Xbox 360 3 Red Light Explained
If you're an avid video gamer and you have an Xbox 360 gaming unit, the good news is that you have the most popular gaming platform in the world. The bad news is that same popular gaming platform is prone to what has become known as the "xbox 360 3 red lights problem".There was an inherent design flaw in the early xbox units produced that caused overheating inside the XBoxe's console unit. This overheating damaged some of the units internal components. You could easily tell if you had the dreaded "Red Ring of Death" because as soon as you powered up your XBox, you would immediately see 3 red flashing lights on the front of the console. Those 3 flashing lights (where there are usually 3 steady green lights) are an indication of a hardware failure.
You may get lucky and be able to easily repair your XBox console just by turning it off, disconnecting the cables, then reconnecting them and turning the unit back on. However, even if this fix works for you, it is usually just temporary. The 3 red lights problem rarely goes away by itself.
Another way to repair the red light problem is to turn your XBox 360 off and take the hard drive out. After you have taken the drive out, you turn the console back on and see whether you see one flashing red light instead of 3. If you see a 1 red light error at this stage, your best bet is to call Microsoft's tech support. The Microsoft tech support hotline is staffed 24/7 so you can get started on having them fix the problem at any time. But before you send your XBox console back to Microsoft, you should look into one of the many Xbox 360 3 red lights repair guides available for download on the Internet to solve the problem. Keep in mind that if your XBox 360 is still under warranty when you open up the unit, you'll be voiding your warranty.
So the bottom line is that if you are already past Microsoft's 2 year extended warranty (which only covers the 3 red lights problem) your best bet is to look into a do-it-yourself repair using the downloadable guides. Most, if not all, of these guides now come with instructional videos that show you in detail every step of the repair process. You can stop, start, and rewind these videos as much as you need to so you get every step of the repair process done correctly.
