Xbox 360, 3 Red Lights – The Hidden Message
Ok, here’s a sneak peek. If your Xbox 360 has stopped working and you’re not getting a video display, how can you tell what’s wrong? Well, those smart guys (and gals) at Microsoft have thought through this chicken and egg problem and come up with a suitably clever solution.
The Xbox 360 is a marvel of modern design, but it suffers from some well-documented problems. The sleek casing isn’t built to deal with the massive amounts of heat produced when the console is running, and the Xbox 360 doesn’t have an active cooling system. These two factors can only amount to one thing: the Xbox 360 is prone to overheating and all the problems that come with it. However, one nice design that Microsoft incorporated into the Xbox 360 was the famous “ring of light.” If your Xbox 360 has never crashed, then you’ve only seen the green light ring, and probably thought it was a fancy power light. But did you know that this nifty piece of design also turns red when the console has a problem, and the secret to the failure is encoded in the red light sequence it displays?
Most of us have probably heard of the Xbox 360 3 red lights error. This is the most common error and is caused by overheating. There are many good guides available on the internet that tell you how to fix Xbox 360 3 red lights error, so I won’t cover it here. What is less well known is that the ring light can also help us identify the actual fault and thus help us apply the correct solution, or know when to have it professionally repaired.
To get the error code, you first need to turn on your Xbox 360, that makes sense, and wait for the red Xbox 360 3 lights to show. Then you press and hold the Sync button, it’s a little white button on the front of the box, and press the eject button on the DVD drive. The segments in the light ring will now begin to flash the error code, one digit at a time while you press the eject button. Press it four times to get the full code. Since there are 4 segments, you can say the number as follows
o All four lights blinking – 0
o A flashing light – 1
o Two flashing lights – 2
o Three flashing lights – 3
Ok, now that you have the code, say 1003, which indicates a bad hard drive, you can take appropriate action.