360's freezing/overheating

[scooby_dooby]

http://www.ga-forum.com/showthread.php?t=72274&page=1&pp=50

http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=461074&st=0

http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=461073&pid=3052464&st=0&

http://forum.teamxbox.com/showthread.php?t=391542&page=1&pp=15

http://forum.teamxbox.com/showthread.php?t=392011&page=1&pp=15

http://forum.teamxbox.com/showthread.php?t=392003

ouch...

Good thing is when you pop open the 360 they;ve included free service and extended warantee for 2 full years.

I haevn't had any problems with freezing so far.

LOL at the nes trick, lick the plug, worked every time! remember playing the PS1 upside down?

 

[hey69]

in belgium every electronics suplier is obliged to give 2 year waranty.. so atleast thats covered dunno about rest of europe

 

[Shifty Geezer]

In the UK it varies from appliance to appliance. A VCR might have a statutory 'lifespan' of 3 years. Of course no-one tells the consumer this, and instead stores try to sell them extended warranties. So if your console goes bust in 2 years time and the manufacturer's warranty is for 1 year, you may well still be legally entitled to a replacement/repair, depending on what the statutory lifespan of the console is set at. This is info I got off a friend who's a member of the UK Consumer Watchdog something or other group, who always gives consumer rights info at every opportunity!

 

[StefanS]

in belgium every electronics suplier is obliged to give 2 year waranty.. so atleast thats covered dunno about rest of europe

That's EU law.

 

[Guden Oden]

You've never blown air into an NES cart? Common

Jeez, come on, how friggin long ago was that? Twenty friggin years ago that's what. Besides, that issue took quite a while before it started to show up.

And to the saliva-man... Jesus, are you nuts? Not only is saliva an electrolyte (thus adding to the corrosion), there's all kinds of gunk in saliva, mucus n stuff, that REALLY don't belong on electrical connectors. What a crazy idea!

 

[rabidrabbit]

I'd pee on a NES cart

 

[one]

A movie and pic of 360 crashing
http://www.xbox-scene.com/xbox1data/sep/EEFkZkkkyEHasmrPqu.php

 

[dizzyd]

Good thing is when you pop open the 360 they;ve included free service and extended warantee for 2 full years.

I haevn't had any problems with freezing so far.

LOL at the nes trick, lick the plug, worked every time! remember playing the PS1 upside down?

Are you sure its a 2 year warranty? I've read from other forums that it was only 90 days.

 

[London Geezer]

In the UK i'm pretty sure it's 90 days if not 60. Certainly not 2 years cause we have to buy 1 (or more) year warranties on top of the items if we need them, except those cases when it's already included. But it's certainly not compulsory.

 

[MrWibble]

Not Nintendo.

Never heard of an unreliable Nintendo product, even on launch day. While I don't want to make any kind of big deal out of this, but it is slightly worrying when there's a whole bunch of people posting on the net of unstable or even dead 360s so soon after launch.

My first N64 remains the only bit of gaming hardware I've owned that's outright died on me. My PS1 (which I got a couple of days before launch thanks to my local indie dealer) still works, as does everything else I've ever bought (right back to my Amigas and even my Vic20).

I've had a few spectacular deaths of PC hardware though

When you mass produce a bit of hardware to the level of a console (even if they had 700,000 for launch, that's probably more than 10 times more than the average TV sells over it's entire lifespan), you're going to get a lot of failures. With the internet being so pervasive these days it's inevitable that we'll hear about a lot of these failures and not so many reports of the ones that actually just work ok...

On the other hand, having heard so many reports so soon after launch, I'm certainly not rushing out to order one any time soon...

 

[MrWibble]

In the UK i'm pretty sure it's 90 days if not 60. Certainly not 2 years cause we have to buy 1 (or more) year warranties on top of the items if we need them, except those cases when it's already included. But it's certainly not compulsory.

Compulsory or not, warrantied or not, UK consumer regulations say that you can expect something to work for a reasonable amount of time. The duration will vary, but I'd suggest that if your console fails within a year or two of purchase you could probably kick up a fuss and get it fixed.

For a TV, I believe "reasonable" is 6-7 years, regardless of the manufacturers warranty.

The extended warranties offered by some of the high-street stores are basically a scam as far as I'm concerned. They might offer some advantages like a new item instead of a repair, or an on-site visit instead of a take-it-back-to-the-shop deal, but you are afforded a decent level of protection as standard. A shop or manufacturer cannot cancel out your rights just because they want to make a shoddy product.

 

[London Geezer]

Compulsory or not, warrantied or not, UK consumer regulations say that you can expect something to work for a reasonable amount of time. The duration will vary, but I'd suggest that if your console fails within a year or two of purchase you could probably kick up a fuss and get it fixed.

Get it fixed, sure, but nothing's compulsory or free to the consumer.
I know that Samsung provide very cool policies on their HDTVs (zero dead pixels policy and on-site repairs when they can), but it really depends on the company.

 

[Powderkeg]

OK, after reading a lot of threads at other sites and owning one myself, this is my opinion.


The biggest problem here is USER ERROR!

It is a classic case of people not bothering to RTFM.

From page 3 of the manual:

Prevent the Console from Overheating

Do not block any ventilation openings on the console or power supply. Do not place the console or power supply on a bed, sofa, or other soft surface that may block ventilation openings. Do not place the console or power supply in a confined space such as a bookcase, or stereo cabinet, unles the space is well ventilated.

Do not place the console or power supply near any heat sources, such as radiators, heat registers, stoves, or amplifiers.

In just about every overheating case I have seen so far, they've done the bolded part.



This includes myself, who overheated my 360 yesterday. After that I read the manual, saw that page, and reloated my 360 to a place within my entertainment center that does have free airflow out the back. Since then it runs much much cooler and the fan noise is greatly reduced.


BTW, the loud fan noise is a sign the system isn't getting enough air. The fan speed is dynamic so it increases the hotter the system is. If your 360 is loud, make sure it has someplace to vent all of the hot air it pushes out. (There is a lot of hot air being driven out the top-back of the system.)

 

[Carl B]

This overheating thing is a problem. Say what you will of the Internet age we live in, but that Microsoft even has a status light for the system that indicates it's overheated is somewhat telling. Even if the distortion of the web were making things seem worse than they are, the distortion of the web will be what results in things actually being worse for Microsoft than they are - because people will watch out for it and more readily call MS to get their consoles replaced. We're not there yet, but this is the stuff of recalls; and if it avoids reaching that point, at least in effect we're in a quasi state of it already.

I read this post yesterday on TXB and was frankly a little surprised.

Ok I phoned tech support, I was on hold for about 40min. The first guy didn’t really know what he was talking about, he kept trying to tell me to do things I had already tried like unplug everything or “read the manual” so he connected me to someone else. This guy seemed like a gamer or he at least knew what he was talking about. He told me that they were having several problems with the launch consoles, the hdd problem, overheating, something to do with the HD to SDTV thing on the back, game disks being scratched , problems with the operating system and a few disk read errors.
He said the overheating problem will be the most common and that this is what I have. (If your console turns off or the screen freezes 90% of the time its an over heating issue. If you get one of the error screens its and OS problem.) he said for both of these problems they need to replace the console and that it would take 6-10 weeks!!! I asked why and he said that they are experiencing more problems then hey had hoped and that he is supposed to say 6-8 weeks, but last week he was telling people 4-6 and those people would be waiting until mid-january. He wouldn’t go further into that though. He did tell me that I could hold onto the system and use it as much as I can for 2 or 3 weeks, send it in then and I would still get it back 6-10 weeks from now.
Anyways the warranty covers any of those major problems I stated above so that’s good. I guess #1 on MS list is to sell all of their consoles to new customers and let the people with problematic ones wait until after the holidays.

I see MS making money on games and peripherals hand over fist this holiday season, but if a lot of launch consoles end up needing to be replaced that's going to be a costly move for MS. Not only are they taking a large hit on loss-leading hardware replacement at the very beginning of it's life, but it diverts console volume that might otherwise have been directed to retail outlets.

 

[gmoran]

Do not block any ventilation openings on the console or power supply. Do not place the console or power supply on a bed, sofa, or other soft surface that may block ventilation openings. Do not place the console or power supply in a confined space such as a bookcase, or stereo cabinet, unles the space is well ventilated.

I'm not convinced that's a reasonable condition, a lot of people will be expecting to able to house their 360's in an AV cabinet. If the 360 can't operate in range of reasonable and expected AV environments then that's a design issue not a user issue - IMO.

 

[Carl B]

I'm not convinced that's a reasonable condition, a lot of people will be expecting to able to house their 360's in an AV cabinet. If the 360 can't operate in range of reasonable and expected AV environments then that's a design issue not a user issue - IMO.

Agreed; the average person on the street will naturally expect (and rightfully so?) to be able to put this console in any enclosure all past consoles have occupied. It is a consumer electronics device afterall, and it's design is supposed to enable it to fit people's 'lifestyles.'

 

[MrWibble]

Get it fixed, sure, but nothing's compulsory or free to the consumer.
I know that Samsung provide very cool policies on their HDTVs (zero dead pixels policy and on-site repairs when they can), but it really depends on the company.

Consumers have a reasonable amount of rights in this country, it's just that many people aren't fully aware of them, and companies will gloss over them or try to imply they don't exist by listing their own warranty conditions (which should really only be in addition to the standard rights you have).

Sometimes you have to kick up a hell of a fuss to get a particular company to comply with the rules, but it's usually possible so long as you know you're in the right. I've returned a PC card for a full refund, weeks after installing it, because it turned out not to be compatible with my PC. The seller swore blind that "they didn't accept used/opened returns" etc., and that it was my fault for my PC not being compatible with the card... the bottom line however is that my PC met all the requirements listed by the card manufacturer, so the fact that it didn't work constituted a fault and it wasn't "fit for the purpose" it was sold for. They tried very hard to make it my problem, but I wasn't falling for it - eventually I got my full refund. I expect a lot of people might have just given up when the retailer first refused to accept it...

Of course it always helps to have a friend in trading standards who knows the right wording to use when sorting a problem out

 

[Shifty Geezer]

As Mr. Wibble says and I've said early, as UK consumers our rights go much further than most people realize. The paper warrantees are worth squat in the face of much stronger consumer rights. It's just an uneducated populace don't know the law protecting them and don't realize when the VCR packs in 1 day after warrantee, they're actually covered for another few years. Presumably this was to stop built in life-spans where some tech would unfortunately and unexpectedly so soon after warrantee just develop and unfortunate fault...

 

[gmoran]

In the UK i'm pretty sure it's 90 days if not 60. Certainly not 2 years cause we have to buy 1 (or more) year warranties on top of the items if we need them, except those cases when it's already included. But it's certainly not compulsory.

In the UK all consumer electronics is covered by a 1 year manufacturers warranty - just got my mobile phone replaced by O2 two weeks befoire its first year aniversary. But as others say our rights can extend beyond even that.

 

[one]

Do not place the console or power supply in a confined space such as a bookcase, or stereo cabinet, unles the space is well ventilated.

Um isn't it a bit demanding for casual users, especially about the PSU.