Red Ring of Death

Most people these days are familiar with the "Red Ring of Death" that's associated with a broken XBOX 360, right?

But have any of them ever found the cause of it? I mean, when it happens, you just send it away to the manufacturer, they fix it up and send it back.

I think I may have discovered the true cause: The machine is demanding blood. And I don't mean metaphorically, like it's demanding so much money in repairs it might as well be asking for blood. I mean, literal blood.

I was having problems with mine a few years back. I bought it used, but never got around to getting a warranty. In retrospect, I should have done that, but that's not the point. It worked great for a while. But, a few months after the initial 30 day warranty ended, it started giving me trouble. The main problem was that the connection between the console and the screen seemed to be going bad. At first I thought it was my TV. But I hooked up other consoles to it and it was fine.

Then the Red Ring of Death struck.

I quickly discovered that the problem was the slot where you connect the AV cord to the back of the XBOX. So, after trying to buy new cords and trying different televisions, I was beginning to become impatient. So I started going a little crazy.

For some reason, and I don't think I'll ever know why, I decided to prick my finger and smear blood on the base of the AV cable and connect the cable back into the machine.

Whats even crazier is that it worked!

I'm not even joking, the picture came back and I was able to play games just fine. It seemed strange, but who cares? I was able to play games again!

Eventually, it stopped working. The red ring came back and I was unable to play.

So, I did it again. I smeared blood on the AV cable then reconnected it. But, it didn't work this time. Desperate, I tried smearing blood one the underside of the disc tray and the power supply. It worked!

About a week and a half after that it stopped working, yet again. At this point I was done. I wasn't about to keep feeding my blood to this machine, simply to play some Left 4 Dead. I gave in and just got a new one.

The problem ended there. I've had the new one for some time now, and it works great. It's been said that the gaming industry tries to bleed their customers dry.

I just never thought it was that literal.

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