Unlucky Xbox 360 owner PacoDG was suffering from a "red ring of death" on his beloved console. Personally, this writer's not had to worry about a red ring of death since his Uncle Reg stopped visiting. Unlike my boyhood shame, however, most of you are likely aware that the 360's burning ring is one that serves as a veritable harbinger of doom for your gaming system, an indicator that something dreadfully wrong is happening inside one's machine.
After sharing his fears online through several forums, here at Destructoid and on Microsoft's official forums, all hope seemed lost. But nay, good sir, for as you can see in PacoDG's report, memories of Destructoid's very own Grim fluttered toward our hapless hero like a guardian angel.
According to what Paco recalled from Grim, as well as his first hand findings, it seems that a 360 suffering from the internal woes that cause the death ring may very well be cured of its ailments thanks to the healing power of ... towels. No longer just an annoying South Park character and a cruel armament against fat boys in the showers, it would seem that the humble towel has finally secured itself a place of worth in the history of man's great inventions.
Simply wrapping your console in towels for a goodly amount of time appears to unlock a mystical healing magic buried deep within the cotton drying apparatus. How does it work? We're not quite sure, but PacoDG assures us it does.
Paco doesn't understand it. We don't understand it. But almost overheating your Xbox 360 would appear to fry whatever demons lurk within. Now perhaps if this method can be applied to medical science, we could change the world for the better. Terminally ill? Just wrap a flannel around your face for three minutes!
Jim Sterling serves as reviews editor for Destructoid.com, head of the Podtoid podcast, and produces a number of news stories, original features, one-of-a-kind videos. With his passionate argumentative style, controversial opinions, harsh delivery, and dedication to brutal honesty Sterling is a name that you can't help but recognize.
Likes
PS2, iPod Touch, Silent Hill 2, Metal Gear Solid, Dynasty Warriors 3
Meet the rest of the team
I have heard of this before..... The explanation i got was that constant heating and cooling inside the heat-prone 360 will sometimes cause some connections to weaken and break. The added insulation of the towels causes these metal components to expand, and reconnect with their intended destination. Science FTW!
your "science" is a bunch of bs!!! you see towels are made with fibers from the hairs of jesus and thus the towels uses jesus' magical jesus powers to restore the life to your 360.
Who the fxck am I? I'm just some new fxcking guy. Freelance writer, got me an article greenlit for publishing on IGN Insider next week, now I'm here. I like cuddling and holding hands and watching the sun rise together.
What I want to know is how exactly did someone find out this worked in the first place? It's not exactly the obvious sort of thing you just try on a hunch is it? Given that it seems like exactly the wrong thing to do with any kind of computer equipment.
Was someone just trying out things at random 'til they found this?
"Smother 360 in lemon curd while singing Auld Lang Syne to it seductively? No, that doesn't work. Dance around 360 dressed as Benjamin Franklin while a one-legged gerbil balances on the mantlepiece? No, that doesn't work either. Hang on, let's wrap the bugger in towels and leave it for quarter of an hour! It's got to work better than the toasted fish did."
Beat the new guy's face in yeah!! Haze him in, haze him in!!
About updates and new people: Needless to say, running a independent blog is really hard. People get busy and don't do this for a living so we all post as much as we can. Maybe when we sell it to FOX or AOL we can hire a whorehouse of interns and make them churn out 30 updates a day :)
Actually, speaking of that ... I have a rather big site update schedule in the next few weeks. I'll do a post about it later tonight or tomorrow so nobody freaks out when I throw their cheese across the lake
Hmmm electro does have a sort of point. In the old days it seemed like pages would pass by full of posts but now it seems to have slowed down a bit but with more writers? No fair Dtoid! First you get me sucking from your teet like some crazed milk junkie and then you take away my hits! I need my fix man...anything...a story on cheese based gaming peripherals....Anything!! Also, how do jimeney!
For the record, as of this writing Joystiq has posted 3 articles today (if you count the one posted exactly at 12:00 AM, that is) and Destructoid has posted 12. So, what exactly are you trying to say? o_O
I think he meant Kotaku. Joystiq is a barren wasteland when it comes to new articles, and it's even worse on the weekend. I know that I can check the page on Friday night, and most og the time by Sunday night only 1 or 2(rarely) new articles will be up. Kotaku, who only has 1 weekend editor(and sometimes a guest writer), happens to post a shitload of stuff.
I guess this works cuz it melts the cracked solder. Don't know if thats true. Just what I read. Also, The solder will prolly melt again...something about the solder MS uses.
If I owned a 360 and had the lights. I would just send it to MS. Don't want to take the risk of the local fire dept. showing up on scene and have to explain my self.
The explanation I got (and don't totally buy), is that some parts loosen or fall off in the 360, and the overheating welds them back on. Farfetched, but it's all I got.
I heard about this fix a while ago, but one I have only heard recently involves actual labor and appears to work for many people. http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=595746 If you don't want to do either then you could always use implied warranty and try to force Microsoft to fix it out of the standard warranty period (design flaw/faulty unit since yours didn't last as long as the normal users/etc). The extra epoxy on elite units will certainly help if you go the design flaw route since it shows they tried to fix it.
“The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on the subject of towels. A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value—you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you—daft as a brush, but very, very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough. More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag [non-hitch hiker] discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitchhiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitchhiker might accidentally have ‘lost’. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.”
I've heard of this working and I have to agree thats its not wise to look a gift horse in the mouth...if looking further into an explaination would satisfy your curiosity is would also most assuridly cause your XB360 to break again!
But seriously, this is EXTREMELY old news. It is one thing when a writer gets an old news bit, but when a new writers first news post is really old news? Get rid of him, I say.
Also, you forget that you need to turn the 360 upside down. Yes, it CAN work right side up but from how Ron explained how it works, you should really turn it upside down if you want it to work.
Jim Sterling is a god amongst men. I have known him for quite a while and I can honestly say he knows just about everything about anything throughout the course of history. If this is old, it's because some other douche spread the word before Jim could do it himself. He has to single handedly answer all queries around the world. It's not his fault some of his lackeys who claim to be "in the know" will sometimes spread "breaking news" news before him. This is totally done without his consent.
I got an A+ in Electronics Assembly when i was in electronics engineering last year @ college (in comp eng now).
Solder melts at a temperature of 190 degrees centegrade. Chips, be it processors or simple ICs have fail and success rates at different temperatures. Most pc cpus fail above 80C (as in fry and become paper weights). Now I have seen graphics processors get a lot hotter, up to 140 and then they do wonky things and crash. But never 190.
The idea if it reforming the solder joints is a logical solution, however at the same time you would have to assume every chip in the 360 is dead.
My guess is that the temperature sensors on the board are malfunctioning and stuck at max, not allowing the 360 to work (its common in pcs to turn off at a max temperature). And by over heating the sensor to max, perhaps resets it, allowing the system to work again.
Oh, and for the record, that Assembly class isnt assembly language, but assembling componets. In other works building cuircuit boards and soldering components to them.
Started re-reading hitchhikers the other day an just passed the bit about the towel! Why did it not come to mind? Probablly because its almost 7am over here and im working like mad to finish my animation project...weeeeeeeeeeep
Destructoid is an open discussion community. You don't need to "audition" to post a comment - just speak your mind. We respect differing opinions on the site, so have at it. Be smart, funny, insightful, clueless, or cute -- but back it up with substance. Keep your cool, keep it fun. We only ask that you act respectfully and above all: don't be a troll and ruin it for everyone else. Don't bring down gamers or we'll, you know, gently shoot you in the face and stuff you into a flaming mailbox. Each comment is your opportuntity to make this community awesomer. Is that even a word?
Avoiding the banhammer only requires common sense: spamming, trolling, racism, NSFW stuff, and other forms of sucking will not be tolerated. If anyone is griefing please report abuse. Be good. Don't suck!
Contest:
8:18 PM on 05.13.2007
| 
I don't know if I believe it.
You turn the 360 on, cover it with towels, wait fifteen minutes, unwrap it, and then turn it on again?
So the 360 shuts off while in its cottony uterus?
How can giving a 360 such a case of heatstroke so bad that it passes out fix it? I'm calling shenanigans.
SHENANIGANS!!!!!!
Who the fxck am I? I'm just some new fxcking guy. Freelance writer, got me an article greenlit for publishing on IGN Insider next week, now I'm here. I like cuddling and holding hands and watching the sun rise together.
Relax. Working on it, my friend.
Was someone just trying out things at random 'til they found this?
"Smother 360 in lemon curd while singing Auld Lang Syne to it seductively? No, that doesn't work. Dance around 360 dressed as Benjamin Franklin while a one-legged gerbil balances on the mantlepiece? No, that doesn't work either. Hang on, let's wrap the bugger in towels and leave it for quarter of an hour! It's got to work better than the toasted fish did."
About updates and new people: Needless to say, running a independent blog is really hard. People get busy and don't do this for a living so we all post as much as we can. Maybe when we sell it to FOX or AOL we can hire a whorehouse of interns and make them churn out 30 updates a day :)
Actually, speaking of that ... I have a rather big site update schedule in the next few weeks. I'll do a post about it later tonight or tomorrow so nobody freaks out when I throw their cheese across the lake
For the record, as of this writing Joystiq has posted 3 articles today (if you count the one posted exactly at 12:00 AM, that is) and Destructoid has posted 12. So, what exactly are you trying to say? o_O
I think he meant Kotaku. Joystiq is a barren wasteland when it comes to new articles, and it's even worse on the weekend. I know that I can check the page on Friday night, and most og the time by Sunday night only 1 or 2(rarely) new articles will be up. Kotaku, who only has 1 weekend editor(and sometimes a guest writer), happens to post a shitload of stuff.
I guess this works cuz it melts the cracked solder. Don't know if thats true. Just what I read. Also, The solder will prolly melt again...something about the solder MS uses.
If I owned a 360 and had the lights. I would just send it to MS. Don't want to take the risk of the local fire dept. showing up on scene and have to explain my self.
Maybe because I haven't bought it yet.
If you don't want to do either then you could always use implied warranty and try to force Microsoft to fix it out of the standard warranty period (design flaw/faulty unit since yours didn't last as long as the normal users/etc). The extra epoxy on elite units will certainly help if you go the design flaw route since it shows they tried to fix it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xb2p8hF9CIA
2. why the fuck are we reporting on this AGAIN? Ron Workman figured this out and broke the news over a YEAR ago.
3. Who the fuck is Jim Sterling and why is he so retarded?
Also, you forget that you need to turn the 360 upside down. Yes, it CAN work right side up but from how Ron explained how it works, you should really turn it upside down if you want it to work.
Who the fuck is Jim Sterling
Solder melts at a temperature of 190 degrees centegrade. Chips, be it processors or simple ICs have fail and success rates at different temperatures. Most pc cpus fail above 80C (as in fry and become paper weights). Now I have seen graphics processors get a lot hotter, up to 140 and then they do wonky things and crash. But never 190.
The idea if it reforming the solder joints is a logical solution, however at the same time you would have to assume every chip in the 360 is dead.
My guess is that the temperature sensors on the board are malfunctioning and stuck at max, not allowing the 360 to work (its common in pcs to turn off at a max temperature). And by over heating the sensor to max, perhaps resets it, allowing the system to work again.
But the solder idea really is absurd.
I am a solder ninja.