ajak, I have the 0102 error too.... Been out of commision for a few months now. Can you please pass on the url to the video fix?

I did it!!! I fixed my 3 red lights of death problem!!

I cracked open my dead xbox (0102 error) as per the tutorials.... The heat sinks were a b**** to remove. Upon removing it I found that the thermal paste that they used had melted into a gooey mess and rolled off into nearby ICs. I had my xbox standing upright... So my advice to everyone is to have your xboxes lay down horizontally so that when/if your thermal paste turns to gunk, it will not short out other chips.

I then cleaned the gunk up with a desolvent & alcohol.... I was going to put in some replacement thermal paste but didnt have any at hand. My brother who have used the paste before said that it may not be neccesary to do so... So I put it all back together without any paste... Made sure that the heat sink was tighten against the CPU/GPU and it all worked!!! Well actually I had other issues but it was all sorted out. Played COD, some demos, watch a DVD... no problem...

No need to use heat gun...

So there is life after 3 rings of light!!

I'm in Segamat, Johor... 2.5 hours from KL. It's really not that hard to do by yourself. It's just the learning curve of cracking open the case and removing the heat sink. Cleaning the thermal paste requires a plastic knife, desolvent & alcohol. The opening tools you can buy from any hardware store.

I encountered another 3 red lights problem yesterday after my fix but it went away. I think there were some remnant gunk under some of the smaller ICs that had reheated. Luckily it went away after 2-3 reboots.

I can see that even having the xbox360 horizontal can still cause the 0102 problem. There just is so much of the stuff that it has to go somewhere

Quick update for everyone... I had a few 2 red lights error and a few 3 red lights error today. I rebooted a few times and managed to use the xbox. Later in the afternoon, the 3 red lights came back permanently.. So I opened up the box again (this time it was easier with experience), and had a look at the chips. There was some hidden thermal paste that I couldn't get at beneath the ICs yesterday and they had ooze out and shorted again... So I cleaned again with desolvent and alcohol... Put it back together and it work!!!! yay!!!

Not too sure how many times I have to redo this until all the thermal paste comes out.

Had another 3 red lights episode and removed the heat sink and cleaned just the GPU chip... Just a little bit more remnant thermal paste to clean up beneath the IC. Put it back together and all OK for now... So it's 3 times now that I had to give my xbox 360 the kiss of life!!!

The thermal paste is basically to assist the transfer of heat between the chips and heat sink. However if there is good contact between the two, you should be OK. I don't think you will encounter any major problem without the thermal paste. The xbox is pretty good at switching into 2 red lights mode (over heating) whenever it gets too hot. I found that if you don't have the heat sink on or if it is not touching fully with the chip, it will go into overheated mode almost immediately. The thermal paste probably gives you maybe another 20-30% more heat transfer efficiency.

However if you use too much or low quality thermal paste, you will encounter the 3 red lights which is a worse problem to have... So for now, I am perservering without thermal paste..

There are other tutorials out there on how to open the xbox. The only thing different that I do is removing the heat sinks and removing and cleaning the thermal paste with a plastic knife and using cotton buds dipped with desolvent and alcohol. Not very exciting video/photo ops. Anyway I will take some photos next time I open the xbox.

I do not have articlean, so I use a desolvent called De-Solv-It bought from Ace hardware store. The only thing that I worry is that it might be corrosive. Hopefully the alcohol that I use afterwards will remove the desolvent. Better to use articlean if you can get it. Also use toothpicks to get at between the IC's legs

This is an update on my 3 red lights problem. I started having the problem about 4-5 months ago. Mine was an early Japanese import (manufactured 12/05). I open up the xbox and cleaned out the thermal paste junk and got it working temporarily. Then it went kaput again. I then used the heat gun method but the fix never lasted more than a day. I was using a high end heat gun (borrowed SATA, I think similar to the Bosch). It had 3 settings on it. I always used setting 1 & 2. After more than 15 attempts to zap it, I decided to buy my own heat gun. Got a cheap one from Tesco with 2 heat settings (330C & 510 C), I finally got it working for almost 2 weeks now!!!

I think previously I didn't have the heat gun hot enough to melt the solder properly. With this new heatgun, the 510C settings seems to be the right temp....

So, for those who tried the heat gun method and didnt get it to work for long, look at increasing the heat... But be careful not to fry any components