
Unfortunate reader Tim has an update on his Chromehounds problem (read part one of his sad tale here):
I recently told you guys about chromehounds killing my box. After reading the comments and your reaction, I blew it off as a coincedence. It recently started working again for no reason. As I had already paid for the repair and was awaiting a box to send MS my shiny broken 360, I decided to try and put chromehounds in again. I got through about 30 seconds of the opening cinematic and BLAM! the screen turned into a strange grid and there was a blaring beep. I turned off my xbox, and when I started it again, Lo and behold: the accursed "ring of death" was back.
Double coincidence?
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
8-02-2006 @ 11:46AM
David said...
This is an idiotic post.
The 3 red lights of death represent a hardware problem. Playing a certain piece of SOFTWARE cannot cause HARDWARE to break. The most it could cause is a harddrive error, but then your system would still work with the hard drive removed.
Most likely something randomly broke while you happened to be playing chromehounds. Often with those errors the system will randomly work for about 5 min at a time before crashing again. You happened to put chromehounds in again and it was still broken.
SOFTWARE cannot cause HARDWARE faliure.
stop putting up inane rediculous posts.
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8-02-2006 @ 11:48AM
Measure said...
Unfortunately, this gamer does not say if he tested his xbox with a known working game before the second crash.
Ideally, he should have tested his machine thoroughly with as many games as possible to rule out another factor causing the crash.
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8-02-2006 @ 11:50AM
Buffalo said...
By that same logic... OBLIVION KILLED MY 360!!!
I realize it's a slow news day, but going back to the same guy who has had the same problem as a LOT of other people??? Just a shade ludicrous.
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8-02-2006 @ 11:52AM
A Griffis said...
Hey buddy, try this:
http://xbox360.qj.net/Fixing-Chromehounds-Ring-of-Death-in-Four-Easy-Steps/pg/49/aid/60539
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8-02-2006 @ 12:06PM
jc said...
David, that is not entirely true. Software can cause the processor to run past it's peak in a prolonged state, causing the CPU to overheat (and die).
As a tech, I also remember a virus from 1999 - 'Chernobyl'. This virus destroyed the BIOS and resulted in many motherboards being replaced.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_virus
While I am not saying that Chromehounds destroys the X360, I wouldn't rule it out 100% either... best to wait and see what the MS tech team finds out.
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8-02-2006 @ 12:15PM
Michael said...
www.xbox360fanboy.com, I would like to see if its possible for you to get me in contact with the person who reported this to you.
I am now also having the exact same issues with my 360. Im seeing heavy artifacting (the grid) and a loud squelch sound the moment it locks up. It was only doing it during chromehounds, now it does it sometimes while in the dashboard. Attempting to restart the 360 results in me usually getting the ring of death.
The video artifacting looks a lot like what happens to your screen when you overclock your PC videocard too much. missplaced video textures all over the screen and such. The best way to describe it is like this: It looks a lot like what happens when you unplug your 360 from your network cable during a download. That funky screen with the grids? the missplaced video textures? looks almost exactly like that.
Perhaps the game itself is pushing the hardware too much? I dont know, im now waiting on a box to send my 360 in to be looked at. I find it funny though that everyone is screaming coincedence when people are experiencing the same issue with the same game.
Over 10 360 games and several months of play and now im having the EXACT same issue this person is after playing chromehounds for a few days? Heh, sorry, I cant afford to be as blind as some people and claim its something else when its obviously the game thats causing this.
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8-02-2006 @ 12:16PM
Ryan said...
My 360 died the other day...in the MUSIC PLAYER.
I was about to start a song, then I got some crazy grid, and I think some loud beep or something. It froze quite a few times during the FFXI Beta, but only a couple times during the retail version.
I'm currently waiting for UPS to drop off my box.
I think we called Saturday night, it's now Wednesday.
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8-02-2006 @ 12:21PM
Ryan said...
P.S. I'm starting to think that a lot more 360's are afftected than some people are putting on.
My 360 lasted just about 7 months, then completely pooped out.
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8-02-2006 @ 12:29PM
kevanko said...
My xbox 360 is 7 months old and i own 8 games ,i have never had a problem ..never.
i bought CHROMEHOUNDS on friday ,played for a couple of hours .saturday i power up my 360 and it crashes (cheqeured flag effect on screen)removed game ,tried again ..3 red segments...
tried various checks and games ,no change .so i phone support(still waiting for reply) So tuesday i try my 360 again ...and hey it works ..no problems since..
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8-02-2006 @ 12:35PM
Grog140 said...
I think its also funny. My 360 died twice....
I would really love to hear some reasoning from Microsoft as to why they are dying to avoid the problem in the future AND to know exactly what is happening.
My 360 died twice, and I have no idea why! My second 360 was treated like a human, I put a cooling fan under it as well as following every advisory very carefully.
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8-02-2006 @ 12:50PM
mike said...
well this is why E3 has changed to not lot sites that post stuff like this in.. for the better i think
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8-02-2006 @ 12:56PM
Aaron said...
I had a first run Xbox 360 which had the same problem. I first noticed that the surround sound would sometimes have a lot of bleeps, noise and then cut out. A few months after the first audio problem my 360 started to lock up and freeze in the middle of a game. I thought it was all a coincidence at first. Last month I was deleting all the E3 stuff I download from the marketplace when the 360 locked up in the middle of deleting a file. The screen gave me the same checker board grid pattern. After I restarted the system I went on deleting items and the screen froze on the same pattern again. Next I tried loading up PDZ and as soon as I started a deathmatch my Xbox froze yet again. Well that pissed me off so I restarted the xbox for the third time and then I got the red ring-o-death. It never worked again.
I called Microsoft to see what was up and they said some of the first run 360 have had problems. They gave the same story to send in my system and hard drive in for repair and I would get it back in 2 weeks at no charge. Well I didn't want to be with out my 360 for 2 weeks so I called EB Games to find out what the $40 warranty I bought with my system would do for me. They replaced my system with a new 360 that day and I also bought another warranty. I called Microsoft back and canceled my repair and found out that the first guy I talked to was wrong. It would have cost me $120 to fix and I would have lost my hard drive if I would have sent it in. So the moral of the story is to buy the warranty from the store.
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8-02-2006 @ 12:58PM
Sinnix said...
WHAT?! That's WAY TOO WEIRD. The EXACT same thing happened to me playing Chromehounds. I sent mine out to be replaced yesterday.
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8-02-2006 @ 1:03PM
Izzy said...
I have a question since Im considering getting a Xbox 360... That being of 100 Xbox users, how many will run into this sort of quality problem if they use there 360 system at a avrage pace, (being something like 2 to 4 hours a day, 3 times a week?)
Izzy
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8-02-2006 @ 1:09PM
Doug K said...
This also only happened to me while I was playing Chromehounds. My 360, which I've had since January, very rarely locked up before then. I had never even heard that crazy beep sound before I played Chromehounds. Now Im really pissed because I had to send my 360 in for repairs ($130). If this definately turns out to be an issue caused by Chromehounds, I'm going to explode.
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8-02-2006 @ 1:13PM
Chappy said...
Izzy, 3 of the 100 will encounter problems with their 360s. I don't recall the specific interview or article, but a 3% failure rate was specificly stated by Microsoft during the flareup aurrounding "overheating power supplies" shortly after launch. While it would suck to be one of the three, Microsoft's return policy is pretty good, and the failure rate is a bit lower than the industry average. I say buy your 360, and "burn it in" by leaving it powered on and running games for a couple of days to see if you'll encounter any problems.
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8-02-2006 @ 1:14PM
joe said...
hey yes i to am running into weird red rings issues.
i think its totally the games breaking the system. which in that case MS need to get a handle on this.if my second 360 dies i dont care of gear of war jerks you off while you play, the 360 and MS hardware is dead in my book, and my 24-35 year old dispposeable income wont get one red cent from me agian, not matter how much i hate sony.
My first console died of a hardware error shortly after obvilion came out, it died while playing a COD2 game which had just been patched. I decided to be nice and go out and buy a new console rather then dick around and wait for a replacement one and then all that other BS. $400 is not that much money.
But now...
i finished a game of chromehounds and i powered off my 360(via power button), but oddly the fans and system seemed to stay on,nothing was being displayed on the tv, but both the fans were still going, i didnt think anything off it and went to sleep, in the mourning i went outside and to my suprise the 360 was still warm, not very hot but at least 70F, and the fans were still spinnning.
So i was like wtf?
I had to unpluged the power from the system and that of course killed the fans, i did it a few times and it continued to act like it was on when it wasnt supposed to be. but then later that night when i tired to fire up ghost recon, the system would hang when i booted it up, it would make a werid sound as if the DVD tray was blocked by something and then it would just not boot pass the 360 logo. So this being my SECOND 360 (i got a prieium at lanch which died shortly after obvoilion came out) i started to freak out.I tried keep loading it verticaly, take out HD but slow was worsening until i got a red ring, and a message w/ the grid in chinese/korean/english telling me to call xbox customer service.
At this point i was like 2 am, i was sooo anoyed.
I repostioned the 360 horitzonal and instead of trying to boot it with the power on button i used the open tray, which promtly open the disc tray and booted the 360,MUCH FASTER like 200% improvment in boot speed. and then nothing no delay into signing into live, nothing. it boot and signed.
but this makes me so annoyed becasue now its made me so parnoia about how long i can leave the game on, how long i can play for, and what game is going to break my console. what do i only have X amount of hours on this console before chromehounds or the next game kills my system? bullshit...
MS you need to get your shit together, i bought a warrantly for the second one, but if it breaks im sending both broken systems to MS, and tell them they can keep them.
I mean i never heard of a game breaking a console.
I mean you think developer would play test the game for hours (im talking 40+) rather then just boot it up and make sure it compiles.
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8-02-2006 @ 1:21PM
J.Goodwin said...
My advice is that the 360 seems to be very sensitive to power fluctuations in it's current configuration. The appropriate way to protect any sensitive equipment is to power them through an uninterruptable power supply which not only eliminates spikes (like a surge protector) but also powers through drops (brownouts).
With the prevalence of computers, tivos, consoles with hard drives, and other technical equipment in households, the grid is getting really unreliable in a lot of places, not to mention that it just degenerates with age.
A $40 battery backup box from best buy, circuit city, compusa, or radio shack will protect your system from problems caused by these type of power fluctuations.
In my personal experience, when I've dragged my 360 out to the main television, and just plugged it into the wall, I can expect system freezes. If I also haul out my UPS, then there are no problems. So that is what I attribute most of these problems too.
Also, you need to install the system with three inches around the sides and top, and six inches in the back. That's just common sense for something that produces heat.
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8-02-2006 @ 1:26PM
Drew said...
This guy is an idiot. Tell him to reboot the fucking console.
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8-02-2006 @ 1:40PM
puh_fifer said...
It is just a coincidence. Everytime there's a new game people start going off about the game destroying their 360.
Me and 4 of my friends have been playing chromehounds for over 80 hours with no problems other than crappy servers. Every disk is the same piece of software, so if it was Chromehounds we'd have dead 360's too.
If anything your 360 was hovering at death's door and chromehounds pushed it over because there was already an underlying HARDWARE problem.
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