tagged w/ RRoD
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"Just about everyone is doing their Thanksgiving list or post today, but I wanted to do something a little bit different. There are people and things that exist on this planet which I think I would be a lot more thankful if they all just disappeared. I'm not saying I wish all of these some violent death, though some I might. I'm just saying life would be a little better without this crap in it.""Just about everyone is doing their Thanksgiving list or post today, but I wanted... more
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Tim performs amateur surgery on his Xbox 360 to replace the broken DVD drive. He describes the problems he had matching drive model and firmware numbers.
http://gamesplusblog.com/?p=2880Tim performs amateur surgery on his Xbox 360 to replace the broken DVD drive. He... more
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For a few months now, Xbox 360 users have been quietly venting about a "new" hardware fault with the console, where instead of displaying three red rings, machines would show an "E74" error.
Just because it didn't flash the iconic red rings, though, doesn't mean it wasn't bad! If you got it, your console would display a system error warning (pictured above), and it meant your machine was fried. Which is probably why Microsoft have decided to issue an extended warranty for the fault, similar to the one offered to red ring sufferers.
"While the majority of Xbox 360 owners continue to have a great experience with their console, we are aware that a very small percentage of our customers have reported receiving an error that displays "E74" on their screen. After investigating the issue, we have determined that the E74 error message can indicate the general hardware failure that is associated with three flashing red lights error on the console. As a result, we have decided to cover repairs related to the E74 error message under our three-year warranty program for certain general hardware failures that was announced in July 2007."
That's the, uh, "good" news. The better news? If your machine suffered from an E74 previously, and you had to pay for repairs, Microsoft will refund you the amount some time over the next 4-12 weeks.
See also http://kotaku.com/5216447/microsoft-explains-the-e74-code-sortaFor a few months now, Xbox 360 users have been quietly venting about a "new"... more
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joystiq has been tracking the new starlet of xbox 360 failures: the e74 error. it appears as the lower right light on the console turning red and an on-screen message telling the user to contact support with the error e74. the number of reported e74 errors seems to have risen since august 2008 and people are wondering if the more recent increase in errors are related to the release of the new xbox experience (nxe) dashboard update. did microsoft reclass red ring of death (rrod) failures as e74 to avoid warranty replacements?
From day one, the xbox 360 has been plagued by hardware failures. so many failures that microsoft ended up pushing the 90 day warranty up to a full year. less than a year later they acknowledge the systemic rrod problem and extended replacement for affected consoles to three years. the rrod is named because of the three red lights displayed when the console failed. the culprit appears to be poor cooling of the console’s components. components like the gpu would overheat causing solder joints to fail. people were able to repair their own consoles by reflowing with a heatgun. microsoft has never officially disclosed why these systems fail. our console purchased on launch day rrod’d, but [bunnie]’s solder joint inspection of it proved inconclusive. every xbox owner on joystiq’s staff has had an rrod.
the e74 error is apparently not new. while microsoft officially calls it a “general hardware failure“, users have been calling it a general video error since launch. it can occur when you have a bad video cable attached to the console. users are blaming the hana video scaler chip for the latest issues. there have been five different motherboard versions of the xbox 360 so far. each version upgraded the cooling and/or the size of the gpu and cpu. the hana chip was introduced when the consoles started supporting hdmi. the original ana video scaler on the xenon board was a quad-in-line style smd package with pins around the perimeter. the hana chip on newer board designs is a ball grid array (bga) package, which means it can fail the same way the gpu does for an rrod.
did microsoft change the error reporting on the xbox 360 so they’d replace fewer consoles? no, we don’t think so. is this a similar hardware failure? most certainly. unfortunately, e74 errors are only covered under a one year warranty instead of the rrod’s three year despite it being the same failure mode. why are so many e74s happening now? there aren’t any hard numbers on how many failures there have been or how it compares to the rrod. we think that it’s just a result of more people having xbox 360s with hdmi support now. a large portion of the xenon 360s have been replaced with more reliable hdmi consoles, but that just means a larger install base of e74 prone consoles. more consoles means more possible failures.joystiq has been tracking the new starlet of xbox 360 failures: the e74 error. it... more
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