I recently purchased an XBOX 360 Elite from eBay thinking that I’d be able to simply fix it. I've done X-clamp fixes successfully in the past. Now unfortunately, the seller was extremely vague about which “red light” the console actually had (I assumed one red light, e.g. E74), and upon receiving and opening the box, I applied the X-Clamp fix and everything else without checking what the problem was first (stupidly! ), and when it finally came to testing…it wouldn’t power on at all. The PSU has a constant red light. From doing some research online, apparently this could signal a short somewhere.

So first thing I do is check for the culprits. I am puzzled as to why the SATA slot on the board appears to be slightly melted.



At first I thought it’s possible that whoever had the board had possibly done the heat gun fix, but I can’t see any other signs of burning or melting on the board. I think the connections are still intact though. There also appears to be a suspicious capacitor near the AV input (C2A6). I checked the resistance on the cap but oddly it seems to be alright. C1A5 right beside it didn’t give any resistance at all though (both circled in RED). I don’t know where to begin looking if it’s a blown capacitor causing the problem. So I decided to check if any voltage was getting through. I tested the values of the U5B1 and U5B2 (circled in CYAN) regulators with a multi-meter…nothing.



No voltage comes up at all while the console is in standby. I also tried checking the voltage around several other points on the board but it doesn’t seem like any power is actually going through the board at all. I know for a fact that it’s not the PSU itself at fault as I have used the same one successfully on 2 other consoles, both which give orange lights during standby and turn green when the console is powered on.

It’s quite disappointing but I’m completely stumped here. Do you think this console is probably beyond repair? Or is there still some hope?? Anybody have some advice?