Of all the 360 owners here, how many needed to send it back?

True.  Right now I am doing it - but I plan on picking up a bigger one (24 inch).. Works out better for me, due to the fact the wife watches TV when I would normally want to play games.

[Viper_Fujax]

does your computer that you bought have a 24" or are you thinking of buying one separately for the 360?

because I had a switch that let me have my pc and my 360 go through the same monitor. I just hit Insert twice and it\'d switch modes. My dad has a box full of random computer crap so i can\'t find a link of what the switch thing is

KVM switch, most likely.

Thinkin of buying a 24 just for the 360.  I guess I could just buy a KVM switch tho\'.

just get a monitor that has both a dvi and a vga hookup, that\'s what I did anyway...

I also used to play on my monitor before I got my hdtv. It looks just as good as on an hdtv apart from the fact that it will get a tiny bit stretched vertically, due to the fact that most games are made to output 16:9 resolutions while monitors are 16:10.

No problems, and still going strong since March 2006.
 
Possibly I don\'t give my gear as much of a workout as others do.  I definitely take precautions and make sure there\'s plenty of room for airflow around the case, and don\'t abuse the hardware at all.

I need to change my vote from "no problems" to "returned it once."  I just got the flashing red lights, 2 years after I bought it.  Probably the reason it took so long for the problem to occur for me is because I don\'t use the console very heavily.

Maybe they\'ll send me a newer version this time.

they likely wont.

[GmanJoe]

Bunch of kids are swapping the innards of new 360s with their borked ones and returning it to Walmart. Of course...they paid cash.

Still no problems here.

[Viper_Fujax]

they likely wont.

I did.

[GmanJoe]

I did.

Hmm...they keep sending my sister-in-law a refurbished one. She\'s on her 5th. Yeah, it borked again. I think it was 3 last time I mentioned it. She got it from her cousin who originally owned it.

[Viper_Fujax]

It might be on how screwed up yours is. Mine didnt even red ring, it just stopped showing picture, then eventually sound.

Think something inside fried that completely killed it

I have to change my vote.

[GmanJoe]

http://us.i1.yimg.com/videogames.yahoo.com/feature/red-ring-of-failure/1192354

Red Ring of Failure
Is your Xbox 360 still working? You must be one of the lucky ones.

By Mike Smith
ADVERTISEMENT

Over 18 million Xbox 360s have sold through since the console\'s launch in November 2005, but just how many of those are still working? Squaretrade, a company that specializes in providing warranty support to purchasers of electronic goods from various manufacturers, claims 16% of Xbox 360s experience a hardware failure within six to ten months after a warranty purchase. Three out of every five failures were for the infamous "Red Ring of Death" general hardware failure error, a problem often linked to overheating.

The Xbox\'s figures compare poorly to competing consoles, which have a failure rate of around 3% -- and if anything, the Squaretrade figure underestimates the scale of the Xbox 360\'s reliability issues. It\'s a good bet that some buyers of Squaretrade warranties went straight to Microsoft after experiencing hardware issues and don\'t factor into the 16% number. On its company blog, Squaretrade pointed out that failure rates are "certain to go up" as the machines in their study group grow older.

Microsoft is cagey about coughing up official failure rate figures, which has lead some commentators to speculate about the actual severity of the problem. Luke Plunkett, a blogger on respected games news site Kotaku, said in a recent post that if the real failure rate wasn\'t in the 30-40% range, he\'d "wolf down humble pie until his sides split."

Plunkett\'s sides are likely safe. Stories of 360 owners making their way through eight or nine consoles aren\'t hard to find, but to its credit, Microsoft has been working with the affected individual in at least one of those cases to lessen the impact of the constant failures.

16 Percent of Xbox 360s Are Likely to Break, Report Claims

Even so, there\'s a surprise lurking for consumers who return their 360s for repair. When you purchase content -- arcade games, extra tracks, etc. -- over Xbox Live, it\'s playable by any user on the console you used to make the transaction. If you go to a different console and sign in with your gamertag, you can download the content and play it only for as long as you\'re signed in. Once you move back to your main machine, it will no longer be playable. Sounds like a handy system to let you take the content you own from place to place, right?

But the trick with this system is that once a broken machine returns from its little vacation, it generally has sufficient internal changes to make it look, to Xbox Live, like a different console. So all your downloaded content -- which, if you\'re a heavy user, could amount to hundreds of dollars worth of purchases -- are only accessible to one gamertag, and only when the console has a live internet connection.

Getting this situation resolved can be difficult. Affected users have reported having to make repeated calls to the Xbox support line, often to no avail. Some fortunate individuals were able to eventually convince the MS reps to refund all the points they\'d spent so they could repurchase all the affected content, although they had to do it using a different gamertag.
How to Avoid Hardware Problems

    * Air it out. Many failures are attributed to the inadequate cooling system of early-model 360s, so anything you can do to give it an easier time will pay off. Make sure you put the console in a place with cool, steady airflow.
    * Move it and lose it. Don\'t change the orientation of the console when it\'s running. The DVD drive\'s running gear isn\'t as well secured as it could be, so knocking over a vertically-standing console can cause the machinery to collide with the disc surface. Characteristic circular scratches are the result and are generally fatal for the game.
    * Think new. Thanks to a well-publicized cooling system redesign, newer machines are less likely to suffer problems. Any console bought in the last six months or so should have much better chances of surviving.

Red Ring of Death: What to do

Is it a "real" red ring of death? Somewhat confusingly, the true red ring error only has three of the four quarters of the ring illuminated. If all four are lit up, you have a much simpler problem: your A/V cable is loose!

Enterprising 360 owners have discovered a homebrewed way to fix the problem, although it only works for a short period of time. It involves turning on your console, wrapping it tightly in a towel, and leaving it on for 20-25 minutes. This might void your warranty from Microsoft, so consider yourself warned.

If all else fails, hit up the Xbox web site to request a warranty repair. They\'ll send you a cardboard "coffin" for you to return your console and send back a fixed machine in a few weeks. The official warranty was extended to three years for this specific problem, so even launch-day 360s are technically still covered.

[Viper_Fujax]

anyone know if the warranty starts over when you get the other/refurbished console?

3 years is going to go relatively quickly from the time i bought it, but if its now 3 years from when i got the new one from MS, id be a little more comforted

anyone know if the warranty starts over when you get the other/refurbished console?

3 years is going to go relatively quickly from the time i bought it, but if its now 3 years from when i got the new one from MS, id be a little more comforted

Starts over with each console, if I recall correctly.