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Posts with tag TechSupport

360 Thief calls tech support, gets busted


A 14 year old Kiwi stole an Xbox 360 but neglected to grab the power brick, as it was most likely too heavy for a clean getaway. So, the next day, he called the local tech support, and requested a new one, in the process giving the hot 360's serial number, his name, phone number, and address so that Microsoft New Zealand could mail him a new one. When the victim contacted MS, and gave his stolen console's SN, they informed him it had already been registered and they have the culprit's personal info, but couldn't reveal any information due to their privacy policy. The victim went to the police, who then contacted MS, and found that the only way they could get the information was through a court order. Only then were they able to make an arrest. Although, if we were in his shoes we probably would have just forked over the cash for another adapter.

[Via DC Emu]

Disc Read Error Rising


Dead Rising
is DOA on my 360. I loaded the menu ok, but when I tried to start the game, it smacked me with a disc read error, despite being a pristine new copy. The usual "clear the cache' tricks didn't help. But, as suspected, when I removed the hard drive, things worked fine. It turns out plenty of other deadly pissed off customers have a reason to stumble back to the mall with receipt in hand:

http://forums.xbox.com/6234648/ShowPost.aspx
http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/...000689731/p/14
http://boards.ign.com/dead_rising/b8413/125103317/p1/
http://www.capcom.com/BBS/showthread.php?threadid=11141
http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?t=28765

Some of these poor folks have already paid $130 to repair their 360 over what is almost certainly an issue with the game itself. When I called Microsoft Support, they told me that there are "multiple known issues" with Dead Rising and that MS is working with Capcom on a fix. Various rumors blame the fact that DR is supposedly the first game to utilize all three cores, but who knows? A couple days ago we were celebrating Capcom's success, and now I'm forced to conclude that Dead Rising is broken for a significant number of gamers.

Needless to say, my enthusiasm for this title is temporarly zombified. Hey Capcom, where's our patch?

Achtung! Xbox 360 overheating explained!


Ever get drunk and piss on the toilet seat without lifting the lid? I'll explain. The ever-resourceful Deutschland modding community has reportedly discovered the reason behind the 360's overheating issue. Xbox-Scene informs  that a group of German tech-heads from ModControl.com and GameStore24.de took apart two independently purchased consoles and discovered the protective foil on the heatsink had not been removed

On the left
[see above pic] you see the CPU heatsink and how the thermal compound should normally look like. On the right you see the ATI GPU heatsink and people who are used to assemble PCs themself known this isn't how it should look like. It's not just a thick layer of compound ... there's actaully a plastic protective foil on top of the thermal compound.

On the right a close-up of the protective layer/foil on top of the heat transfer pad. On the left the protective foil has been removed and placed next to the heat pad. This protective layer is probably placed by the manifacturer of the heatsink and is used to protect the heat transfer pad from dust, but should normally be removed just prior installing the heatsink on the GPU. The way it's installed now by MS the GPU chip makes contact with the plastic protection foil instead of the heat transfer pad. This can of course cause cooling issues for the graphics chip as for optimal cooling performance there should just be a thin layer of thermal pad between the GPU chip and heatsink.

They also have a video (in German) that appears to point out the offending foil.

How many consoles could be affected by this basic issue? Was the overheating scandal really as simple as Friday Happy Hour on the assembly lines? Hardware-savvy readers please weigh in. Also would any German-speakers care to translate?

[Previously: Motion filed to dismiss overheating lawsuit]

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