It’s been a long time since I posted anything, but I thought I better blog this quick before I got over how pleased I am with myself.

I was one of the first in Australia to get an XBox360 when it just launched. I pre-ordered my unit at Electronics Boutique and went for the launch night and everything.

Anyway, apart from Top Spin 2, I didn’t really play much XBox. I used it mostly to watch dvds. A few months ago when people were complaining about the 3 rings of death I was a bit concerned since my unit was the very first version but things were working fine for me.

Two nights ago, I had a power outage at home and when I tried to boot up the XBox I had the dreaded 3 rings of death! Initially it looked like all 4 rings were flashing but upon closer inspection I realised it was 3.

Having stored my XBox360 packaging box somewhere I can’t remember, I had my receipt in there and couldn’t be bothered looking for it. I searched in Google instead, to see what information I could dig up.

Found this post on xbox-scene.com that had information about the different rings and how to get specific error codes of the problem. My error code was “0020″ which stood for “Unknown Hardware Failure” which meant it could have been anything. Microsoft recommends you send the console in if you get this error.

But I found this video on geeksaresexy.net that basically shows you that by wrapping your XBox360 in towels, leaving it on for 20 minutes and letting it overheat, it fixes the problem! While I was of little faith I gave it a go.

IT WORKED! My XBox360 is back up and running. Apparently this is a temporary fix and the problem may resurface but I’ve left the XBox going for a couple of hours and so far so good. One thing I didn’t do was remove the hard drive, which really is a good idea in case it overheats. The video also instructs you to remove the video cable, but I’d leave it on as I found the XBox360 powers itselfs off after a while if it doesn’t detect the video cable.

Finally, I found this site that claims that for US$23 you can download videos and instructions on how to repair any problem on the XBox360. As I mentioned earlier I have little faith but has anyone purchased or seen this and is the info worth paying for?

UPDATE (16 Dec 2007):
My XBox360 died again with the same 3 rings of death problem, error code “0020″. I gave the towel trick one more go and the XBox360 worked for one more day before dying with the same problem. I’ve given up on the towel trick! Did some research on the net and the next thing I’m going to try when I have the time is to apply Artic Silver Thermal paste and maybe use the heat gun trick to “cook” things back in place.