The ones that came out the first year.

Anything produced in the last couple of years has been modified in a number of ways. First MS started using epoxy to glue in the cpu and gpu (the RROD was caused by the gpu) - excess heat was causing the motherboard to warp and the chips would loosen, losing their connections. Then a new heat sink was added to the gpu, then a new cpu was fabricated, and most recently, a new gpu has been introduced. If you buy an XBox today, you shouldn't have to worry about RROD.

I'm on number 4 now, and never had a launch version so I suspect you are not completely correct, as more than the initial year ones have failed.

Can't base it off the 360 launch date, since a lot of those units were built in the months leading up to Nov/05.

I'm on my fourth now as well. The first one was bought nine or ten months after launch (april06 manufacture date), the next two had manufacture dates of mid summer of 2006 (july & aug). forget the date of the current one; the august one died in July of this year (08).

I'm on my second one, and the one that failed had a build date of Sept/Oct 2007.

Also, interestingly enough it did not RROD. It just kept freezing on anything and everything that I tried to play.

Today's "Archie" comic in the Toronto Sun was about RROD and the frustrations getting a working unit.

I don't think I've ever seen a consumer electronics failure so pervasive that it gets memorialized in a mainstream daily cartoon strip!

Here is a good article from Anandtech that came out today:

Jasper Is Here: A Look at the New Xbox 360 (http://www.anandtech.com/gadgets/showdoc.aspx?i=3472)

It covers the new XBox motherboard that is now out, as well as thoughts on possible explanations on the RROD, and why it has still occurred on some subsequent board revisions. An interesting note is that in their research, they found XBox's with the original Zephyr motherboards in new lots. You definitely don't want one of those!

This is turning into a joke console. Our 5th xbox360 died lastnight. Funny though, we had the red ring of death flashing but could still paly for a bit.
When is Gates going to fix this crap?
Pretty bad when you have to buy a spare xbox so you don't have any down time.
On Nov 19th Our 5th 360 died(RROD). When called that day and they said that they would email us the label to save time. Well, after 3 try's we still didn't get a label so we asked to do it the old way and send us a coffin instead. The coffin arrived today and it's on the way back. Sad, real sad.
In the mean time We bought another 360. I guess it doesn't hurt to have a spare.

In the mean time We bought another 360. I guess it doesn't hurt to have a spare.

I wonder how the so-called console war would look if they counted only units still in service?

I wonder how the so-called console war would look if they counted only units still in service?
In all honesty, who cares?

I'm more interested in enjoying a good game experience than I am concerned who makes more money, MS or Sony. I buy the console I think will give me the best experience, not the one that makes me a fanboy of A, B, or C company. The console war is little more than marketing. Unless you have stock in either company, there is no "war". Do all competiting products have "wars"? Who's winning the clothes detergent "war" this week?

Tide is of course. There is always a product race, product war whatever you want to call it.

Xbox 360 elite died after about a month. Phoned xbox support, they said they would send a box. A couple hours later I got a couple of e-mail, one contained a ups label and shipping instructions. I figured the girl I talked to a screwed up when she said they would send me a box so I took it into the UPS store and they said they would ship it no problem. Its been a couple of weeks now and when I try and check the repair status on the website I keep getting a message saying "improper postal code." I've tried phoning to confirm they have my proper postal code on file so I actually get my xbox sent to the right address but the voice menu keeps referring me back to the website for current repairs. Has anyone else had a similar problem with the webpage and should I not worry about it? I'm just concerned I'm not going to get my xbox back and that it will be a nightmere trying to fight for a new one.

You think that's bad? Try getting them to send the box to a different address than the one that's normally associated with your xbox live account (such as your workplace).

Actually, don't try it. You've experienced enough frustration!

What do people think of the Anandtech article? I'm no expert but based on what's described in the article, the RROD problem is still possible even with the Jasper models. People who claim that the Falcon and Jasper models won't suffer RROD may be correct but in my view, those models may not have been in the field long enough to suggest that the problem is rectified. The article's put me firmly back in the wait till the problem is really fixed camp. Sad.

Hi everyone... wanted to write about my replacement process in the event it may help someone. I bought a new XBox 360 with the 20 gb hard drive from Costco in February 2008 for ~$450 including tax. The XBox was manufactured in November 2007. As well, during the summer in anticipation of Rockband 2 I upgraded to the 120 gb hard drive and used the hard drive transfer cable. Piece of cake... and put the 20 gb hard drive into storage.

Well a few weeks ago in earyl December 2008, particularly since the last OS upgrade I began to notice that my discs were not reading. I would put it in the tray, it would whir for awhile, and then give me the "open tray" message. I googled this problem only to be disappointed that others had similar experiences and the drive was toast.

I gathered up by original packaging (swapped back the 20 gb HDD) and bill and went to Costco. I knew it may be a long-shot but wanted to try a return since they have the 1 year returns on most items (except computer, printers, cameras, etc but NOT consoles). To my surprise the TOOK it back. Kudos to Costco. I immediately bought their latest Xbox bundle for $400 which now comes with the 60 gb drive.

Got home and had everything running in about an hour. Swapped the 120 gb drive back in immediately and went to the XBox "Transfer Licenses" tool site to migrate all my rockband DLC licenses to the new console...

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/support/systemuse/xbox360/licensemigration/

I had 82 licenses to manually go through but was able to do it in about 45 minutes. Apparently I am allowed to move my licenses to a new console 1 time per year so hopefully this new one lasts at least 12 months.... otherwise I need to stay logged in to my XBox live profile online to access my DLC.

Bottom line... I think I was extremely lucky to NOT have to go through the XBox coffin process and HIGHLY recommend purchasing consoles from Costco given their exceptional return policy. They were very good to deal with in this situation and seemed to know about the numerous problems with returned XBoxes.

Hey folks,

my second console just died today, no video output but i still have audio. So we tried another cable just to be sure, but of course my video card is toast. Of course I'm out of the warrenty period so Microsoft wants me to pay for the repair which is $110. Needless to say I got a little fired up and asked for a supervisor. The supervisor said that he would knock the $110 down to $55, and he included 1 month of xbox live gold, which I think is pretty standard. So I will keep you all updated on the time line.

Dec. 23 called for the coffin.

omg
If you go back a few posts you would see We bought a spare 360 while waiting for our 5th 360 to come back from rrod repair.
Well, my son opened it christmas day and we hooked it up. After less that 3 hours total use the unit has died. No rrod, no boot. the xbos logo or dashboard doesn't come up. We unplugged it for a bit then it fired up only to lockup a few minutes later. No boot again.

I'm gonna try return it to Staples since we only had it a few weeks.

Received the coffin and shipped it out today, the holiday really screwed me over. They should get the box tomorrow as per purolator, so I hope to receive it back around Feb. 1st. I will update this as i get more info.

Dec. 23 called for the coffin.
Jan. 3 received coffin.
Jan. 5 shipped out the parcel.

Called 12/08 for box.

Receive box 12/13

return unit 12/13

Get unit back from ms

1/2/2009

unit dead 30 minutes into trying to play... :(

Got the xbox back yesterday, and it looks like they just gave me a new one, as opposed to a refirb. Manufactured date is nov 28, 2008 and this one seems to run alot quieter than my last one.


Dec. 23 called for the coffin.
Jan. 3 received coffin.
Jan. 5 shipped out the parcel.
Jan. 21 received new xbox.

Hummm... Interesting. What vintage was the first one you returned. I returned a Xenon pro and got another xenon pro - the serial number on the unit indicates the original build date ( as opposed to the date on the label...) I was told when they refurb that they rip out the guts and that there is no real generation of these units (Not sure if that makes sense)

Miles

Got the xbox back yesterday, and it looks like they just gave me a new one, as opposed to a refirb. Manufactured date is nov 28, 2008 and this one seems to run alot quieter than my last one.


Dec. 23 called for the coffin.
Jan. 3 received coffin.
Jan. 5 shipped out the parcel.
Jan. 21 received new xbox.