My 360 Is Back!

You read that right.  My Xbox 360 Elite is back and better than ever.  I expected a much longer wait.

I decided to send my 360 to Microsoft to get fixed.  I followed the progress on the Xbox website.  Here is a timeline of what happened:

Friday, October 24, 2008- Red Ring of Death is discovered.

Sunday, October 26- I arrange a repair.  The shipping box is sent.

Thursday, October 30- The box comes, I pack my 360, ship the box with my 360 in it the next day.

Friday, November 7- Microsoft receives my console.

Saturday, November 8- My 360 is fixed!  Shipped back to me a few days later.

Friday, November 14- This is the day that I originally would have received my Xbox, but no one was home to sign the UPS guy's paper...

Monday, November 17- The UPS guy tries again.  Success!

Microsoft sent a letter of apology (of course, my name has to be 'Xbox Enthusiast) and a card for a free month of Xbox Live.  That was very generous of them, considering the entire process didn't cost me a dime- the repair and shipping were both free.  They even renewed my regular warranty!

As for how my 360 is performing, the few things that were changed were the most noticeable, in a good way.  Signing into Xbox Live is a lot quicker, and testing the connection doesn't take as long.

But the biggest difference is that the 360 is a lot quieter.  When it starts up, it doesn't sound like a leafblower.  Instead, there's this really quiet, soft noise that sounds like a Gonk droid.  It only does the Gonk noise twice, then if I want to hear it again, I need to restart the console.

The sound of the console is also a bit more pleasant.  It doesn't make that motorcycle... er, racket after 20 minutes.  Even though the fan is the loudest part of the console, the 360's noises aren't nearly as obnoxious and distracting anymore.

All of that said, I recommend sending RRoD-afflicted consoles to Microsoft for repair.  It's worth the wait.

The Red Ring of Death: A Pain in the Ass

The image you see above is my Xbox 360 Elite, plagued by the Red Ring of Death after a little over one year of use.

See, I'm pissed right now.  No hardware today should break after one year.  Hell, even Super Nintendos still work.  I know two people with working SNESs.  They're fucking ancient and still work.

It all happened like this:

Friday afternoon.  The end of a bad week in school.  I just wanted to relax.  After watching Law & Order for an hour, I decided to play on Xbox Live.

I turned on my 360 and tried playing the Mercenaries 2 demo.  The console did a weird freeze up while loading the game map.  There was some distortion in the picture.

I restarted my console and tried the demo again.  I got a little further this time: I got in the truck and after a few seconds of driving, the console did another weird freeze up.  Again, some picture distortion.

I restarted again, and this time tried the Need for Speed: Most Wanted demo.  It froze up before the main menu could fill up the screen.

I decided to restart again.  This time I tried playing Naruto: Rise of a Ninja.  As soon as the game map finished loading, the console froze up again.

So I decided to restart again.  I got the Red Ring of Death.

I tried one last time.  When I put the 360 on its side, I got a weird green screen.  I gave up after that.

So now I'm in the process of finding an easy solution.  I am trying to avoid sending my console to Microsoft, because I've heard that it takes weeks and that you might not get your hard drive back.  I don't even know if I'll get a 360 Elite back.

The warranty expired on June 14.  Fucking warranty runs out before I get the RRoD.  I sort of expected that to happen.

Any tricks that might help fix the problem are welcome.  "Get a PlayStation 3" is a legitimate answer.

EDIT: I decided to send my 360 to Microsoft for now.  I arranged a repair on Sunday, and got the shipping box on... Thursday or Friday.  I'll need to check.

EDIT 11/7/08: Microsoft has recieved my 360 and are fixing it.

EDIT 11/8/08: 360 is fixed!  Expect a post when I get it back.