Awhile back I bought an Xbox 360 but truthfully never feel like playing it.  Every now and again I will check up on the new and upcoming games just to get an idea of what advances the game industry have made.  Well after a few months had passed since my last look at these games, I picked up my controller and thought I’d pop in a rental for an hour or two to pass the time.

The Problem

I turned on the Xbox and the screen remained black as the green Xbox panel light flashed on and then off.  I couldn’t really remember how exactly the unit powered up, so I figured this was normal.  Suddenly the nice comforting green light began to flash red over and over again.  Immediately I knew something was wrong- red= danger.  In response to this use of nature’s caution color I pressed the power button to turn it off.  Again I hit the power button and waited for it to turn on again.  Same thing.  Now I am usually level headed when it comes to electronics, but when nothing works it feels like you are beating your head against a brick wall.

After thoroughly checking all the cables, my last resort was the Xbox troubleshooting manual.  The book states that the red light may mean there is something wrong with the a/v cable.  Hmm…  I checked that and nothing changed.

The Fix 

This process was getting me nowhere so I figured I would apply some of my tried and true troubleshooting methods.  After a little observation I noticed that the unit would sometimes load up to the splash screen and then freeze which led me to believe I could at least get it working temporarily.  During one of the boot up attempts I for some reason or another ejected the cd drive.  The unit began to load up a little more but then froze once I sent the drive back on it’s way into the unit.  Another time I shut it down and booted it up again.  This time I began pressing the cd drive button repeatedly so the drive could not completely close.  As I did so the Xbox successfully loaded up to the dashboard screen.  Things were looking a little brighter now.  I placed my game into the drive and it also loaded up successfully.  Total success!

Conclusion 

Now I’m not sure what exactly is wrong with the Xbox 360. I haven’t done too much research either.  After I was able to get the Xbox working(for now), I called Microsoft.  Apparently a lot of people are getting this type of issue and having to replace the unit so I am also replacing mine with BestBuy next week.  The above method is not a fix, but rather a temporary solution for a guy trying to play a quick  game.