Xbox 360 has died a slow and painful death and Microsoft has come to the rescue.
I hadn't played with the beast for about 6 months, and decided to jump onto my favourite game, Red Dead Redemption. Due to the lack of time the had been a system update, so I had to wait for that to get applied. And then jumped into and tried my best to be as good as I had been, in the multiplayer gang matches.
Mind you I did get my butt handed to me on a platter.
But I noticed something very interesting, the graphics on the machine had turned into a washed out colour, sort of pixelated so to speak with streaks of the colour going across the screen, hence the washed out effect.
No big deal I thought, so I switched the unit off and waited for a few minutes and switched it back on.
This is when the troubles started.
Now I will stress that this is one of the very early Xbox 360's and only has the 20gig HD installed, and that I feel extremely lucky that in the 6 years that have had it, I have experienced the dreaded RROD (Read Ring of Death). Most of you will know what that means, and the lucky part for me was that I wasn't aware at the time what it meant. So I had just left it alone for a few more weeks, and had experienced this a few more times. Microsoft had asked me to return it the first time it happened, but due to the fact I never had it again for sometime to come, never gave it any thought.
Till a month ago, when I started to get these graphic problems.
Now I think I left the unit of for about 10mins while I went and made a coffee, and came back and switched it on and started seeing on the TV Screen Mode not Supported. Not knowing what to do, I started searching through Google and found no solution that would work for me. Plenty of blind attempts and know how to reset the display settings, but it appears none would work.
I decided to have a play with the cable and eventually got it up and running, to do this I had to switch it over to the RCA cables reset the graphics that way and switch it back over to the component cable. Cool, the message went away and I got about 2-3 hours of game play in before the graphics went again. Once again I switched the unit off and left it for about 10mins or so, and tried to switch it back on. That was the first RROD for so long, I thought damn I should have just sent it off when Microsoft asked me, all those years ago.
The next few days I decided to try it again, and it again just worked and got about 3 days of good play out of it before it happened again. The graphics again decided to go all washy, and when switching it off and back on again I was presented with the RROD. Again I waited a few more days, and although the RROD never happened again, I got the Mode not Supported again to the point no matter what I did wouldn't work, even the trick I tried last time refused to work this time.
So I jumped on the phone and was told that it would cost to repair, damn. I thought hang on a minute, I decided to mention that I had rung once before with the RROD issue and was told that I would need to ring the customer support line. After not being able to ring the number as it would tell me to go back to the website, I emailed the support guy back again, who then said he would get someone to call.
After a few minutes it was obvious that everything that I was asked to try, I had been down the road and tried everything the support person could think of trying. He then raised it to the next level and said someone would call me back soon, after 2 days I then got a phone call and was told that if I returned the unit they would replace it with a refurbished unit.
I wasn't expecting this level off support after all the unit is one of the very first batches that landed in Australia, and although it is a second hand unit that they have fixed and repaired before. I was glad to hear that I would be getting it under warranty this time only, and I am kind of happy about it and then I thought what if this unit starts playing up with the same problems that I was having with the graphics.
Oh well, will just have to wait and see, and who knows I might never have that problem again anyway.
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