I think many months ago I was involved in a discussion on one of these threads, and I *think* it was DirtyDog and myself that were talking about my 'environment' and why I had so many failures.
The unit it stood vertically, although the first 2 or 3 were horizontal. Only reason why it's vertical, for me, was space saving and I had a crazy/logical idea that ventilation would be better that way.
No uber-long sessions, no kids, no moving it, no nothing. The "ONLY" possible explanation I can think of, for me anyway, is coal dust. I have a solid fuel fire and those who have or have had one will know that the damn dust will get everywhere! My PC has some damn good filter systems in it, and it's opened up and cleaned every couple of months. Only thing I can do with the console is blow in it, whether this blows out the air or forces it to pile up in a corner I don't know.
Only indication I had that it was failing was last night. About to go through Portal Advanced, phone rang, was on for an hour, came off the phone and saw someone had sent me a message so pressed the jewel button and as the blade opened up it hung. Waited a minute or two, switched the console off, left it 10mins while I went for a drink, came back and it gave me 3 red lights.
Tried it again throughout the night, but no joy. Same this morning but won't even switch on now, just gives 3 red lights (no fans activate or anything) so it's well and truely borked.
Microsoft have said they don't want the harddrive (thankfully!) but their procedure has changed since the last one I had a problem with as they are emailing me address labels which I've to attach to a "cardboard box", ring UPS to arrange a pick up and take it from there.
So well fed up, can't take it back to the shop as I bought it in Exeter (none high street, just a cheap little game shop) so has to go home to Microsoft.
O well.
