James Dean’s

Xbox 360 3 Red Light Fix Repair Guide

Review

By John Hitchen

Ease of Use : 
Video Quality:
Comprehensive:
Instructions:

So like many, I received the Xbox 360 3 red rings! (ring of death, red ring of death, rrod, 3 red lights, E74 Error- whatever you want to call it.) And like many my first instinct was to call Microsoft directly and see what I would do to have to get it back up in working order. The problem was that they wanted over $140 and two months to fix my system.

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I then spent a lot of time visiting forums and even purchasing a few of the so called Xbox 360 repair guides. The problem was that most of them were absolute shit! They weren’t very high quality, and made it really difficult to understand how to fix my xbox.

This unfortunately is the problem with most guides. They’re really small and hard to see, even if the info is correct. If I can’t see what to do, it doesn’t help me! Not to mention some guides can be very expensive and not deliver or even destroy or ruin your system with their advice. So by now you should know I spent a lot of time talking to people and looking.  I found James Dean’s guide probably about two years ago, and have been using it to consistently fix (32) Xbox’s up till now. Not a lot I admit, but I do it for friend’s every now and again. And sometimes we offer the service to people we know in the store.

Click Here Now To Fix Your Xbox In Just an Hour or Less

Now if you’re like most, you probably don’t want to spend $140 getting your system fixed, but at the same time you’re scared about trying to fix your own system. Well let me guarantee you that this guide really does work, and it’s not complicated at all, even a not-so geeky guy like myself was able to fix my Xbox 360 3 red lights problem. So let me give you an overview of the process and tell you about James Dean’s wonderful repair guide.

What you will need:

• Artic Silver 5 thermal compound kit (with thermal compound remover)
• Torx 8 screw driver
• Torx 10 screw driver
• Flathead screw driver
• Pliers
• Alcohol

Now that you have everything.

This repair guide will fix all of the following:

• Freeze ups
• Distorted Graphics
  
• 2 red lights error
• 3 red lights error (ring of death)
• E74 Error

What comes with the guide:

• 3 Red Lights Fix Pro Repair Guide
• 8 High Definition (High quality) Videos (So you can see everything he’s doing, unlike other low resolution guides that make it impossible to see anything go on.)
• 60 day 100% Money Back Guarantee!

Click on Image to make it larger!

How to Fix Your Xbox 360 Repair Guide - Full Review!

Disassembling the Xbox 360

Once you receive your Xbox 360 3 red lights repair guide. You’ll receive all 8 videos and the guide. The first video will walk  you through everything you will need as well as how to begin disassembling your Xbox 360. You will see where you need to poke some of the latches as where to begin unscrewing to get your case open.

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Removing the Motherboard on the Xbox 360

Once you start the second video, you’ll be shown what to unplug and not to unplug. How to remove the dvd drive, fan and motherboard. We don’t want to damage anything, so make sure you have the videos before attempting this.

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Removing the X Clamps on the Xbox 360 Motherboard

Now the third video will show you how to remove the xclamps (x-clamps) on the xbox 360 motherboard. I highly recommend you follow along with the video, otherwise you could end up damaging the xbox 360 clamps, and then having to order some more from Llama.

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Unscrewing the Heat Sink on the Xbox 360

Now in this part of the guide, you will want to pay special attention to all of the instructions. And be patient! In this part of the video you will be removing the heat sink, so that you can reach the GPU and CPU. And there would be nothing worse than to hurry and break this part of the system.

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Cleaning the GPU and CPU on the Xbox 360

Now we’re going to begin cleaning up the thermal compound around the GPU and CPU, this will help get rid of freezing and other problems you were having while you were playing Call of Duty.

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Adding Arctic Silver Compund to the Xbox 360 GPU

Now you’re going to want to let this sit for about 15 to 20 minutes to make sure it’s fully dried. Then you’ll be adding nylon washers to the heat sink to help make sure your system gets better airflow and doesn’t overheat as bad.

Once cleaned up and closed back up, your system will be 100% working. If not, refer back to the guide for what you may have missed or rushed on! Should you still have problems James Dean’s customer service is excellent and usually doesn’t take to long to get a response back from.

Should you still find that you can’t get the guide to work, you can ask for a 100% refund with no hassles or problems.

Final Verdict: As far as Xbox 360 3 Red light repair guides go, this is by far the best one, with the most information and the best quality videos. You won’t find a better one anywhere else!

So the other day one of my good buddies stopped by the house and started talking to me about his son’s Xbox 360 and how a few nights ago it was starting to freeze up and would make a lot of weird noises, and then last night it just went poof.

“Poof?” I asked him. “Yeah, it just wouldn’t come on, and had like 3 red circles on the power button.” he responded.

Well, the conversation continued a little bit, but it was pretty obvious he had received the Xbox 360 red ring of death, and that it’s very common even in the newest models. So I explained to him as simple as I could, that when the system overheats it melts certain parts in the system and messes it all up. Simply speaking of course. I told him that he had a few options, and that if he didn’t mind waiting or spending over a hundred dollars that I Microsoft could fix it for him in a few months.

Well he protested of course. $140 and the risk of losing certain parts or things just wasn’t a good deal to him. Not only that, but the wait kind of sucks, especially when your son just wants to blow shit up.

So wanting to lead him on a little more, I told him about a few stores online that repair them for like $85 within the course of a few weeks. He felt a little better about this option, but then I mentioned that some of these services lose major parts, literally steal the system, or flat out claim they just didn’t get your system even when your package has confirmation on it. (Happened to a few guys on IGN that i’ve spoken too.)

So by this point he was pretty upset about it, and was considering just buying his son a new system all together. But I told him I could fix the system, and that he could just leave it with me. He was pretty grateful to say the least.

But here’s where things get interesting.

Now I can usually fix a system in a little less than an hour, and I don’t bother looking at the tutorials or watching any of the videos any more. But I found myself just for reference sake, opening up our two top picks. When I discovered that James Dean had gone ahead and completely updated his main website and made even better videos. I was astonished to say the least. He also had added a few more videos for getting rid of the E74 Error and the dreaded 2 Red Lights.

So I flipped through a few of the videos to see all the updates. And James Dean blew my mind away, he had oversimplified the process to the point that anyone without even the slightest hint of technological background could figure this out. I mean, I’ve seen Soccer moms who could do this. He also made it extremely user friendly, and all of the tools he use are easily found around the house and can be substituted if not.

But I digress, I’m getting a bit off topic. So anyways, I opened up the system and began working, removing the x-clamp, etc. James dean also shows you how to test to make sure that all of your repairs went flawlessly and that you can close the system up.

If you do run into problems. Which I did a couple of times early on, mainly because I made a mistake on my part (got to cocky about not watching the videos… lol) they have live support and other sections on the site to help you diagnose any new problems and figure out what you may have forgotten.

Xbox 360 Ring of Death Repair

Today it is estimated that about 1 in 3 xbox 360’s will experience the ring of death, repair isn’t really as hard as most people make it out to be though. See when your xbox 360 receives the ring of death, it’s being caused by the x-clamps on your motherboard becoming loose. And this is usually caused by overheating the system to the point of causing them to expand and contract. But it’s not really your fault. It’s because the system has a poor airflow throughout the system, and therefore cooks itself.

To really keep your xbox from having this happen to it, you would have to just not play it. And what fun is that? I mean with the recent release of Call of duty modern warfare, it’s really not that easy. So anyways, when the x-clamp causes the ring of death, repairing it is the only way to make it work again.

So you will need to physically open the system, remove the motherboard and then tighten the clamps. Now that may seem like a lot or it may even sound scary.

But the only real alternative is sending it back to microsoft for a cold $140 in shipping cost and more, just to wait two or three months for a repair you could easily do in an hour.

If you’re truly interested in repairing your ring of death xbox 360, I highly recommend James Dean’s Xbox 360 red ring repair guide, which can be found at the top of this page. It’s a great guide that i’ve used several times to repair a lot of xbox 360 ring of death systems.

All right so what is going on with this site?

I mean, it hasn’t been uploaded in like months!

Well, as it turns out, I’ve actually been really sick and then really busy lately. But the part I want to talk about is the busy part. Sorry, I’m not one to cry about having the flu though, so you’ll have to feel bad for someone else ;p.

But more and more parents seem to be coming to me lately and asking if I can fix their Xbox 360, and honestly I don’t mind, and usually get some cookies or some pocket change for doing it. But I want to de-myth something (if you will), about new systems not getting the Ring of Death or Three red lights, whatever you want to call it.

The truth of the matter is, even the new systems are still receiving the red light errors. I admit, not as frequent, but almost just as bad. See, the new updated systems still haven’t cracked the code to this overheating problem. Simply put, the design of the system doesn’t allow good airflow, and so rather than cool down the system, it just heats it up. And when it heats up, it melts things and bends them out of place.

Now the solution is simple, and the reviewed guides on this site can fix the problem tonight, and get you or your kids back to playing call of duty tonight.

Okay, so with that load off my chest. The next thing is about the updates i’m planning on making to the website. Lately I’ve received additional emails about certain programs, that weren’t discussed in the reviews, so I will be going back and personally running through each review and adding a lot more detail so you know what to expect. Especially adding videos of the process where I can.

Secondly, Jimmy Dean (Our Number 2 Top Pick) has recently updated and revamped his whole website. And I got to admit, for the price it’s far more impressive than any of the other guides we have here on Xbox Repairs. I will be doing a completely new and full review on his guide as time permits, as well as be moving him to our Number one pick. I will be removing the Chris Jones xbox repair guide as well as the 360 fix kit reviews, as I feel that both are not in the best interest of our supporters. Especially not when you can much better and more capable guides from Jimmy Dean at the same price.

Thirdly. I will be going more indepth about the process of receiving a lot of the different errors on the xbox and what you can do to prevent them or overcome them.

That’s all for now.

John