Yep, it’s been about a month and this means it is time for an update. Well .. as expected UPS is terrible. I never got the package, and had to wait until the repair order showed as ‘canceled, no repair’. Which is finally did. Time to try again.
Because the promised free empty box has not been delivered by UPS, I had to wait and wait. The tracking number is magic. It was found, it disappeared, they said it could not have been made, and then they confirm there is one, but no package. In other words: business as usual for them. Anyway, I waited until the xbox.nl page mentioned no repair pending or whatever and I could order a new one. Which I did last night.
A new confirmation, a new email, a new tracking number. Let’s try again! It’s again as last time a valid tracking number (let’s hope it stays like that) and I put it in the Dashboard delivery checker widget and using growl notification I can see if it updates.
The wait is now for the box to get delivered, then put the bare bone x360 in it and ship it back. (and pray that UPS actually delivers it to Microsoft Repair Center). Trust me, I will take pictures of the box, the x360, the 360 in the box, and packaged and labeled. And a picture of the confirmation slip from the post office that they took it out of my hands.
Anyway, technical difficulties aside. I watched Revision3.com’s Tekzilla the other day and it had a segment about the site http://www.llamma.com/ which has modding + error code information. Since I don’t give a crap about modding my x360 at this point (still under warranty!) I was there for obvious reasons. To try and determine if I could debug what might be up. What does which red ring of fail mean?
Well.. it turns out that I actually get 3 segments, which means a hardware failure. So it’s not something else specific like ‘AV Cable not plugged in’ or something easy I could perhaps fix myself.
I’ve also learned a great trick that you can press the tiny white button on the box (sync) while I get the 3 rings, then press eject, this will make it flicker. It did, all 4 rings (so that’s a 0). Then do it again, which made it flicker with 1 ring (so that’s a 1), then it did a 4 (0) and a 2 (2). So my error code is 0102. Which according to their page is an unknown error, hardware related (of course, the error I have is the only one that’s unknown). However .. it did mentioned that usually this is expected to be solder points being shit and perhaps got loose. Which is one of the bigger reasons why the x360 needs to get fixed/replaced. They offer a kit on the site, but since I have warranty, … let MS fix it.
Anyway .. I now know it is not something simple that I can fix myself, I get a constant RROD now and I can’t use the x360 at all anymore. The problem has 100% locked the system down. With or without harddrive, with or without accessoiries, with or without a wired or wireless connection. With or without a game disk in it. It doesn’t matter. IF it does load it freezes within a minute, and rebooting drops it into RROD. So I can’t even try to do initial setup restore, or clear the hard drive .. plus the code 0102 kind of gives away it’s not software but hardware related.
In the IT world we consider this not a solution, but progress. We now know more about the problem and it simply needs to get fixed. So .. ordered the repair, they’re sending an empty box. I send it to them. They repair it and send it back (or replace it and send it back). And I can game again for a year (but hopefully longer).
37% fail rate on x360, and they’re allowed to sell it. Wow. But anyway. Three year warranty and I am in the second year now. No gaming for me this summer since end June. Boo!
Anyhoo, I thought you guys might enjoy a tiny story and an update. 🙂
I can’t wait for Part 4 where I tell you guys I got the UPS delivery and then Part 5 where I mention I actually got it back and it works.
So far this joke has cost me from end June until end August – two months.