EDIT: My console is now screwed. It isn' t just Gears.

I was playing it half an hour ago and it crashed. I turned the machine off and then back on, loaded the game again, continued the campaign, the level loaded and then zip, it froze again with white vertical lines running down the screen. Again i turned the machine off, disconnected the power supply and left it until it was cool, connected it back to the console and powered up. Same thing.

It only appear to be Gears. I' m checking my other game now. It' s possibly a corrupt save because i just started a new game (overwriting my saved checkpoint) and it appears to be ok.

I' ve read about the vertical line crashes before though and they seem to happen before before things start to get worse. My 360 has never died on me (only frozen a couple of times during PGR3) and to be safe i have deleted my Gears save data on the HDD. It sucks but i' d rather restart the game than try loading a corrupt save again and have it fuck the console.

Anybody else ever had vertical lines like this?!

Yeah I had sometimes moving sometimes not scrolling white lines of dots - I had never seen anything ike it, but it turns out my HD tv was on the way out even though it was brand new it had been damaged in transit and only happened when the tv got up to temperature after about an hour of playing.

I found that switching inputs got rid of the problem temporarily so I could keep playing - as only the component input was affected - but the games themselves did not crash. Could it be that gears is caining the system harder and running it hotter so it is illustrating a weakness with your particular 360?

I dunno. I figured it was a GPU problem at first but it seems to be working now. It crashed repeatedly because i loaded the same save, now i' ve deleted the data i' m hoping it' ll be ok.

It' s only 12 days until i' ve had the thing for a year. Microsoft would replace it for nothing because the manufacture date' s pre-Jan 1st but i' ll be super pissed if it dies on me.

WTF MAJIk i though yo uwas in the xbox club,problem with 360 we keep to ourself ffs.

Majik,

i don' t think it got as bad as white dots down the screen but I distinctly remember a watery look stuck to the screen on GRAW just before my first 360 died. You might have seen something like this? Anyway, I hope deleting your save sorts it out - Geras online is awesome, not too complicated but it really highlights the need for good teamwork. And we need to get a quality Kikizo team together. Versus Gears plays very differently to the campaign mode, but both are excellent. Tiz helped through to the end on Casual fairly quickly, and LocoPuyo and I cracked a Berzerker skull on Hardcore today. Sweeeet!!!

I' m always ready for some Hardcore or Insane co-op.

Same thing on the dash, reboot and 3 red lights. I' m going to have to return it. FUCK!

Every 360, made before a certain date is designed to fail. They all will, its just a matter of time. Mine did, my second one works well though (so far).

This is what it was doing before it died...



...i now need to find out what number i need to call and go through the bullshit " try this" process over the phone with some idiot. I' m guessing they' ll send me a box to return it in and send me a new one.

Fuck!

Sorry majik for that joke,i hope they fix it for you fast,that sux,but i know the support and getting a new 360 goes very fast and seemless in sweden.

ORIGINAL: QuezcatoL

Sorry majik for that joke,i hope they fix it for you fast,that sux,but i know the support and getting a new 360 goes very fast and seemless in sweden.

Will i have to return the HDD too?

Try and play without the HDD,and see what happends,if it' s the same shit,no keep it.

Sorry to hear about that Majik. Well, welcome to the club! Like Quez said, they' re really fast about replacing the things so you should be good to go in like a week or so.

As far as the hard drive, I say return it. Yeah, you' ve got a lot of crap on it, I' m sure, but your gamerscore and stats are all saved over XBL, so I wouldn' t worry about that stuff (my profile got corrupted somehow on my hard drive, so I had to download it again from the MS servers. Painless, really.) Getting a system that is sure to work, 100%, is paramount!

Dude, that sucks Majik.[:' (]

(Completely off-topic, but nice TV) Like Quez said, go play it W/O the hard drive, and if your problem is solved then you' re out 100 bucks, and you can ignore the rest of this. However if it gets no better, go out, spend the 8 pounds and get yourself a Datel Data-Transfer Kit or something of that ilk, I dunno if Datel does business in the UK.

But offload your files onto a PC, and send in your hard-drive + console. Worse comes to worse, the whole lot is botched and they send you a new one, and you' ve still got your HDD data. Best of luck man, and oh, by the way, just to get you in the mood for the Microsoft representative:

" Is the console plugged into an outlet?"
" Does the console have a cable running from your TV to your 360"
" Was the console on when you noticed the problem?"

WTF?!

I took the HDD out and it worked again. I' ve replaced it and formatted it so i guess i need to see if it' s ok again.

I' m not happy!

If you havnt found the number yet, its 1800-4MYXBOX

I' ve downloading my profile from XBL.

I don' t know if the thing is screwed or what. It may be ok or it may be dead but since it was a game save that killed it (i' m almost certain because i died, it loaded the checkpoint and crashed) then since i' ve managed to format the HDD then i could be ok.

Right?

After taking ages to download my profile, it rebooted and i got the same vertical lines again. It' s obviously a hardware error and not a save problem afterall.

My problem now is that i no longer have the 3 red lights. It gets to the dash, crashes and vertical lines appear. Will they still replace it?

Will i have to return the HDD too?

You have the same thing I had, you won' t need to send in your HDD. But before you call customer service try disconnecting the HDD for 20 minutes and try again after witht eh HDD back on. When I called they wanted me to try that before they would send me the return box. The whole proccess for me took a little over a week and I got a bran new unit at no charge, go Canadian law!

I bought a 360 at EB Games on launch day and paid $50 (canadian) extra for a one year warranty. Today I walked into EB, told them my console was broken (it wasn' t), they gave me a new one I kept my HD and I paid 50 bucks again for the new warranty. Next year I will probably do it again; If you buy a launch unit of any console your crazy not to get rid of it for a new one via warantee. 50 bucks a year and no hassle, consider it with your next console purchase.