Another Xbox 360 crisis? Now many users complain of video failure / GamerSquad reveals that after the dreaded Red of Death Rings, many Xbox 360 users are now complaining about video failure!

Xbox 360 crisis? Users complain of video failure!

Filed under: Xbox 360
Posted: Jun 26th 2007 by Andrew Macarthy

"I hope I'm not already broken!" - "Me too, me too..." (Credit: TomEppy)

Just when you thought it was safe to get back into the water (read: power up and play your Xbox 360 after a disastrous bout with the Red Rings of Death), you may want to reconsider dipping that gaming toe.

A new fear surrounding Xbox 360 malfunctioning is beginning to surface, with a number of users of the Xbox.com general discussion board revealing a video failure problem that they're experiencing - strangely enough - all at the same time.

Symptoms of the defect include the screen blacking out, with white dots appearing all over it. Some posters also report that green shadows plague their television displays (one of the common signs of video card failure). The audio, they claim, remains unaffected. For the majority of those complaining, the incidents started while they were playing Forza Motorsport 2 - insert ominous music.

Many have tried to diagnose the root cause of the problem, focusing on the various cables attached to their consoles; but whether using high or standard-definition cables, the same worrying situation of a display blackout occurs.

Others have supposed that the problems are being caused by the hardware component layout within the Xbox 360, blaming its poor orientation as the cause of limited ventilation - and perhaps the subsequent video faults. A few also mention the possibility of an Xbox Live update glitch, which may explain the reason why these people experienced the black screen around the same time.

Is this the start of another massive hardware headache for Microsoft?

22 Comments

Comments

Every week we find another thing wrong with the xbox360!! Sony and nintendo haven't have a problem so far (besides the straps on the wii remote which is easily fixed)

Posted 140 days ago by MS-rules

This happened to me yesterday. I was playing a game of NHL 08 when the screen turned green and then it turned purple, eventually the screen was just black with white dots. I had my console since December 2005 too.

Posted 52 days ago by Kevin

the exact same happened to me as mentioned by kevin. any info would be very grateful on a solution for this.

Posted 46 days ago by Kris

the exact same thing happened to me..i called 1-800-4MY-XBOX and talked to an agent...and since mine was some how still under warrenty they said theyll send me a box to ship it out and theyll replace it for free!! (theyll give you all the info. u need

Posted 45 days ago by Eric

yes that is true that they will send you a new one for free if you have had it less than a year but they told me 5-7 weeks!!!!!!! RIDICULOUS!

Posted 41 days ago by Adam

I was playing Madden 08, and then the screen just turned green, but it never turned purple, so I kept playing. However, it would flicker on and off, so I started to get aggravated and just turned it off, and restarted it and it was fine until about 5-10 minutes later. Who knows?

Posted 39 days ago by BANKS

Mine went during Halo 3, it was like looking through water, i turned it off for the night. the next day I got home from work and tried it again only to find it was a black screen with horizontal dots. I call 1-800-phck-you, and told that since my unit was out of warranty it was going to cost me $99 plus tax for repairs. I was basically told that i was SOL, there was nothing that I could do, also this was the first case he had ever heard of. I am going to sell my whole system and all my games for a PS3, i am totally unsatisfied with the 360.

Posted 37 days ago by ecn

ecn the exact thing happend to me. I was playing halo 3 and then it was like all negative colors. so i turned it off. the next day when i turned it on again there were white dots flying all over my screen. I unpluged the video/audio cord and kept messing with it. nothing seemed to work so i shut it off. the next day it was back to normal, except for that wierd negative color thing. thats better than nothing. i shut it off. turned it on this morning and back to white dots. WTF?!?! i dont know what to do!!!

Posted 37 days ago by mep

ECN & MEP- same exact thing happened to me while playing Halo 3. I thing the video card in the 360 is going bad. I tried new cables and everything, nothing works. Luckily I purchased an extended warranty so I won't have to pay to have it fixed.

Posted 36 days ago by GGW

DANG. I thought it would be the AV jacks. Is there no hope?

Posted 34 days ago by BANKS

i've had mine since it came out and out of the blue, whilst playing GRAW2 the screen went fuzzy so i turned it off, messed around with the cables and t.v. and the F###ing thing was still scrolling white dots. Well and Truely P###### OFF

Posted 31 days ago by joe

Wow...same thing with mine during Halo 3. Screen would freeze sometimes requiring a reboot. Fired it up this morning, got into xbox live fine, then it froze. Rebooted and I got a black screen with diagonal lines on it. If I switch the AV adapter from HDTV to TV, I got horizontal lines of white dots. The audio plays fine.

Posted 30 days ago by richid

It has just happened to me! While playing Halo 3, color inverted suddenly and I turned it off. When I turned it on, all I got were the dotted lines over the black screen.

Posted 30 days ago by raquino

Ok so I was plaing my xbox360 and I just finished playng the half life 2 andthen went to the first Halo then my screen got a green grainy haze to it and then I restarted it a plenty of sund but no screen! 4 hours later it wored for 5 mins and then te screen when gren ago and not it will not even turn on! Ihave played Halo 3 in it befrer and a lotof people who has owned halo 3 seem to be having this problem! loved my xbox360 why o why did this happen!

Posted 24 days ago by Jeremih

I think this happened to me before but I dont remember how I fixed it, but it did the horizontal dots when I stopped playing halo 3 one day

Posted 23 days ago by Nick

I have been looking online for Xbox360 faults of a similar nature. My screen goes green when playing online. Fault can be fixed temporarily by turning unit off and then back on. However it keeps returning. I have already sent the Xbox back once, under warranty, and they replaced the DVD drive. Now it is happening again and they want me to return the unit again. I get the feeling the support team are aware of the problem but say nothing. I thought it could be my TV, but I replaced the scart socket to no avail. Anyone got any ideas on what could be the problem?

Posted 21 days ago by Geraint

Mine has now broken too!was playing pro evo 6 when screen went green, returned to normal for 3days, then got the black screen with white dots "floating around". 4 days later it worked fine again, got the new pro evo, turned on xbox and that was that, 3 red lights, cd tray wont open either!tried different cable to no avail, 15working days for repair apparently... very strange problem

Posted 17 days ago by Steve

Yep, me too, just playing Forza 2 through the HD Cable - and it went purple, and blacked out in places too. I have only had mine 3 weeks. If I play through the 3 component Video/Audio leads it works fine! Crazy.

Posted 16 days ago by Sladdin

Same here. It happened with NHL 08. Now on to more important questions...WHAT TO DO? Spent 4 hours on the phone with Microsoft and they refuse to fix it for free. I have had the stupid thing for 13 months! If anyone has any way to contact Microsoft about this please let us know! I'd rather put my $150 towards PS3 than give these crooks another dime!

Posted 15 days ago by Jon

Same problem for me too, played halo 3 everything was fine, next day i turn it on and i have white dots going diagonaly across my screen.. I have been looking for a fix but i cant find one anywhere.. And microsoft wont repair my xbox because i had to take it apart to fix the 3red lights.. which i got 5 times! F**K MICROSOFT

Posted 14 days ago by Guy

Mine just died a few days ago. Thought it could be the cables, so I took them to GameStop to see if it worked on their system. It did. Which means the video card is fried. Drat you, Microsoft! Worst part is that right after it died, I got a call from GameStop telling me that Call of Duty 4 was ready for pickup the next day... Had mine for just over a year, bought it August 2006, so my warranty is just a couple months over. Damn it... I opened up the console as much as I could, carefully avoiding any of the tabs to indicate that I had voided any terms of service or something. In the end I decided to play it safe and not screw it up any worse. The only hope we have for getting this fixed free and fast is if this becomes a big enough problem that MS starts to repair consoles, even if they are over their warranty, like they did for the Red Ring of Death epidemic.

Posted 6 days ago by Bob Bobberson

Mine died about a week ago, same symptoms. I'm guessing this is unrelated to known 360 problems. I have a launch 360 that previously had no problems (won it via the Mountain Dew contest so I actually had it shortly before the official launch). Started happening to me while watching a DVD, I don't think this is game related. It's starting to sound like the next big piece of bad news for Microsoft. Like a lot people that haven't had problems, I've been thinking the 360 hardware problems have been over reported. Now, not so much...

Posted yesterday by Evan

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