Yes, sadly on Friday night during a campaign of Gears of War, my 360 flashed its death knell via the three red rings of death.
There were signs before it happened that night. For one, whenever I started up and played Gears, after only a bit the game would stop, freeze, and pixelate the image. Only turning off the 360 would clear the image. I tried everything from blowing on cords, inputs, and the disc drive, but nothing helped. So, I thought it was just the disc. Wrong. There goes the three lights.
I heard a while back about LoneRanger I think yanking the powercord out at the second he saw the three red lights start to flash. I immediately ran up, yanked it out, and waited. Scared to put it back in and have it not work, I hesitantly plugged it back in and turned it on. But, right on cue, the three lights flashed.
So, after emailing, and then talking to Xbox Customer Support, they said they were going to be sending out a box for me to put the Core system and everything in. They will then take a look at it all, and determine the problem, repairing it for free. I asked and they said the whole process of them shipping me the box, shipping it to them, them repairing it, and then shipping it back to me could take over a week to do. Too bad. I had originally planned to use the 360 as a photo/music player during the family Christmas party -- playing seasonal songs over pictures of our house, pets, Christmas stuff, and family. Guess we'll just have to settle for "The 24 Hours of a Christmas Story" on TBS that they play over and over again every year.
So anyway, now I'm back to many of your levell. I still have the original Xbox, though I haven't bought or rented a new game for that thing in nearly a year (Half-Life 2 was my last purchase -- got it in January). So basically I have a bunch of old games to play on an obsolete system. Yay?
No biggie -- when the 360 broke, that was the first time in a while I had actually picked up the controller to play anything on it. I had just been doing things like listening to music and watching movies before.
Anyone else have this problem? I don't mean generally, as I know it's happened to a ton of people. I just mean has it happened to anyone on here?
That sucks man. I've heard a lot of stories about this now, and for some reason I seem to be the only miracle worker. No telling how it worked, but it did.
Anyway, best wishes to you and your family. Merry Christmas and a happy New Year!
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"Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly." - Langston Hughes