...unbelievable...

....i thought a lot of this " 360' s break easily" stuff was exaggerated, but now....


*shakes head*

...ack...

Hmmm, it appears to be working now. I checked what E 74 was and it appears to be an AV cable error and not somthing serious. I' ll keep it on for a while and see what happens i guess.

Still, it could be actually ok!

pheewww thats a relief, even to me!

Ok so far so good. It' s been running for 2 1/2 hours without any problems. It' s updated and playing both original Xbox games, 360 games and DVD' s without any hiccups. It' s too early to say whether or not it' s ok but i' m icreasingly confident that this machine is going to last for a while.

They sent me a refurbished console. Again. It sucks but at least it' s not a 2005 unit - this one has a manufacture date of July 06 but since it' s refurbished it' ll have been in for repair for something.

When i got the E 74 message i was furious. Luckily it turned out to be a cable error and once i' d rebooted it was fine, although there are discussions on th net about E 74 being a RAM issue too. If that' s the case then if it gives me the message again i' ll open the thing up and re-seat the memory myself rather than send it off.



Do you guys have you machine vertical or horizontal?! And do you connect through component or VGA?!

I' ve always had my machines horizontal as that' s how the DVD drives are meant to be used, and i' ve always connected to my HDTV via component. That said, i just tried the replacement via VGA and Gears looks much better than through component. It looks slightly washed out but that can be fixed by setting the colour scheme to vivid.

My 360 is horiz using the comp cable, Majik I did ask on your " 360 the most useless console ever." Thread asking you to confirm what you meant about the launch models are you talking about machines with build dates prior to ' 06? I am getting a little worried as mine has frozen a couple of times recently, but I attributed it to the Autumn update, but I am not so sure now.

Yeah pre-2006. Saying that, even 2006 units have problems. Tiz' s console for instance is becoming slow, and i' d probably recommend clearing the cache, but it' d also wipe the BC and firmware updates too. It' s not a documented procedure for the retail models but still works.

If you console has only started freezing recently then i could be attributed to specific games. Gears of War has caused some problems, as has Dead Rising. Tony Hawks Project 8 has been known to actually kill machines and so i' ve already taken it back - it' s full of bugs and untidy code. If it' s just doing it sporadically then you could have a problem. I presume you are forced to restart when it crashes, ...you can' t access or hear the guide at all?!

Mine started crashing because of Tony Hawks or Gears. It' d been fine for nearly an entire year and didn' t get hot [the main cause of many freezes] and then it started crashing, and not just when playing games, it was crashing on the dash and when playing DVD' s.

The games are awesome, the console...not so much. Hopefully the machines next year when they move to a smaller die will be more reliable and i' ll buy a 3rd [hopefully black] machine and get rid of these two, but for now i have two working machines; one new and one refurbished and i' d have to be seriously unlucky to have them both fail simultaneously!

How long have you had you machine, and do you still have your receipt?! If so then you should have a 12 month warranty with the store you bought it from. I had to buy another machine and send my original launch unit back to Microsoft because i bought it online. If i' d bought it from a shop then could have take it back and had it replaced straight away with a new one.

I never had problems with other launch units, even my original Playstation and PS2. They were fine although my PS2 had strange DVD playback where it' d be slightly green, ...but i can' r remember getting and disk read errors or crashes, and i never had to have anything replaced. I bought a PStwo as soon as it was released though. Still, 360 seems to have had serious issues. If only Apple made consoles...

If only Apple made consoles...

The first units of Ipods were buggy as hell

there is some serious talk that apple might enter the video game industry as a hardware manufacturer , probably handheld

Do we really need a fourth choice of consoles? I mean 3 is enough. The only
reason M$ even started (and are still in it) is because they have serious money to burn.

What' s the point in comparing 4 different versions of Call of Duty?

Do we really need a fourth choice of consoles?

strong competition = lower prices

Nice one Majik thanks for that, yes still have the reciept and thinking back it really staerted at the same time as the Autumn update, which was also when I start killing lots of Zombies in Dead rising. I will see if clearing the cache etc does work and take it from there. Many thanks once again for the tips

Strong competition = lower prices

please tell that to Sony!

Apple couldn' t possibly compete, even in the handheld arena. There might be a bigger focus on games for the widescreen video iPod, but i wouldn' t expect anything more. I mean, i can' t believe Nokia are trying again with the NGage brand, it' d gonna get trashed. Again.

PSP is really coming into it' s own. It could do with a re-design, possibly making it smaller, but the game that are out now and coming soon are what everybody expected when Sony announced they were releasing a handheld. It' s a shame GT Mobile isn' t out yet though, i expected it to push the units technical limits and it was going to be the first game to use 333MHz rather than the capped 222MHz. With MGS Portable Ops, Tekken Dark Resurrection, Ridge Racer 2, Vice City Stories, a new Burnout on the way, Call of Duty and Medal of Honor etc... even DS with it' s AWESOME games looks much less appealing.

With proper Silent Hill and Final Fantasy games coming next year, and the standalone PSone download service in development then PSP is going to really take off. It' s sold well so far but it' s been a slower burn than i expected, probably because Sony can' t easily reduce the price as the units still cost them a lot to make.

If anybody else is going to enter the handheld gaming market it' ll be Microsoft.



The thing is, Apple could simply adapt the Mini Mac for gaming...



...and easily take on Sony and Microsoft but is it viable? No, and while they would do very well in the west, they, like Microsoft, would fail in Japan. You' d have Sony and Nintendo dominating in Japan, and Microsoft and Apple dominating in the western territories. It' d be awful.

ORIGINAL: alijay034

Nice one Majik thanks for that, yes still have the receipt and thinking back it really started at the same time as the Autumn update, which was also when I start killing lots of Zombies in Dead rising. I will see if clearing the cache etc does work and take it from there. Many thanks once again for the tips

Ok, if you' re clearing the cache then you' ll need to:

...go to the system blade and select Memory. Press Y on either the HDD or a Memory Unit and then press X, X, Left Bumper, Right Bumper, X, X.

You' ll get a message saying something like: " This will perform maintenance on your Xbox 360 storage device. Do you want to continue?" and you ofcourse select ' Yes' .

Bear in mind that it' ll wipe you' re updates and they' ll need to be downloaded again.

Will it only wipe the system updates? Or will I lose anything else
if I clear the system cache?

ORIGINAL: Tiz

Will it only wipe the system updates? Or will I lose anything else
if I clear the system cache?

I' m not 100% on this but i' m pretty sure it' s just the firmware updates and the cache. Your saves and downloaded content shouldn' t be touched.

I' ll dive in the deep-end after work.. Would that also fix the Gears texture loading problem as well?? It' s just getting longer and longer, and characters without
textures look like third-degree burn victims..

sorry for little oftop but how can I check my xbox date ?

It' s on the back of the console. It' s the American date format though and so YYYY/MM/DD

thank you Majikdra6on
my xbox date is 2005-11-29.It' s bad ?