Red ring of death

So our XBOX 360 has had an easy life. For a long time it just sat....unused except to watch TV via our media center or DVD's. We recently began actually playing it. Well two days ago it started locking up while playing games. I thought it was just a scratched DVD. Last night we got the "red ring of death".



I started looking online. Apparently the first batch of XBOX 360's had heating issues. The CPU and GPU (computer parts for most folks) would overheat and kickoff a hardware failure. Boo. Assuming we had just a one year warranty (I have since learned Microsoft has extended the warranty to 3 years for this issue!) I went online for a fix. Somehow applying new thermal paste fixes the issue. Odd. Whatever. There are several Youtube videos explaining how. I went to Fry's and bought a new tube of Arctic Silver 5 thermal paste. I took apart the XBOX after watching a few how to videos. I put it back together...and still saw red lights. I then ran a diagnostic....which appeared to have cleared the red lights. I won't know for sure until I connect the cables back up. since we use the 360 for a DVD player and it was down, I had to dig out a DVD player to use. Once its over I hope the 360 works...if not...gotta think of a plan B.

I have earned over $60 answering questions on ChaCha.com (text 24242 to try it out...again IT'S FREE!). I get about 20% of the questions being dumb or immature (should I break up with my boyfriend/what the longest penis in the world), 40% phone number and addresses and 40% trivia questions. I am learning quite a bit.

For now we are watching Dream a Little Dream, Kelli had never seen this 80's gem. Kelli is incredibly smart....but she just now figured out what SAT stands for as in the SAT test. Odd.