Posts Tagged ‘RRoD’

If You’re Gonna Buy an Xbox, Buy an Xbox

By Chief Oddball on March 22nd, 2010 at 5:57 pm

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So after my 2006-era Xbox 360 suffered terminal RRoD on Friday night — you may have read about it — I decided to pool together my remaining Gamestop store credit and some cash from a recent side job in order to replace it. In my blog post on the subject, I went into the usual insane amounts of detail (at four in the morning, no less) about the various Xbox packages that were available and debated with myself over which one to get. Eventually, I decided that the $299 Elite was the sweet spot.

On Saturday, however, I decided that the $399 Final Fantasy XIII Special Edition Elite was the sweeter spot. This was mostly decided for me by a quick call to the local Gamestop, when I learned that they not only had just one FFXIII console left, but also the limited edition faceplate to go with it. The faceplate, which was originally intended to be for preorder customers only and is not for resale, essentially solved my biggest gripe with the special edition unit: that it didn’t look special.

Naturally, then, I went down to the store and got it. As a bonus, the store’s best employee was working the register that day. Not only is he not a douchebag and knows exactly what he’s talking about, but he doesn’t try to screw you out of promotions or take forever to ring up a trade-in, as some of the store’s other workers have done. I hadn’t seen him for a while so I wasn’t sure he was still working there. Normally I don’t bother with those Gamestop surveys they always give you on your receipt, but I filled this one out as soon as I got home, because that guy rocks.

Anyway, I unpacked the Xbox and laid it all out, making sure all of the components were in order. The Special Edition bundle came with two wireless controllers, plus a new headset (in black, like the Elite…which was interesting because everything else was white). This made it easy for me to simply retire all of my old equipment — console, power supply, and both controllers — by packing them up in the box my new stuff came in, then tucking it into the closet. I’m pretty absurdly detail-oriented with this kind of crap, so don’t act surprised.

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Three Rings to Screw Them All: Another Xbox Dies

By Chief Oddball on March 20th, 2010 at 4:24 am

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Crap. My 360 died. Part Deux.

A long time ago in a not-so faraway land, my launch day Xbox 360 console bit the dust, killed by GPU failure. Tonight, the refurbished console that Microsoft sent me as a warranty replacement for that original unit also bit the dust, also killed by GPU failure. It was a new design, sporting a new chipset, a quieter DVD drive and, most importantly, an enormous heatsink inside. And it failed anyway.

Ironically, I turned on my Xbox tonight because my friend Forster suggested some online gaming. He was undoubtedly in the gaming mood, having just received his warranty replacement Xbox from Microsoft this week after his original console suffered the exact same problem as mine. So we decided to try some co-op in Borderlands, a pretty cool hybrid shooter/RPG that I just got my hands on last weekend.

On our first game, we got about three minutes in before my Xbox locked up hard. Forster was in the midst of telling me something over the chat headset when both he and the game sounds completely cut out. Most unnervingly, I could immediately hear my console’s cooling fans spin down, as if the system had been returned to the dashboard, but it was completely unresponsive and required that I press the power button on the console faceplate to turn it off.

Upon booting it back up, I once again fired up Borderlands and was about to start the game when it abruptly crashed again, this time displaying a solid screen of black and white vertical pinstripes. First tangible sign of GPU failure, CHECK!

Forster and I tried three more times to start a co-op game, and each time I encountered a hard lock a couple minutes in. I was starting to get a little pissed off, so I suggested we try another game — Forza Motorsport 3 — to see if the problem would manifest there, or if it was just something goofy with Borderlands.

So we started up Forza, got into a 5-lap competitive race, and proceeded to finish without any hiccups whatsoever. Hmm.

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Success?

By Pooch on March 27th, 2008 at 1:43 pm

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In a startling display of quickness, apparently my Xbox 360 has been repaired. I missed the first attempted delivery by UPS earlier, but will be on the lookout for it tomorrow. Of course, had Microsoft actually e-mailed me that my repairs were complete (like they said they would), I would have known to be on the lookout today. Unfortunately, they only sent me an e-mail when my unit finally made it to the repair center. But when I checked my system’s status on the Xbox home page today, it reported that my machine is under its new limited warranty and is no longer under repair.

Speaking of shipping — I dropped my Xbox off at the UPS store on March 14th, and it took an entire week to get to the Xbox repair center (heck, it took three days until it left Illinois). However, upon checking the tracking number of my new shipment, it seems my repaired unit took only two days to ship from Texas to here. What goes?

Anyhow, hopefully by this time tomorrow I’ll have a working Xbox 360 again, and finally be able to find a use for the awesome birthday presents Chief Oddball and Reaper got for me.

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Sayonara, Xbox 360

By Pooch on March 14th, 2008 at 11:49 am

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Well, the packing box for my Xbox 360 was delivered yesterday (which I discovered merely by chance, as the UPS driver didn’t so much as knock at my door), and I dropped it off at the nearest UPS Store this morning. Let’s hope it gets repaired in a somewhat timely fashion.

There was a slightly amusing moment at the UPS Store this morning, which really illustrates how many problems Microsoft has had with the 360: the woman knew I was shipping an Xbox as soon as I walked in the door. After exchanging pleasantries, she said “An Xbox?” before I could say anything else — apparently the generic white box Microsoft sends out is a dead giveaway. According to her, she’s had to deal with this many times.

Somehow, I’m not surprised.

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Red Rings of Death GET!

By Pooch on March 11th, 2008 at 1:03 pm

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Well, it finally happened.

Knowing that my Xbox 360 was purchased about five or six months after Chief Oddball’s, I’ve been counting the days since his 360 died last year, awaiting my own console’s failure. It took slightly longer than I anticipated, but this morning while playing my rented copy of Lost Odyssey my console locked up, the screen displaying red criss-crossing lines. I tried booting the game up a few times after that (always with the same result) before getting the dreaded flashing red lights.

Of course, it only happened that one time. I can still power the thing up, but every game will inevitably lock up with the screen displaying a red checkerboard pattern, not unlike what Chief Oddball himself experienced. Resigning myself to fate, I called Xbox support. After verifying that neither the power supply nor hard drive were the problems (and registering my console, since I’d never bothered), the gentleman on the other line set me up for a free repair job (saying they’d call me if the problem was something than overheating hardware, which is very unlikely). So I’ll be getting my UPS box in 3-5 days, and then I probably won’t see my 360 again for months.

Good thing there aren’t too many 360 games out there right now that I’ve “gotta have.” Also, good thing I have three other gaming consoles to keep me busy if I need a gaming fix.

Still, it would have been nice if my well-ventilated 360 didn’t take a crap on itself. Oh well.

(Maybe this is someone’s poor idea of an early birthday present.)

Edit, 9:30PM: Okay, it’s completely dead now. Red ring all the way, baby.

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The Xbox Returneth

By Chief Oddball on September 11th, 2007 at 4:21 pm

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I received my refurbished Xbox 360 back from Microsoft today, right on schedule. It was manufactured in early September, 2006 (so much for August…I guess I can’t count) and includes all three of the improvements one can reasonably expect from a 360 replacement these days:

  • It has the new GPU heatsink, which will hopefully prevent future failures.
  • It has the BENQ VAD6038 DVD drive, the newest and quietest of the lot.
  • It has the new fans that run much quieter.

It also, to my satisfaction, didn’t look beat to hell, as some people’s replacement consoles do when they arrive. (One guy reported that his refurb was covered with sticky residue left over from the ridiculous amount of stickers the former owner had tacked onto it.) Microsoft also included a 1-month Xbox Live Gift Card to make up for the downtime. Not bad!

I’ve got my hard drive reattached, network and media connection reconfigured, and the new MAC address entered in the router’s MAC filter. All appears to be well — and so, this evening, it’ll be game time!

Incidentally, today delivered a double dose of excitement: We also recieved the Garmin nüvi 350 GPS that we ordered. We’ve only played with it a little bit while standing in the driveway, but so far it looks easy and fun to use. I wonder if I can resist sticking it to the windshield and going somewhere for no reason later tonight? Hmm, I know…I could go down to Gamestop and put some more money down on Halo 3 for the Xbox. How apropos!

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Xbox 360: Signs of Life

By Chief Oddball on September 5th, 2007 at 10:12 pm

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My wait for a replacement Xbox 360 may be coming to an end. Today my serial number was updated at the service tracking site, and it’s a real Xbox 360 serial number. I’ll apparently be getting a refurbished console whose original date of manufacture was between August 13th and August 19th, 2006. Like all other refurbs, it should have the new GPU heatsink (the crucial component in preventing repeated failures, in my estimation) and perhaps even one of the newer DVD drives.

I hear that the refurbs usually ship via UPS 3-Day Select within a couple days of the serial number change, so if I’m lucky, I’ll have a 360 back in my hands sometime next week.

And then, I’ll be headed to Rapture.

Edit 9/6/07 @ 10:28 am: It looks like my Xbox will be shipping soon; UPS has a tracking number in play but it hasn’t gone anywhere yet. I’ll probably receive the console on Monday or Tuesday, at this rate.

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Electric Biscuits

By Chief Oddball on August 31st, 2007 at 6:24 pm

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No, the title of the post signifies absolutely nothing, except the fact that I feel capricious. (Of course, it also seriously reduces the quality of the archive search feature going forward, but who gives a turkey.) I’ve got about half an hour before a couple of friends get here (bearing an Xbox 360 — finally I get to play BioShock!), so I thought I’d kill a little time.

This month has been quite busy for me, and September is shaping up to be one of my busiest months ever. For the last week I’ve had three major projects overlapping at once, and that doesn’t even include my day job. Last night I wrapped up one of those projects, at least until I get a request to change anything about the work I’ve already done. A rather large project for my previous employer kicked off on Thursday, and will be ramping up towards the middle of next week — as soon as I use Labor Day Monday to make some serious headway on another one of my outstanding jobs. Yay, fun.

I’m trying to cram all of this into the last month I’ll have here before Apple and I journey to Michigan for Reaper’s wedding, as well as some good old fashioned clowning around in the Motor City. Beforehand, we’ll be picking up a portable GPS — probably a Garmin nüvi 350 — to liven up the road trip, and help us find our way around some new areas. I’ll also have to make time to wash and wax the GTO, change the oil, check the other fluids and the tire pressures, and cover the front end with racer’s tape. No, they do not make a car bra that fits SAP-equipped GTOs, so I’m taping the car up. Excessive? It costs about $20 for two rolls of tape, and hundreds more than that for a proper new paint job. You be the judge.

The saga of my Xbox 360 continues. As you may know, it died, and I sent it to Microsoft for repair. They received it last Thursday, and early this week, my online repair status page was updated to show a different serial number. The new number ends in “9999,” which is impossible, because the last four digits of a proper 360 serial indicate the build week and place of manufacture. After some research, I discovered that “9999″ means that your console was deemed irreparable and sent to Microsoft’s plant in Mexico, where they gut it and refurbish it for another unsuspecting customer down the road. In all likelihood, that serial number in my account will change again, this time to a proper number, when Microsoft ships me another previously-refurbished Xbox 360.

That hasn’t occurred yet, unfortunately, so I’m stuck waiting for something to happen. In the meantime, my boss got back from China and bought an Xbox 360 Elite, and this evening he’s bringing it over so we can play some BioShock. So that’ll be fun. It’ll also, probably, be rather jealousy-inducing. As it happens, all of this side work I’m currently engaged in will be paying a pretty penny, so I guess if I want to upgrade, I can. But first, I’m definitely waiting for my “repair unit” to come back. I have a feeling that my “upgrade temptations” will go away as soon as I have a functioning console again!

Apple and I played a game of Monopoly last night. Yeah, the real, honest-to-God cardboard version. It was mad fun. I admit it, I’m not too big of a coward to admit I like board games. We had a howl of a good time last night, in part because I just kept landing on the damn “Pay Income Tax” space. Every bloody time I passed Go, I’d hit that space and would have to count up all my money so I could pay 10% to the bank. By the third time in a row, we were on the floor howling. Easily amused? Nah, we just know how not to take ourselves too seriously!

Anyway, that’s gonna be about it for me right now. Our guests should be here shortly. Hopefully, I won’t suffer massive burnout over the course of the next month, but one way or another, I’ve told all of my clients that I want everything wrapped up by October. I’m not going to suffer while we’re up north, and that’s final. In the meantime, though, I keep having a good laugh at the timing — every blessed person I’ve ever done work for is coming out of the woodwork this week, including Unclean Waterfowl (who I hadn’t even talked to in a year), all needing something. It never rains but it pours!

Catchya on the rebound, clowns.

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Xbox 360 = Teh Dead.

By Chief Oddball on August 13th, 2007 at 11:46 pm

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Crap. My 360 died.

As I posted not long ago, a playable demo for BioShock was released just yesterday, but was downloading with maddening slowness. I left the console on all night in “low power” mode, where essentially all it does is maintain background downloads. Unfortunately, when I got up in the morning and went to power it on, it wouldn’t boot. Just…dead. Except for the green power LED in the center of the otherwise-dark Ring of Light.

So I powered it completely off, waited a minute, then back on again. This time it booted, and all seemed well. I checked my download status and saw it had only managed to accumulate 33% of the game. So, naturally, I started downloading again (it picked up where it left off) and left it on all day while I worked, since by this time I no longer trusted the low-power mode to see it through. I also plugged in my controller to charge up in anticipation of gaming night.

The demo finally finished downloading around 6:00 in the evening, so I powered the console down and had dinner with Apple. I went for a bike ride (daily cardio!), talked to my grandmother on the phone, did some other stuff and got everything ready for Game Time. At 9:00, I went back to the Xbox to check out BioShock. Just as the title of the game came up on my screen, the console froze up, displaying nothing but a fuzzy checkerboard pattern of glitched graphics. WTF?

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