Red Ring of Death - Redux

Un-fucking-believable.

I’ll have pics up shortly, but I imagine you know by now what they look like.

If you recall, I already went through this fun last year, when my system failed the first time.  You can read that saga here, here, and here.  My repaired system lasted more than an entire year without taking a dive once again.  I first noticed issues while playing Braid on my birthday, after an hour or two of playing, the system would chirp and freeze.  This happened a few times, and I had hoped it was just a bad copy, so I re-downloaded it.

Apparently not.  I got about 30 seconds into Call of Duty this morning before beginning some project work, and now my system is keeled out like an overdosed junkie.

I’d really like to not make this an annual event.

Red Ring of Death T-Shirt

I just saw this shirt on Split Reason and thought I’d share it with you all… because it’s amazing.  Do yourself a favor all ye who have felt the burn, and pre-order one of these puppies before they start flying out the door like an unwanted child on their 18th birthday.

Red-Ring of Death Followup

Peter Moore yesterday released an open letter to the Xbox 360 community announcing a new three year warranty extension that covers systems that fail due to the red ring of death.

Although Microsoft has not announced the official cause of the red ring of death issue, unofficial reports seem to indicate the problem is related to the proximity of the DVD drive to the board, and the lack of airflow through that region causes the board to warp, breaking contacts and additionally causing the solder to reflow. Some have reported that Microsoft has begun to add additional heat piping on repaired systems to fix this problem.

I’ve previously written about my experiences with the Red Ring of Death. I should like to comment that after calling for support, Microsoft shipped me the packaging box (”Dubbed ‘The Coffin’”) several days later, and after a couple of weeks, I received my system back. I’ve had not a single issue with it since the joyful return of my system almost two months ago. Overall I didn’t have to pay a dime, and Microsoft gave me a free month of Xbox Live Gold access for the inconvienence of losing my system for a couple of weeks. All in all, a generally positive customer experience.

If this is indeed the problem, one would not expect Microsoft to own up to it specficially, because the onslaught of ‘Heating upgrade requests’ would be financially damaging, and in many cases unnecessary. For those systems that require the upgrade, this should become obvious well before the three year deadline arrives. This certainly bolsters my spirits and hopes that we’ll all be able to enjoy the 360 in years and decades to come. I congratulate Peter Moore, Microsoft, and the Xbox 360 team for owning up to the fact that there is a problem, and stepping up to the plate to ensure the customers and community remain satisfied with the 360 Experience.

Kudos.

Update: So much for that.

More on the causes of Red Ring of Death

After my Xbox 360 died earlier this week, I finally called Tech support. As suspected, there is nothing I can do about the issue, and Microsoft will be shipping me a box in which to ship them the console for repair (and for free, as my console is under warranty). The tech support line was a bit hard to hear, and one has to navigate through an automatic tech support drone (although not a bad one) to get to a real person, but I suppose that’s good as it filters out the people who forgot to plug their system in.

I’ve been trying to discern what might have happened to cause this error. I’ve found a nifty little guide which allows you to get some more in-depth information about the dreaded three blinking red lights. I won’t go through the entire procedure here, but if you have this issue, I encourage you to do so.

The particular error code I get is 0102. This code is an unknown error, an error not handled by any other of the escape conditions. Essentially my Xbox 360 has no idea what’s wrong with itself. The guide suggests that it can occur if components have lost contact with the main-board, due to a cold solder or a short, or possibly a broken contact.

As I have not physically relocated my Xbox 360 since this occurred, the only conceivable explanation is that my console has been overheating, and the heat has caused warping significant enough to damage the component connections on the system board. As my system IS under warranty, I’m not willing to open it up and poke around, nor try to repair it using heat reflow or other techniques.

My system was purchased in the summer of 2006, not exactly among the ‘first batch of 360s’. Additionally, the system is sitting on my wooden desk, upright, and has plenty of space surrounding it. In fact, there is not a single device within three feet of the console which emits heat (and even at that, an LCD monitor doesn’t emit much). If heat was the culprit, this points to a systemic problem with the 360, although Microsoft has denied this. Either the solder work in the pick-and-place machines used in fabrication are flawed somewhere (a problem which would be relatively trivial to diagnose and fix given large quantities of 360s suffering the same problems), or there is simply too much heat and not enough airflow within the 360 chassis. If this is the case, it will continue to be a major problem unless the physical case is redesigned (fat chance) or the system uses a lower-voltage chipset which will reduce the amount of heat being generated (would require another model of 360 to emerge). As both of these solutions seem to be unlikely to be implemented, my hopes of having my (repaired) 360 last as long as my SNES has are foundering rapidly.

The Red Ring of Death

I’ve had an Xbox 360 for about 9 months now. In general I feel that of the three next-gen consoles, the 360 has, at the moment, the best selection of quality games, and I certainly wouldn’t wish for one of the other two instead (although definitely as well). The only problems I’ve had with it are a propensity to occasionally throw an error stating that “The disc cannot be read, please clean it and start again”. While this is annoying when it occurs, rebooting the system fixes the problem, and it didn’t happen that often.

Today, I have a bigger problem. My system was working fine last night, but today, booting up would cause the system to freeze right away, sometimes overlaying the Microsoft start-up logo wherever it happened to freeze with a blue checkboard pattern. The situation has since devolved to the point where turning the system on causes nothing to happen but three blinking red lights on the ring of light.

Much has been made of this problem in the last few months, and while Microsoft claims that this problem occurs far below the consumer electronics average of 3-5% failures, the noise in the community would suggest that the problem is much more prevalent than they claim.

Certainly regardless of what the stats say, the number of hardware failures are much, much too high. When Wikipedia has an entire page devoted to the problems that happen with your system, your product has issues. When people have come up with a nickname for an error, calling it “The Ring of Death” or 3RL (Three Red Lights), and error which indicates that the system has suffered an irrecoverable hardware error that requires manufacturer repair, your product has serious issues. When the BBC publishes a consumer report citing the fact that your product is known for having total hardware failure issues, usually around the time the warranty is running out, you have a crisis on your hands.

There are three things that peeve me about this problem. Firstly, that it’s so common, and not only on a first 360, but many have to return their systems multiple times. If car manufacturers did that, they would flat out go out business. Haven’t you guys ever heard of Quality Assurance? Secondly, that the customer support is reportedly terrible. This is a major PR issue which could have serious repercussions on your future ability to move product. This will especially be true in the future when the offerings for the Wii and PS3 catch up. Your customer support staff should be bending over backwards to do damage control, not pissing off the people who forked over half a grand to play games on your system. Lastly, as someone who’s lived in the computer industry for some time, the general rule is that hardware usually dies after a long time, when it’s lived out it’s useful life, or within a month of purchasing it (Infant Fatality Syndrome). Much of the electronics warranty structure revolves around this assumption: The purpose of the warranty is to catch the ones which die quickly due to the product being faulty. What we have going on here though are Xbox units dying months or nearly a year after purchase. These units are not being mishandled, they simply stop working one day, and the reasons for that are poor construction on Microsoft’s behalf. This is exactly the scenario in which the warranty is intended to apply, but because the failures are often so close to the expiration date on the warranty, many consumers are getting screwed by the support staff into paying for the repair.

I own an NES and Super NES, these systems still play just as well as the day I bought them (and in the case of the NES, even better, although I did have to change out the connection pins, for a mere $10). I have no doubt that if I wake up one morning and want to play Chronotrigger, or Earthbound, Secret of Evermore or Mario RPG, I can march downstairs and flip on my system, and all will be well in the world. This is 15 years after the system was purchased, certainly beyond the expected lifetime of most other consumer electronics. With my 360, I now have to question whether it will work on any given day, during the active life cycle of the system. Will I still be able to play Gears of War in 15 years?

Video game systems should not be lumped in with other consumer electronics. A Sony Walkman may not work two decades later, but any of the media you might have wanted to use it for are still available in some format. A television of 2007 can play any signal a television of 1991 could. This is not the case for video games.

So Microsoft, I’m fully aware you have a lot of really smart people in your organization. I’m sure this issue has been floating around the engineering team for a while, but you’ve had a year to your advantage. The solutions to hardware issues like this are not always simple, but in this case, they are necessary. If you don’t get this under control, people will stop buying 360s, and they will not trust you in the future to build a system they’re willing to pay for.

Fix your shit, or suffer the consequences in the market.