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Microsoft will sort it and you don't pay anything - P&P is free

I hate my xbox. I bought one of the first ones, and promptly lost the reciept. After about 6 months of stuttering gameplay, it gave up the ghost with the RROD. I couldn't send it back to Microsoft, (at this point they were still denying the high failure rates of their consoles were their responsibility), so I cursed it, and put it in a box under my bed.

Over Christmas I was talking to a friend who runs a computer gubbins shop about how rubbish the xbox reliability was, and he convinced me to bring it into him for repair. I'd been reluctant to get it fixed because I thought I might be throwing good money after bad. He fixed it in a day for £40. Excitedly, I rushed it home, but not before I purchased 'GTA4' and 'Dead Space' on the way.

It packed up again last night, after stuttering through 5 days of gameplay. The picture suddenly turned a tartan green colour, then froze. Upon reboot I received one flashing red light and the system error code E74. A little digging on the internet reveals the cause of this all too common fault, the graphics chip is knackered, something Microsoft haven't seen fit to take responsibility for so isn't covered by any extended warranty, (which I would have invalidated anyway taking it for an unauthorised repair).

During the short time it did work, apart from the deafening noise the little box makes, I was happy to have it. If anybody is considering buying a new xbox, I'd suggest they try to find one of the newer 'jasper' consoles which hopefully will have addressed the hardware failures of previous machines. The way to find one is a little vague. I believe they're shipping as the low price 'arcade' packages, (£125 from Argos), which come with 256mb of built in memory. You need to look at the info on the back of the console itself to be sure though. It will have been built after August '08 and the power socket will read 12V-12.1A. Older models draw 14.1A.

Phew...

Just to add to this, from what I'm aware, the RROD is usually caused by the GPU coming away from the motherboard due to poor venitlation and cooling within the 360 itself.

Some people have advised turning it on and wrapping it in a towel and then turning it off. Apparently this helps the GPU solder melt where it can then sink back into the board. You can find tutorials for it on youtube.

I had a look at it but didn't try this myself as I'd rather just get microsoft to fix it. I sent it off and had a brand new console back within about 10 days (with a free month on xbox live to boot). Not bad considering it failed nearly 3 years after being bought (close to initial release).