The modded 360 that I've used for some time has just decided to play up. This appeared to be after the recent mandatory MS update. You can turn on the 360 and it will simply freeze at the boot-up sequence, other times it will go straight through to the dashboard quite happily.

In pretty much all instances the console will freeze if you play any games. This does however seem to subside if I change back to the normal MS video cable rather than the HD lead I'm using - but it still freezes, so I'm thinking that's coincidence.

What do you think? Is it:

• Bricked as a result of the Jan Update detecting a DVD firmware mod?
• Coincidental problem with underlying hardware?

Would flashing it back to the original firmware help? What's people's experience of the Jan update? I've done all the previous live updates and it's never caused a problem.

Any guidance appreciated.

i'd go with technical malfunction, since i haven't heard of any bricks because of january's update

Xbox 360's are just unreliable... thats why modding is so risky because you void your warranty...

It has nothing to do with the update it is coincidence...

If all people with flashed drives were bricked in Jan update you would have heard it here on the forums. Mine is modded and working perfectly. I say hardware fault also.

That's what I reckon as well. It was one of the very first 360's and I never had any problems with it even when other people were experiencing issues with freezing.

I guess I'll open it up and make sure everything is seated correctly.

Thx.

I have not modded my 360 and the latest Gears of War or system update did the same thing to mine. I also have an early model from December of 2005. Sometimes I can start up to the dashboard and play a movie, most of the time I freeze at the MS spash screen, other times I get the 3 red lights. Is anyone else having this issue?

It is unrelated to any update... with 10 million consoles sold there is always a percentage that fail cooincidently with a given action...

3 red lights is a hardware issue. Most likely your console is overheating.. another thing to check is the power supply, make sure it is well ventilated, try having it not sit directly on the carpet and see if it helps.

Mine is definitly a software issue. There are a few things that give this away.

1. Everything was working perfectly until I installed the update
2. The system will sometimes give me the red lights after the console has been off for two days. No heat.
3. Sometimes the sytem will boot and I can watch HD movies. I am pretty sure that two hours of decoding HD would heat the system up more the 2 seconds of connecting a controller.
4. Sometimes I can get gears of war to load but when I turn on the second controller, the system freezes right away.

Thanks for the suggestion about the power brick though. I will check that out but nothing has been moved in over three months and everything had been perfect, even after six hours of HD play. The day that I did the update, the system had been off for three or four days and it did the update as soon as the system started up. I think that I will be on the phone with MS tonight.

So, there aren't any real problems with the latest January update huh? I haven't been on live for a while. Need to fix my network settings again, but I was kinda afraid to update it since I was thinking it might brick my console.

I havent updated since the end of november 07 update as that caused a few problems to

I after ages with the same games got bored and chucked in a copied ver of forza motorsport... which required an update! BTW... it was a really early firmware hack, way back when firmware hack was only available for the type of one drive!

Anyway,

Hit yes, and now I am getting exactly the same symptoms as above:

sometimes boots into dash
mostly hangs at ms splash (fuzzy screen + wierd noise)
sometimes boots games then fuzzy screen + wierd noise
sometimes i get the red lights

So... did u guys ever manage to resolve this issue or is it try ur luck with microsoft??

Does it work any better with the hard drive removed??

If so... try clearing the hard drive cache.

Same issues with or without the HD unfortunately...

Ms will tell you to send it in... but you can only do so if you didn't void your warranty which you already have...