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The Man Who Went Through 11 Xbox 360s
1up is carrying the sad story of Justin Lowe. Just your average gamer, wanting to partake of the current generation of consoles. He's got a PSP, DS, PS3, and a 360. He really likes his 360 ... which is probably a good thing, since he's sent 11 of them back to Microsoft. He's now on his twelfth. The piece covers Justin's ongoing plight, and discusses Microsoft's claims of hardware failures being a 'vocal minority'. "Justin has not had a working system for longer than a month or two. The list of problems is almost comically large: three red lights of death, two with disc read errors, two dead on arrival, several with random audio and video-related issues and one that actually exploded. Looking at the situation through Moore's own standards, how has Microsoft performed? 'On a scale of one to ten, I'd rate them an 8... at first,' says Lowe. His [first] 360 broke in early January, just a few weeks after purchase."
My Wii ran fine out of the box, but a friend of mine had to send her Wii back to Nintendo- some of the first batch of Wiis had some defect (I can't remember the details). This doesn't even include the stonger straps they had to add after some people broke theirs. Not to rip on Nintendo, just pointing out that it's nearly impossible to make perfect software/hardware.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
There's a thread with over 400 comments here :
o mments_per_page=30
http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/31956?from=0&c
Dedicated only to poll people who have had a faulty 360, who have seen the 3 rings.
Some of them are actually on their second or third system.
It's the sort of thing that stops me from buying a 360. Since I'm in Mexico, the repair process would be especially annoying.
Say what you want about the PS3, but it seems like a much more solid piece of hardware. (Insert "Yeah it doesn't fail because no one ever turns it on") joke or something.
I troubleshoot home theater electronics all day, every day. I have to wonder if something else is at work here. At least one person asked, what do these eleven units all have in common? The same working environment. There are plenty of Xbox 360s out there, and they certainly all aren't failures, and the chance that this one person has received every part from the 1-2% of doomed 360s out there that are failures would be nearly statistically impossible.
More likely is that some other factor is causing this, perhaps the powerstrip he's plugged it into has a badly grounded outlet, or perhaps the main outlet itself - or possibly any of another hundred or so electrical issues there could be - such issues tend to plague complex electronics in very odd ways, and not the same way every time.
If I were at Microsoft, I'd replace his unit, but advise this guy he needs to get some help looking for what other factors could be causing these malfunctions.
-Julius X
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The simple math you ask is (0.05)^11, which is about a 1 out of 205 trillion probablility (or rather a huge improbability). To start having a more down-to-earth probability you would have to assume a huge 20% failure rate to bring the probablility down to 1 in 50 million. A 20% failure rate of course would not have gone by unnoticed and MS would certainly not have been able to dispute it.
So, unless this guy is driving the Heart Of Gold, there is something else going on here.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
I used to work at Western Digital in their support area and we saw the same thing happen to a tiny minority of users. I'm not excusing Microsoft for it, but for some reason it seems to happen to every company. We'd have someone have a head crash, 2 DOA's, 1 week working then dead, etc. It was strange but there was really nothing we could do about it. 99% of our replacement orders went out and worked flawlessly with no hiccups in the process but for whatever reason there's a certain percentage that are doomed for multiple failures.
The real tragedy here is that Microsoft management didn't catch this case long before this and flag it as a priority fix case - send him a new machine, have someone deliver it to his house, whatever it takes to get the problem fixed. The cost of doing that is FAR less than the cost of fixing the amount of bad publicity this will generate.
"Christ what a design! I could eat a handful of iron filings and PUKE a better emergency pump than that!"
Odds of getting 11 Failed XBox360s given a 5% failure rate: 1 in 20^11 or 204,800,000,000,000 (204 Trillion). If we assume a 10% failure rate we have 1 in 10^11 or 10,000,000,000 (10 Billion). Given that there are only about 12 Million units sold, and assuming that this guy was the least lucky person, but there were no enviromental hazards killing his 360s (which is a dangerous assumption), We can estimate a failure rate of about 23%. The error rate and confidence ranges will need to wait until another post.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
He probably has the thing in a hot spot, like on top of a big CRT monitor, in an enclosed space, in a location with air vents blocked, or next to a hot air vent. We know the XBox 360 has marginal cooling.
Ah, see 3% with a grain of salt. 3% DOA would be ridiculous, I agree, but 3% failing within a year? Or 3% failing after 2,880 hours of use (4 whole months of play time)? It's hard to say.
Then you've got to count all the possible failures. Harddrive failure rates are around 2-4% according to some surveys, so that could account for the whole thing by itself (even though it doesn't). Laptops, as a more mobile platform, are between 15 and 20% likely to crap out on a yearly basis, according to a Gartner press release from last year...Same release put desktop failure rates at around 5% in the first year. Compared to those rates 3% looks godlike.
But there's just not enough data.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Oh and he claims his dad is an electrician AND he has hired an independant contractor to look at the wiring. Also he claims to have not had these same issues with his other systems (and he claims to have several.)
TFA is quite good. There's even an mp3 of a call to MS...
I've had my 360 replaced 3 times. It is not abused. I keep it in a well ventilated area, and I don't have issues with power problems damaging any of my other electronic equipment. I have a friend that has had his 360 replaced 5 times. His is kept in a well ventilated area and is actually plugged into a power conditioner. I also have other friends who have never had any issues with their 360. I think the real problem lies in the return process. When your 360 breaks, you call Microsoft and they ship you a box to mail the 360 back to them in. You are not to ship the power supply, cables, controller, etc. When they recieve it, they ship you a different refurbished console. My guess is one of the following is happening: 1. They aren't doing a good job at repairing units. Either early revisions of the 360 have some defects in the hardware design that make them more prone to failure, or their repair process isn't catching all the defects, or both. Either way, these bad units just keep getting cycled through the return process. 2. Parts of the 360 that are not to be shipped back are defective and cause hardware failures in the console. For example, a problem with the external DC power supply could cause a hardware failure in the console. You ship the console back and they give you a repaired console. You then plug the refurbished console into the defective power brick and damage that one too. I now have a stable console that has lasted several months, so I don't expect any more problems. My friend who just had his console replaced again about a month ago told me that Microsoft's new policy is to repair the console you send them and ship you back the same console. Once the same console has been repaired 3 times, they send you a new console. So obviously Microsoft is aware of the problem in their return process and is doing something to address it.
Not necessarily...
I manage the largest (AFAIK) Xbox360 error code list.
Basically the most common error that people _REALLY_ have when they get the "3 red lights of death" is a 0102 which has been tracked down to an issue with the Graphics Processor. What happens is the processor runs exceedingly hot to the point where the PCB actually weakens and the solder in the BGA softens (it's eco friendly lead free solder too so it's weaker right off the bat). The heat syncs are held on by springy metal brackets referred to as "X-Clamps" mounted on the back side of the motherboard (so the screws go right through the mobo)... What this does is create a perfect storm for deformation of the motherboard and cold (figuratively of course) connections within the BGA.
Once a motherboard has been sufficiently deformed it doesn't really ever get better, like frame damage to your car it can be repaired but it's never quite the same again. A temporary fix is to pull off the heat syncs and reflow the BGA with a heat gun... but it only takes weeks to a month before you'll get the red lights again. A more successful fix is to remove the "x-clamps" altogether and bolting the heat syncs directly to the case chassis... This prevents the unnecessary flexing of the PCB below the GPU and even when the area gets hot from use does not deform the PCB and thus does not create cold connections in the BGA.
What does this have to do with the same person having 11 faulty consoles? Simply put... the consoles he's getting back are NOT NEW. He's not returning it to the store but Microsoft themselves and either getting his original console back "fixed" by Microsoft, or he's getting a refurb that originally belonged to some other poor schmuck who had the same problem... again "fixed" by Microsoft. Once a console throws that error it's prone to failure again and again...
I don't have a broken 360, mine has been working a-ok since I picked it up on launch day... but I know thousands of people who've experienced broken consoles and I know many people personally who take great care of their console and just had it stop working one day... and then the next one they got was DOA... and the next one only worked for a week... etc. etc. etc.
In most cases you either have had no problems at all or you've got through 2 or 3 or more consoles. The only people I know who have had to replace it only once after the 3RLoD were those who were out of warranty and simply bought a new one instead of sending it in for repair.
Collector's Edition
You're confused.
.5^11, or dramatically lower than .5. The naive odds of any one 360 failing in a given timespan will be x, where x is apparently .03--the 11th 360 ostensibly has the same .03 odds, but the odds of getting 11 failures in a row will be .03^11.
The odds of getting heads on the eleventh toss of a fair coin is 50% just like the first, but that's not what the grandparent is talking about. The odds of getting eleven heads in a row is indeed
I've never owned an Xbox myself (I always figured what's the point since it's just a glorified PC in the shape of a games console)
- on-a-xbox-360/
However a certain freind of mine did a little investigation with the faulty ones he's had so far (given that he's a PC support engineer)
From the looks of things the problem appears to be a fundamental design flaw with the way the heat sink attaches to the main board
typically it attaches over a large area
once certain parts of the board heat up more than others this causes the board to flex and bend slightly
since the heatsink spans a large area, this results in certain sections underneath the heatsink cross to become drawn or pulled away from the main heatsink ever so slightly
the end result is something critical that should be in contact with the heatsink under the cross is no longer in contact, i.e. Red screen of death
http://www.hiptechblog.com/2006/10/30/cook-an-egg
Thank you, I found that very informative.
But it's heat sink. It acts as a sink for heat from the GPU. It should under no circumstances sync the heat.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
I worked at UPS for a spell. Every box was thrown. Some boxes were called "wedges" used to keep a wall of boxes from falling down. I got really good at it. Seriously, your shipped box WILL get thrown. I only fault UPS for not telling customers to pack and tape the crap out of their boxes. Some people don't know how to do that. My friend once worked at FexEx. The attitude there was like, "well, if the packages is insured, then it is okay to break it, because insurance will cover it. If it is not insured, then it's nothing of value."
I had the 3RLOD problem a few weeks back. I used a series of methods from RBJtech (Google search), and have been problem free since then. It's a fairly simple procedure, and quite fun if you are a tinker-head like me. It will void your warranty, so be aware of that.