Arg…  just a matter of time before my XBOX died, it would seem.   While I was out having a fun vacation, the XBOX 360 was left on by the kids.  At some point it overheated and started to display the Red Ring of Death:

I tried most of the common external efforts to reset a faulted piece of hardware.  Power cycled, removed power, performed a series of power cycles, left it unplugged for days,  everything I could think of that would help with a typical computer failure.

DID NOT WORK.

Interwebs to the rescue!   After a short Google for articles on the problem, I found a number of YouTube videos showing various ways to fix this annoying problem.  Watching them, they seem to fall into three categories:

– Over heat with towels method

– Penny method

– Heat sink / X-Clamp fixes

Following reviews of various methods above (and I’m sure there are others) I decided I would first try a variation of the ‘Penny method‘ mentioned above.

Others have already documented this process, so I’m not going do it here.  What I will say is that my hybrid penny fix worked, at least for now.   The only change I made to the described Penny Process was that I used 2-penny stacks instead of three.  Another video I watched showed a successful fix with only 2-pennys, and that also allowed easy re-assembly of the C-clamp screws with the shorter penny stack.

There was a trick that I had to watch 4 videos to find.  That is how the proper sequence for removing the outter plastic shell.  I made the mistake of starting on the front (after removing the front panel, which you need to do first, BTW).  After removal of the little grey side panels (snap-crackly-pop, they will come out with careful prying) I tried to go for the ‘easy’ snaps on the front of the enclosure.

It tuns out you should unsnap the REAR of the enclosure first.  The little ‘slots’ across the back are access to a series of snapping clasts across the rear.  Use a small flat-blade screwdriver that will fit IN the slots to push in on them, until you hear a good snap.  Sounds like something breaking, but.. nothing did.  It’s just the way it work.  Once the 8 or so snaps are released, pull the rear apart.  It’s sort of tight, but it does come apart.   Once the rear is seperated, the front is of course very easy to unclasp.  Watch the little DVD/CD drive door button, you’ll need to futz with that a bit.

Once 1/2 of the plastic over is removed, you’ll next need to remove the long silver (6 of those)  T-10 (that’s torx size 10, very small, for those playing at home).   Once those six are out the other side of the cover comes off, and you have something that looks like this:

Now, one last photo.  I can’t say this with any certainty, but it was posted by others that the main issue is those crappy ‘band-aid’ heat transfer spounges on tops of the RAM chips.  There are 4 of those things.  The various penny fixes involved shoving tape wrapped pennies between the metal case and the chips to provide a more conductive material interface.  I used stacks of 2 pennys on each chip, tape wrapped then, reusing the bandades by peeling off the other side of the double-stick ‘band-aids’ fastened the penny stacks to the chips, re-assembled the case and tested.

Following the ‘post-fix-overheat-to-reset-and-re-melt-heat-transfer-grease’ method, I fired up the box with the fans unplugged until I saw the TWO flashing red ring segments.  This indicates a full-overheating of the chips.   I let the machine cool down, plugged back in the fans, re-installed the fan duct (not seen in any of my photos) and….  VOILA:

Sure beats having to sign up for Windoze Live to start an ‘authorized’ repair request.  Microsoft can just ……………….     (you fill in the blank).

So, for litteraly 9 cents (8 pennys and less than 1 cent of electrical tape) I was able to fix the machine.  Of course they could have just put a proper heat sink on those chips for.. hm.. I’m sure less than 8 cents, but no..  just like Microsoft software, they only do an 85% job, and end-user repairs are generally required.