I don't have to tell you that video gaming systems are really hot these days. From Nintendo WII to the Xbox 360 to the various portable hand held units, video gaming has been big business since the early days of the Atari and a few of its contemporaries. The technology that goes into these highly advanced pieces of machinery is truly remarkable. The graphics that these systems produce today versus what some of the earlier gaming systems put out truly is the difference between night and day.



That in large measure is why people today absolutely love their video gaming systems. The Xbox 360 is one such system.

The dreaded “Red Ring of Death”

Today there are 10's of millions of owners of the Xbox 360 and every day many of them “goes on the fritz”, suffering what is commonly called the Red Ring of Death (RROD), or you may know it as an e74 error. This happens when the console or the power supply (as Microsoft states) suffers some type of hardware failure, which in turn causes 3 red lights to begin flashing in a semi-cycle on the front of the console itself.

I won't get into why many of these systems are suddenly becoming inoperable, as that is beyond the scope of this article. The fact remains that when you have a Xbox 360 that you've not only spent hundreds on, at time of purchase, but possibly hundreds more that are often spent on games themselves only to suddenly find it sitting somewhere in your home not working, and if you love your system as much as I love mine you may be suddenly and unfortunately facing a number of decisions concerning your Xbox 360 repair.

Again, do to the large cash investment that you've undoubtedly shelled out over the months or possibly years of owning your system, it's easy to see that when it finally “gave up the ghost”(assuming yours has) the first question you probably asked yourself was, not how much is this going to cost me, but how much more is this going to cost me?

I say that because even though when my system died a few weeks after the warranty had expired and although I was very upset about it I already made up my mind that I was either going to buy a new one or I was going to get my current one fixed. It was just a matter of the cost.

Cost to repair a Xbox 360?

The cost to repair an Xbox 360 I found vary anywhere from $59.99 to $140. The $140 is basically what Microsoft will charge you and others holding expired warranties, not to mention the extra expense of having to ship it back to them.

Again you have the cost, in total about $170, including shipping. Then you have to wait as long as 8 weeks (a minimum of 8 weeks, could be longer depending on their backlog of repairs) to have it repaired and returned to you.

Boy, what an absolute pain in the “hind parts”. That whole production would have to be the absolute worse.

I sincerely hope I didn't just describe you?

If, however, you're still contemplating what to do about your broken Xbox 360 and you're leaning towards having Microsoft repair your system, my advice to you is, not so fast.

Like you when my system went down, I was a little hesitant about what to do but then I found another way, (a why that didn't include Microsoft intervention) in fact a much quicker less expensive way.

How to fix a Xbox 360?

I reveal the process on my blog. Be sure to watch the short video I have there too, it'll show you what I did to fix my Xbox 360. And like me you'll have your system up and running in not time at all.