So I turned on my Xbox this evening to get my Halo on, and instead of the normal single green light in the upper left quadrant, I had 3 flashing red lights. Apparently this is the Xbox’s way of telling you that there is something all F’ed up. Depending on the severity of the problem, a different number of quadrants could be flashing red when you boot up your broken Xbox 360. Here’s your guide on what you need to do to figure out what’s wrong with it.

First off, you’re either going to need the capability of remembering 4 digits, or you’re going to have to go get a pen and paper.

Okay, now that that’s out of the way, while your Xbox Ring of Light (RoL) is flashing red, press and hold the synch button (the controller connect button) and while holding it, press the DVD eject button. This will put the Ring of Light (RoL) into a faster blink and the the number of lit quandrants may change. This process will need to be repeated 4 times (hence the need for the pen and paper if you’re incapable of remembering 4 digits, but you’re somehow able to remember where every weapon on every map in Halo 2 is). Each time your press the synch and DVD eject button simultaneously, write down the approprite number from the following table:

RoL Flashing Light Codes
One Light Flashing 1
Two Lights Flashing 2
Three Lights Flashing 3
Four Lights Flashing 0

Here’s an example:

  1. Turn on your Xbox360 and wait for the red lights.
  2. Press and hold the synch button, then press the DVD eject button – if all 4 lights flash, write down “0″ and repeat this 3 more times.
  3. Press and hold the synch button, then press the DVD eject button – 1 light flashes, write down “1″ and repeat this 2 more times.
  4. Press and hold the synch button, then press the DVD eject button – all 4 lights flash, write down “0″ and repeat this 1 more time.
  5. Press and hold the synch button, then press the DVD eject button – 2 lights flash, write down “2″.
  6. Now you’ve got your error code: “0102″

Okay, so now you know how to figure out your error code, use the list below to figure out what’s wrong with your Xbox… and if your lucky (I was not) the list will not say “Not yet known”.

0001 – Power Supply Problem
0002 – Power Supply Problem
0003 – (not yet known)
…
0010 – Over Heating
0011 – Over Heating
0012 – Over Heating
0013 – Over Heating
…
0020 – not yet known, possibly overheating
0021 – not yet known
0022 – GPU Error / GPU Overheating
…
0101 – not yet known
0102 – unknown error*
…
0110 – Memory Error / Memory Overheating
…
1003 – Hard Drive Error**
…
1010 – Hard Drive Error, Can be caused buy a currupt or missing Eprom.
…
1013 – not yet known
…
1020 – not yet known
…
1022 AV cable error***
…
1030 – not yet known

* Literally means the console does not know what is wrong. Possibly a short or cold solder joint somewhere (2 reports of people repairing this, one was removing moisture build up inside the console, the other used a hot-air rework to reflow the BGA Ram chips)

** It could be a problem with the Hard Drive itself or a problem with the internal connection to the hard drive, Try removing the hard drive and playing without it

*** There is a problem with the AV cable, try using a different AV cable. (could also be a problem with the encoder chip)

Hopefully this helps… it didn’t help me, so it looks like I’m going to be making a call to Microsoft/Xbox Customer Support. Here’s the number: (800) 4-MY-XBOX

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