12 February 2011

XBox Fix for Red Ring of Death and E74

…without putting the main board in the oven or any other craziness.
I bought my XBox as a media extender, sot that I didn’t have to have the noisy fans of my server in the same room as the TV. I appreciate the XBoxes are still pretty noisy but they are quieter.
Anyhow I’ve become somewhat addicted to its ability to stream my TV and yes I’ll admit, play the odd game. Imagine my terror then when I turned it on, the lights around the power were all red and nothing came on the screen. I had the “Red Ring of Death”, which seems to mostly be caused by overheating of the CPU and or GPU.
Thanks to the Llamma’s Adventures site I found this post covering a solution which didn’t involve a costly return to MS, just some time, a few washers and heat sink paste. About two hours later and it was working again. Awesome.
Well its continued to work seamlessly for about 8 months now but the other day when I turned it on I got a single red light on the ring of death and the message: E74 on the screen.
When you get these light warnings you can get a secondary code by pressing and holding the sync button whilst you press the DVD drive button four times in succession. On each press the light will blink signifying a digit of a four digit error code where:
All four lights flashing = 0
One light flashing = 1
Two Lights flashing = 2
Three lights flashing = 3
Returning to the Llamma post I decided to tighten the screws as much as I dare and re-run the overheating of the GPU to re-flow the solder using his method of the fan over the CPU. After this I let it cool for about 20 minutes and then started up with my fingers crossed and it worked! Not sure how long it will last for of course!

Edit: It died again a few days later and as I'm in the process of moving it's been put in a box for a later date in a state of shame!

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