Unbelievable, but true. Even our killer Master Chief skin couldn't protect our Xbox 360 from the dreaded 3 Red Lights of Death (3RLOD).
For those of you who haven't heard of this issue that's been plaguing the Xbox 360 since release, and even forced Microsoft into extending their warranty to 3 years for 360s suffering from the 3RLOD, here it is in a nutshell: You're Xbox 360 works fine for a while, but then all of the sudden starts freezing up, and starts to give you 3 blinking red lights around the power button (all except the top right light turn red), or even worse, it magically starts doing it one day as you turn it on to play.
The 3 red lights signal that your Xbox 360 has had some type of hardware failure. Apparently for most Xbox 360s that were manufactured prior to July of 2007 (manufacture date is posted on the back of the console) they have major overheating issues, which is what causes the hardware failure.
There are a number of "fixes" we've found through our research, so while our Xbox 360 is being shipped off to Microsoft to be repaired, we decided to purchase a broken down Xbox 360 from eBay and see if we can get any of these "fixes" to work.
WE DO NOT recommend TAMPERING WITH YOUR XBOX 360, AND TAKE NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR WHAT YOU DO WITH YOUR SYSTEM. We HIGHLY recommend sending it off to Microsoft and having them repair it (assuming you haven't cracked open your case, and voided your warranty). With any luck, they'll put the newer, cooler running, Falcon chips in it, as well as the new GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) heatsink (to cool it down as well).
Right now we're waiting for the console we purchased off eBay to arrive. Once it's here, we'll begin our tests in earnest, and post our results.
Update: 12/15