FAQ: Xbox 360 Error Codes Explained, If you have an error code, read this! Options

[Megaherz]

MS doesn't ask any questions about the current state of your 360 when you purchase an extended warranty. While this may be unethical it's still a legal loophole in the system. If your system breaks just buy a warranty and have MS fix it for free.

[Tfizzle]

heres a new one...

0021

my thread about the 360 here in question is here...

http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=529167

[LilaQ]

Hey guys.

Finally got a 0102 too,. my xbox started freezing randomly 1 day ago, suddenly then the three red lights.
I have had no metal foil under my cooling units, but anyhow I put some Arctic Silver on it.

I read a post about moisture that had build up on the mainboard, so I disassembled my box again and suddenly noticed these odd marks on the mainboard. First I thought they were caused by heat and burned in, but then I tried to wipe them away and with a little force I had success.

It'll take a while till I'm totally done, but hopefully this helps me with my 3-RedLights...








Maybe these pics can help to find out what the reason for a 0102 is. I think the 0102 can have different reasons as it may be some sort of general failure, which would it make really hard to fix these errors... :/

I'll post as soon as I completley wiped the mainboard and tested the box again...

LilaQ

[twistedsymphony]

That looks like residue from corrosion

do you live near the ocean or something?

Corrosion could definitely cause things to stop working properly. It doesn't generally effect simple circuits until it gets really bad but even light corrosion can quickly kill something as complex as the 360 really quick.

I used to work at an arcade on the beach and we'd have machines go down all the time due to corrosion from all the moisture in the air. older machines we could easily fix ourselves by using contact free cleaner and a tooth brush and re-seating/re-flowing all the chips but newer more complex machine's we'd often have to send the boards out for repair/replacing

[LilaQ]

Hey twistedsymphony,

no I don't live near the ocean, actually I live in central Germany. Maybe the really tropical weather we have had the last weeks caused this corrosion!?

I wiped everything off now, really carefully with an old soft t-shirt. Additionally i put 2 passive cooling units on the RAM's that are still visibile when the main cooling units are on the mainboard.

And it looks like I had total success. The xbox ran for about ~7 hours now, without any breaks, and I hadn't had a single freeze or anything else.

I hope it's all fixed with that now, and hopefully I can help people with this, who have the same errorcode. Even though it's not 100% clear if that corrosion or the new cooling units on the RAMs make the difference, but I guess both doesn't harm your box.


LilaQ

[nomoreniu]

I got a 0102 tonight, I have a feeling is due to overheating. I bought mine at CircuitCity 16 days ago, I'm glad it is under their 30 day warrenty. I think this is a sign for me to wait until they come with with a cooler running version of the 360....

[neoed30]

I have had error code 0110 everytime my 360 flashes the 3 red lights at me. The other day I was messing around with the RF Modulator and turning the 360 off and on and repeatedly pressing the White synchronize button for the wireless controller and the 360 gave me an error code 0102 for the next couple of restarts. Then it booted to the 360 logo and froze. I restarted it and it went back to the 0110 code again. Did I confuse it by hitting those buttons continuously? Also, the last weekend of June I was messing around with 360 and it gave me 0110 error code flashing 3 red and then it booted up. I messed around in the dash for about a minute then it froze again. I restarted it and I actually got an on screen error code E 79 for the first time. I haven't seen that one yet. Anyone else? I haven't had it come up again since. Just flashing red lights. I think I killed it finally. Oh, well time for a brand new one.

This post has been edited by neoed30: Jul 11 2006, 10:22 AM

[111111]

Hi when i turn on my xbox 360 the led 1 and 3 turns on and it turns loud. I have the error code 0011.
i think i made a wire touch these two places when it was on.

[Supafly707]

Hey, just joined the forum. Thanks for all the helpful deciphering of the error codes.

Now, I just started getting a 0110 error, the memory error/overheating thingy. I've had my 360 ever since launch in mid december or whenver it was and this was the first time I've ever had this problem. I got home from work and tried to watch a movie and it froze on the title screen. I sent an email to MS support and I'm waiting until six to call them so I can maybe get the info I need to send it in for repairs because I can't seem to do anything about it here. This is pissin me off!

By the way, does anyone know exactly what the 0110 means? What is the memory error/overheating? I might have forgotten to turn my xbox off when I left the house, but my dad gets home not long after that and he turned it off. I don't see how anything could have overheated so easily when I've spent some days with it on for hours upon hours playing Oblivion or Halo. Then again, I keep hearing the first gen 360s have overheating issues. Again, if anyone can explain what this error ACTUALLY means, I would be grateful.

[Team Modfreakz]

Hi again,

have just repaired another x360 (Error 0102) with Hot Air Gun!!
This box was really dead, no sound and screen only 3 red blinking leds. So I used the same method as I wrote in my last post.

x360 boots now just fine, no problems at the moment. also played 5 hours without stops!! hehe

Would be very interesting if somebody could repeat that and port his results.

This post has been edited by Team Modfreakz: Jul 13 2006, 10:51 PM

[jfishel]

Hi again,

have just repaired another x360 (Error 0102) with Hot Air Gun!!
This box was really dead, no sound and screen only 3 red blinking leds. So I used the same method as I wrote in my last post.

x360 boots now just fine, no problems at the moment. also played 5 hours without stops!! hehe

Would be very interesting if somebody could repeat that and port his results.

i followed your advice and used a heat gun on my bga ram chips and southbridge as well. the first run i used a fairly low temp and a quick try proved correct. it powered on and made it to the dashboard. roughly 3-5 minutes later, it froze. that simply backs up the theory about the ram chips being poorly attached and/or poor quality chips.

IMHO, from the behavior the system exhibits, many 0102 failures are due to bad RAM or RAM that was damaged by exposure to heat. Try to think about this more from a planar point of view and less of a console. when a motherboard fails to POST, we tend to trouble shoot Physical Damage->BIOS->RAM->CPU (in no particular order). once you've ruled out physical damage and since in this case there is no adjustments to be made to the bios, RAM/CPU are the next logical areas to troubleshoot. by simply looking at the design of the heatsink for the GPU, it should be fairly obvious that there is indeed a heat problem where the chips located under the heatsink are exposed to higher temps w/o any benefit of the heat sink just milimeters above it. personally, i'm going to send mine back to MS and get a refurb. i'm curious to see if anyone has chopped off their GPU heatsink to expose the ram chips below, and added a fan to it. Even adding some sort of heatsinks for the remaining RAM chips exposed on the top of the planar like the ones referred to in the above post. Anyone wanna give that a shot and post the results?

[jfishel]

one further thought i had regarding my post above. if there is in fact an issue with the heat sink for the GPU causing a fault in the system ram, then this error could be more prevalent on systems that are running in HD. the extra load rendering may contribute to the temp inside the case. has anyone tried to track the # of failed systems running in HD as opposed to SD? i know i was running in HD up until it failed the first time.

[neoed30]

by simply looking at the design of the heatsink for the GPU, it should be fairly obvious that there is indeed a heat problem where the chips located under the heatsink are exposed to higher temps w/o any benefit of the heat sink just milimeters above it. i'm curious to see if anyone has chopped off their GPU heatsink to expose the ram chips below, and added a fan to it. Even adding some sort of heatsinks for the remaining RAM chips exposed on the top of the planar like the ones referred to in the above post. Anyone wanna give that a shot and post the results?

My Error Code was 0110. I cut my heatsink a while back and placed heatsinks on all of the memory chips on the top side of the board and added a fan. It worked for a couple of weeks. I think I waited to long to do this though. My 360 has now finally bit the dirt for good. R.I.P
I am currently parting it out. These items are now on Ebay. Hitachi DVD Drive, RF Board (ROL) ,Power Supply.

GPU Heatsink

This post has been edited by neoed30: Jul 16 2006, 08:42 AM

[jfishel]

your post is exactly what i was thinking (and i suspect the next board revision will prove it). the only problem with it is the 20% loss of cooling efficiency by hacking off the heat sink. its obviously too late for anyone who has the current planar revision. one last thought for anyone who has gotten a refurb system, have you checked to see if they changed anything on the boards? (ie, ram chips, heat sinks, etc...)

This post has been edited by jfishel: Jul 16 2006, 06:47 PM

[Team Modfreakz]

Hallo,

here the howto video!!
http://www.freepler.de/userdaten/38928917/...air_gun_fix.mpg

and another link of this video, view it at YouTube.com's site!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYv6b7MndJk

1/1/07 Edit: Link to video, hosted by Google.

PS: I cannot guarantee that it will also work on your xbox360, but hey! it's the last chance to bring your console back to life!!!

This post has been edited by xboxgamer733: Jan 1 2007, 08:30 PM