I was starting to play my Xbox 360 when all of a sudden my console froze and I saw the three red rings of death. I gaped at my TV screen. I was quite aware that my Xbox 360 isn’t that reliable, but I would never have expected something terrible to happen to me.

I called my friend who plays and asked if it had happened to him. He let me know that he had this identical problem and that he waited a little over a month for Microsoft to fix his problem. Apparently the drive is overheating which will cause it to stop working. Ultimately, Microsoft won’t send a shipping box to send your Xbox in for repair. So now you have a console that doesn’t work due to a design issue, but you also have to pay cash for the shipping cost to get it fixed!

Here are a couple of tips that might prevent your system from being damaged.

Tip 1: Ventilation is crucial, so locate a spot for the Xbox that has generous airflow. Do not place your Xbox in an entertainment center as it will tend to get very hot. This is not good because the problem is the result of overheating.

Tip 2 – If you got all three red rings of death, the first thing you can try is to turn off your 360 and go do something else while it cools down for an hour. Move it somewhere with better airflow and unplug everything connected to your Xbox 360. Then try turning your system back on after it has cooled down for a while. I hope these tips can prevent what happened to my console.