Xbox 360 Flashing Red Lights - How To Fix Them

Is your room glowing red, is there 3 red lights on the front of your Xbox 360? If so join the club it happens to thousands of people each and every year. What I can do is explain your four options to you and shed some light as to what causes them to appear on your console. First of all why is this happening to you?

1. Overheating is one of the major causes of the red ring of death on the Xbox 360. This can be easily avoided if you take care of your console ensuring that dust doesn't build up on the vents. Also taking care where you actually store your console making certain that there is sufficient space to allow good air flow around your console.

2. Making sure your power brick is kept cool is a good idea too. Keeping it on a flat surface and not on the carpet will allow a good circulation of air around it. Carpet and shaggy rugs will just trap the heat so that is way this is to be avoided.

3. Your console can suffer from a hardware failure. The most common is what is known as an E74 which means that there is an issue with AV cable. This particular problem can be fixed just by ensuring that the cable is plugged in correctly.

4. If you are unlucky enough to have 3 red lights flashing away at you then your console is currently experiencing a general hard ware failure. This is normally caused by a malfunction on the motherboard that causes certain parts of the solder to become brittle and break.

If you are looking at the 3 red lights you have four options left open to you I will explain a little more about them now for you.

1. Your first option is to buy a new console, this is probably not what you want to hear but I want to let you know about all your options. It can be fixed though and I will explain about these options for you now.

2. Sending your console back to Microsoft for repair may seem to be the obvious choice but unless you want to be without your console for a period of around six weeks. Also if your Xbox is out of warranty as most of them seem to be when this occurs it can cost in the region of $150 so this may not be for everyone.

3. You may have heard of the towel trick but I would not recommend this as it can actually cause more damage to your Xbox than it originally had. The trick basically involves wrapping the Xbox up in a towel and then heating it up to above normal operating temperatures.

4. For many people the ideal way to fix the red ring of death is to fix it themselves with information found on the internet. Doing it this way you could be up and running again in couple of hours. I would suggest using an Xbox repair guide if you are going to attempt this as it will make the job much easier.

Hopefully now you are aware of the facts to help you make an informed decision about getting your Xbox repaired as quickly as possible.