The Xbox 360 Faux-Red Ring of Death

Thursday, Aug. 23 2007 | Author: Drew

I had a bit of a scare last night, and I’d be willing to bet I’m not the only one that this has happened to, so I wanted to share the solution.

Despite the fact that I was knocking down the door at GameStop Tuesday morning to pick up BioShock, various work, night class and family commitments have kept me from playing. Yesterday, I finally had some time to myself to sit down and enjoy this masterpeice. I cranked up my system, loaded up the disc, and waited…and waited…and waited. Then, to my horror of horrors:

I had heard the rumors, but now it was happening to me. Visions of two-month waiting times dancing in my head, I quickly surfed over to the Microsoft Support page. After some searching around, I realized that I was not suffering from the dreaded Red Ring of Death, but something far less severe.

Xbox 360: One red light flashes on the Ring of Light, and you receive error E67, E68, or E69[...]If an Xbox Hard Disk Drive is attached to the console, turn off the console, and then remove the Hard Disk.

I did what the steps said, and as soon as I touched the hard drive, it fell off the console. See, a couple of weeks ago, I had gone over the system with some canned air, and apparently I hadn’t reattached the hard drive correctly. After that was remedied, I was up and playing within five minutes.

It may be common knowledge, but I didn’t know it, so I’m sure there’s a chance that someone else out there didn’t know, either. So, if you find yourself in the same position, before you ship your 360 off to be fixed, do some poking around. There may be a quicker (and cheaper) alternative.

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4 Responses for "The Xbox 360 Faux-Red Ring of Death"

Trinity Dejavu

August 24th, 2007 at 3:39 am
1

Lucky you! I’m on my 4th 360 in as many months, the shop I bought it from (game) are very understanding and cheerfully swap it for a new a one everytime. The shop manager says he sends back a dozen a week with various faults.
John J.

August 24th, 2007 at 7:09 am
2

It’s good that you don’t have to go through a warrenty replacement, and thanks for sharing a useful (to 360 owners) tip.
Griffith

August 24th, 2007 at 9:49 pm
3

If this were Apple… they would already be flooded with lawsuits. But I guess that people have simply gotten used to Microsoft’s unreliability.
Fix Your Xbox 360

September 11th, 2007 at 3:08 am
4

I feel your pain. I get the 3 red lights from time to time, plus my Xbox 360 console shuts down abruptly on random occasions. Usually it takes a simple reboot to get it working again, but for the first time ever I felt slightly helpless until I bought a internet guide to solve my problems. So far so good.