing them all for free right now. Which makes sense because they just extended the warranty to 1 year so the only ones out of warranty are pretty much the launch consoles which are known to have lots of issues.
 
Yeah, it's not something I would've done, but I'm not going to potentially ruin a friendship over it. My main concern is that Costco keeps their generous return policy for people that really get screwed.
 
pkScary said:
Yeah, it's not something I would've done, but I'm not going to potentially ruin a friendship over it. My main concern is that Costco keeps their generous return policy for people that really get screwed.
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Thats not a friend worth keeping........
 
I thought about doing this once, but realized I'm above that shit. It's not really stealing $100, it's stealing $400.

And doesn't costco make you sign some paperwork when you return an item, I know wal*mart does, even if it's a bottle of shampoo. They do this I assume so if somebody returns a different item they can go after them.
 
Just don't send in a 360 now.. MS is saying they have a backlog and that I will see the Xbox 360 I sent in December in... February.
 
I sent my 360 back on december 23rd for warranty repair and received my new one on jan 5th. I wouldn't say there is a backlog.
 
costco and sam's and walmart do in fact flag returns. If you do this once, I wouldn't expect to do it again. Remember, they have a history to go back and look at, and in most states, that's a felony theft by deception if they use the full price of a premium 360.
 
That's what they say each and everytime to me. Gears of War is on my desk and I haven't been able to play it yet.
 
Unless your friend voided the warranty, he could have gotten a new one. Microsoft started repairing older models manufactured in 2005 for free, and lengthened the warranty to one year for every system.

Questionable my ass. I hope he gets what he deserves.
 
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