Why me? And on a Weekend!
Well it's a beautiful Friday afternoon and I thought I would take a few minutes and tell you about the two new baby calves that I got for my farm. One of them is a brown and white Hereford name Melissa and the other is a black Angus name Colonel.... but then this happened.
I apologize for the low quality in this image. Unfortunately I had to take the picture without the flash in order to see the three flashing red lights on the ring of light. I'll be honest I have heard of the red ring of death. But I never thought it would happen to me. Well today it did! So what exactly does one do when they experienced three out of four flashing lights on the red ring of death. Well, I did what any self respecting technology professional would do and I went to MSN search, (you thought I was going to say Google didn't you) and I looked up "red ring of death." Apparently I am not the first to experience this problem, in fact, I was surprised at the number of entries that are out there that are purporting to help me fix my problem. There are books I can buy which will walk me through the process of repairing the three flashing red lights in the red ring of death. There are You Tube videos that I can watch that will show me how to repair the red ring of death problem. There are hardware repair kits that I can purchase that will provide me with the appropriate tools to fix the red ring of death problem. And finally deep in the list I came upon a link that might actually be able to help me fix the problem. www.Xbox.com. I went to the XBOX.com web site which does have a tremendous amount of information on Xbox360 and I used their search box and I typed in red ring and lo and behold the first entry that comes back is Xbox360 three red lights flash on the ring of light. 
So I followed the link to three redlights flash on the ring of light, and it takes me to support article ID number 907534. To summarize the article it tells me to check a few things. Check the Power Supply, check all the cables, unplug all the cables, plug all the cables back in, restart the Xbox. If three red lights still flash you have a hardware failure. In the case of a hardware failure the recommendation is that you visit www.xbox.com/support
Now here's where life really gets interesting. I'm one of those guys who buys a piece of electronics opens the packaging that comes with the electronics takes the information that I consider ill are irrelevant like the registration cards and throws in the trash. So when it comes time to exercise my rights in warranty or to perhaps call lee and two support on a complex problem I can solve myself usually I'm out of luck. On the XBOX support sites I figured what the heck and typed in the serial number information, my hotmail account information and actually registered my XBOX. I did all of this today. Imagine my surprise when the manufacture date came up with February of 2005. Has it really been three years since XBOX360 came out? I guess so. I next went in and said I need to file for repair. The web site indicated to me that my XBOX was outside its warranty timeframe. I guess I wasn't really surprised to find this out, but still it, hurts. Then I noticed at the bottom of the page where a drop down list asks "Do you see three flashing red lights on your XBOX?" When I indicated that I did see the three flashing red lights I was presented with a form to return my XBOX FREE OF CHARGE for repair. I have to admit I was totally surprised, and totally happy. I won't be playing any XBOX games for the next 4 to 6 weeks according to the form. I will be getting my Xbox360 fixed by professionals who know what they're doing, and probably actually got XBOX repair training from somewhere other than You Tube videos. So according to the form, Microsoft will send a delivery driver with the appropriate box for me to put my XBOX in and return it to them for repair. I'll keep you posted on how my experience goes with the XBOX360 repair process, and you'll have to wait till next week to see pictures of Melissa and the Colonel.