it's easy - the towels just re-activate the fun crystals

This is probably what Microsoft does to repair sent in broke consoles. Then they charge you a bunch of money for it.

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.

"Thats it. Thats the song to funkytown."

"That's it, that's the melody to Funky Town!"

Wait just one minute. Something's wrong here.

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!!!!!!

@ Electro Lemon.

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.

electro:

Relax. Working on it, my friend.

the internets has known about this for quite some time.

Jim Sterling, I still love ya borther! In a totally heterosexual way of course.

Quick, someone get drunk and come up with a nickname for the new guy!

I would not be upset were you to throw my cheese across the lake. In fact, I would be most impressed. My cheese is heavy, and the lake is wide.

@electro lemon

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

that's funny because I have the towelie episode on my 360 and I haven't had 1 problem with it since I downloaded the episode

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 haven't had any problems wif mah 360.
Maybe because I haven't bought it yet.

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.”

Yes, someone finally makes a Hitchhiker joke...oh man, 42 comments in. That's shameful.

this just in... blowing on your nes cartridges can get them to work if they've been having trouble. as demonstrated here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xb2p8hF9CIA

1.Who the fuck is Jim Sterling?

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?

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.

But the solder idea really is absurd.

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