It is pretty well known inside the xbox 360 gaming community that all is not perfect. Since the release of the initial model of the X360, the gaming unit has been plagued by what has become commonly known as the Xbox 360 3 Red Lights problem.
Your game freezes, you see 3 flashing red lights on the front of your xbox console and you have now been officially hit by the 3 red lights problem.
This means that there has been a hardware failure inside the xbox, usually caused by excessive heat build-up. In the case of the 3 red lights, this usually means that there has been overheating inside the GPU to the point where either some of the hardware components have been damaged and/or the solder joints have softened to the point where they have lost connectivity with key components. The best way to find out if you have permanent damage is to let the xbox cool down for an hour or so then power it back up. Sometimes, just turning off the xbox for an hour or so to let it cool down then turning it back on will get rid of the 3 red lights. If this doesn’t work for you, you’ll either have to send it out for repair or try the fix it yourself route.
Once you start the 360 repair process yourself, you’ll quickly realize that it is not all that complicated as long as you follow the instructions step-by-step. There are a lot of fix-it guides available on the internet that take you step-by-step (including videos) through the complete repair process. The huge advantage of going the do it yourself route for the Xbox 360 3 Red Lights problem is that you can be back up and playing your favorite game in about an hour or so.
