lol latest update, now when i turn on my machine, theres a red light on the lower right quadrant of the 360 (Horizontal position) and Error 74 code is displayed....already tried running it without the HD...still the same

74: AV cable Error - There is a problem with the AV cable, try using a different AV cable.

As requested here are the pictures of the parts that i gotten in order to do the whole process..

  cool man, you are the best!

No problem... Its for the Xbox Community afterall, if this can help it grow then i really dont mind helping out.

@mightysmiter - When did you get the white thick lines? Issit when you are playing a game halfway and the lines appear, then once you off-on it, the 1 ROL lights up? I read from the xbox.com forum that one person gotten it and it eventually lead to 3ROL.. Maybe you can try the x-clamp but then i think only use the method as a last resort. If it is still under warranty why dont just exchange it...

hi fellas,
ive been missing from the xbox scene for quite a while already due to a heavy semester
unfortunately, today when i turned my baby on, my 360 started displaying whitish transparent verticle lines.

VGA problem?HD problem?
This happens during gameplay only and not during the blade menu interface...any idea whats wrong? i already pmed bro tot, now hope he can help..lol

360 not even 1 year old, bought june 6th last year from Djinn
asian console, so no transformer
pls point me in the right direction if there is any

hehe.my 360 revive after giving to tot31 fixing it.playin fight nite whole day long.tada problem  hope can say goodbye to 3rod forever 

i started a thread here: http://forum.lowyat.net/topic/445019

i posted some of the photos too. check them out and see if that is wot u mean by the vertical lines. and we might juz be in the same boat man.

hehe, the status of my machine now is its unable to even start, but instead of the 3 ROD i get 1 red flashing light on the lower right quadrant of the rings

im guessing the HaNa/Ana chips Djinn mentioned earlier are busted...or maybe even the GPU coz i already tried it with a friends AV cable...no luck

any one here who can fix 1ROD instead of 3ROD?should be 3 times simpler right?lol

alamak... why one by one lah all of us... it's like a time bomb lah

lol yealah judge...its actually an atrocity that so many 360s break and its not like we play catch with the damn console...heck, im so kiasu about mine that i never play more than 3 hours at one go(hence ive never got some achievments like dead risings 16 hour real life thingy)

anyways, ive already posted up in the pasar malam..see who wants to buy my broken console for 900 bucks and go fix it themselves...mircrosoft, u lost a customer right here.
why? well, explain to me how isit that my Atari still works fine

Actually if you dont mind speedy work, i can take a look at your console. So if you can leave your console with me for a week, i will remove the x-clamp and see how it goes.

After reading some of the excellent detective work here re the red lights of death and going over the couple of dead consoles here with a microscope, I've come to the conclusion that in most cases the red lights of death is due to a simple design flaw, not to overheating or poor soldering.

We seem to be seeing consoles where the motherboard has flexed and a few of the solder balls or pads have given way at the corner of the CPU or GPU as pointed out by SMTRework and others.

Now why would a motherboard flex?

The answer is the heatsink clamp design.

If you look at the clamp design, *all* of the pressure to hold the heatsink down is in one tiny point. The centre of the X clamp has a plastic 'spacer button' that sits hard against the bottom of the motherboard and that causes all of the stress to push upwards (towards the bottom centre of both the GPU and the CPU.)

What is the reaction to that upward force? the corners of the motherboard flexing in the opposite direction.
Because the motherrboard is not screwed down to the chassis in the areas around the CPU and GPU the natural reaction is for the board to flex downwards slightly because of the pressure in the middle pushing upwards.

When the console gets hot, the solder balls may become slightly softer allowing the board to flex further and the break occurs.

Even if the soldering was perfect the poor design of the heatsink clamps means the corners of the CPU and GPU are going to be under tension.

So perhaps the fix would be to remove the clamps altogether, fit 'screw in' pegs to the chassis and screw down the motherboard and the heatsink so rather than tension being on the board to flex, it is actually encouraged to stay flat. The existing holes in the board where the clamp attached would be ideal.

So extra cooling and other measures may not do squat unless you remove the tension of the giant pimple trying to push up from the bottom.