xbox 360 red lights flashing- Does This sound familiar

Xbox 360 red lights flashing is likely to mean one thing! You've become yet another victim of the dreaded "Ring of Death". I know it sounds a little like something out of the middle ages and the plague, but to any self respecting Xbox 360 enthusiast this
is one major problem.

This now infamous problem generally indicates one of two things, an hardware problem or power supply issues, you often have warnings before a system failure and these include freeze ups, where you have a graphical display that often is seen as a
checkerboard or pinstripe effect.

You may also notice that the sound freezes, it is possible that these symptons may occur over a sustained period before completely losing the function of the Xbox 360 system.

The red ring of death is normally associated with 3 red lights flashing, but there are also faults associated with 1, 2 and even 4 red lights. Both 1 and 2, not unlike 3 both suggest some form of hardware problem that is brought about by the overheating of the unit.The red lights can be accompanied by a number of e errors, such as E66, E67 and E68.

With regards to having 4 red lights flashing, don't mistake this for the "Red Ring Of Death" this would indicate that the AV cable is unplugged, or on some occasions during Xbox 360 play the 4 red lights may be seen. This is due to sudden power surges and can be easily reset by the system been unplugged and then plugged back in.

If you are wondering what creates all the problems associated with the Xbox 360 its quite simple really, it all comes down to some design issues. The slim design together with powerful components that are predisposed to getting hot, coupled with insufficient ventilation vents and fans are a recipe for the over heating issues faced by Xbox 360 users.

There are other issues like the solder used and the heat sink system applied but needless to say without going into mass technical data, the Xbox 360 getting way too hot is the key to a large number of overheating problems, for which the 3 red lights flashing is just one.

On the positive side the Xbox 360 remains the most popular of gaming machines out there today and with its quality graphics and hot games there is no doubting that whilst playing them it becomes addictive and time flys by very quickly....and heres a danger!

There are two precautions you can take to assist in preventing any problems with your Xbox 360, one is to limit the time you are actually playing at one time and the other is to be very careful as to where you situate your system. In other words try to
provide as much ventilatiion as possible, and at the sametime don't keep in close to equipment that could add to the issues of overheating.

If you find yourself facing any of the Xbox 360 red lights flashing problems, you may want to let you're system cool down for a couple of hours, unplug and the plug the cables back in, including the AV cables.

Beyond this you can try removing the hard drive, turn the system back on and see if the problem still exists (only when 3 red lights flashing) If the light is green reconnect the hard drive and turn on again, this hopefully will have cured the problem, otherwise its likley to need repairing .

If you're machine is out of guarantee you either send the system back to microsoft and wait for a significant time for it to return, and with it a significant repair bill or decide to repair you're own Xbox 360 system.