Faulty 360, can i fix it?

dovey · 16 Nov 2009 at 04:31

I'm pretty new to consoles and have managed to blag a first gen 360 off a friend who was given it by a friend and never used it.

I managed to get it hooked up and working after a lot of messing about with different inputs and such. However soon after getting a game going (pes) the colours go very weird, it is as if the console has just switched to 8bit colour instead of 32bit. I stuck a dvd on and everything was fine, this is running through component at 1080p.

After restarting the console it is showing one green light but displaying no video (audio is there). I assume something has gone badly wrong but it does not have any red rings which I thought they displayed when a hardware fault had occurred?

I'm not too fussed about it as it was free but if there are any legitimate/working tricks that anyone knows of to get it going again i'm willing to give it a go!

Thanks

Phemo · 16 Nov 2009 at 09:49

If it's out of warranty then the old xclamp replacement trick should do the trick so try that. You'll find a load of tutorials for this quite easily but in short it involves removing the stock heatsink clamps and lugs and then replacing them with M5 bolts and washers.

Have a little search around and post back if you need any help. The best site for info on 360 repairs is one I can't really link to unfortunately but there'll be plenty of them out there.

For further info, the booting up but no video output problem is very similar to the 1 red light/E74 error. Basically solder joints on the GPU that link it to the scaler chip have broken, but clearly not the ones that trigger E74 itself. It's almost the same thing though.

Wakinglimb · 16 Nov 2009 at 11:14

There used to be issues with 1080p over component - it's not a given. Try it at 720p and see if you get the same issues.

Meatball · 16 Nov 2009 at 11:44

I would use the towel trick to make it RROD. Then repair it using the oven trick and X-Clamp

.

Phemo · 16 Nov 2009 at 12:05

Meatball said:
I would use the towel trick to make it RROD. Then repair it using the oven trick and X-Clamp .

Why would you want it to RROD first? That'll just make it worst. It's best off to just do the xclamp replacement fix now, or better still oven/heatgun then xclamp replacement.

No need to trash it even more first. As I mentioned the no video output is basically the precursor to E74 which is caused by board warp and broken solder joints (which is actually what causes RROD too, just solder joints in a different part of the GPU are broken then) so just doing the xclamp replacement on it now alone would take care of the no video output fine, although how long for is anyone's guess.

edGfaCTor · 16 Nov 2009 at 14:10

xclamp fix is only a temp fix it will die again even professionals have said so the problem is mostly non lead solder which needs replacing.

have you tried it on another tv it does sound a bit like settings issue

Wakinglimb · 16 Nov 2009 at 14:32

edGfaCTor said:
have you tried it on another tv it does sound a bit like settings issue

As I said, 1080p over component only works with about 5% of TVs - baking it in an oven etc is not going to fix this problem. A VGA lead may well do the trick though

Substance · 16 Nov 2009 at 15:05

My 360 was like this, MS said it was a GPU failure, and not covered by the 3 year warranty they repaired it when I told them it had the rrod though

wannabedamned · 16 Nov 2009 at 15:14

I would recommend a heatgun to reflow solder and then Xclamp as said.

Xclamp alone is not a perminent fix, a reflow + Xclamp has had my friends 6th Xbox 360 running for just over a year now problem free. We got fedup of returns and swaps so we played with it ourselves and got a pretty solid result

Although, Before that, It wouldnt hurt to try running the machine at 720 instead of 1080

dovey · 16 Nov 2009 at 16:11

Thanks for the suggestions guys. I was running it in 1080p over a nec 24wmgx3, when there was no video output i used Y+r trigger to reset the video settings and was trying to use the standard video cable instead of component. I also tried another tv which also detected no signal.

I don't have a heatgun so i might search around and give the oven trick/x clamp a go as a lot of you have suggested

capriboy1978 · 16 Nov 2009 at 16:26

am I missing something here? I thought the original xbox could only output 1080i over component? I haven't changed the sttings since it was new but I'm sure the max selectable was 1080i.

Wakinglimb · 16 Nov 2009 at 17:37

capriboy1978 said:
am I missing something here? I thought the original xbox could only output 1080i over component? I haven't changed the sttings since it was new but I'm sure the max selectable was 1080i.

That's exactly what I was saying.

Phemo · 16 Nov 2009 at 19:17

The original Xbox or the Xbox 360? Every single 360 has been able to do 1080p over component since the dash update in 2006 enabled it. The problem is that not many TVs can accept a 1080p signal over component, but every 360 can output it.

Also as mentioned before, yes the xclamp replacement fix alone is not enough to guarantee a permanent fix. A lot of the problem with the 360 stems from the fact that the board is not mounted properly so it can warp quite easily thus causing broken solder joints. The oven/heatgun reflow as well as a properly done xclamp replacement (ie. drilling the cage out and mounting longer bolts with washers under the motherboard) will provide better mounting and is as good a fix as you can get without getting the GPU professionally reballed. I've not looked into the costs of a reball but I'm betting the cost is prohibitive anyway.