Fighting with the red ring of death is beyond frustrating. But you should know that more than half a million people are dealing with the red ring of death. The good news is that Xbox 360 red lights aren’t as serious a problem as you might think and can be easily (and safely) fixed in less than an hour. In fact, more than 94% of Xbox 360’s that have red light errors only need a small adjustment to start working (only 6% actually require new parts).

One thing you should know about the red ring of death: it won’t go away on its own, you’ll have to fix your system.

Before doing ANYTHING, please read this first!

Some people say that you can fix the red ring of death by wrapping it in a towel and overheating it, or by heating it with a hair dryer, or by simply hitting your system. DON’T DO ANY OF THESE! While they may work for a bit (like 10 minutes), you will cause permanent damage to your system.

As you’ll see in a moment, the red ring of death is caused by heat, so heating up your system even more is the last thing you want to do. Hitting your system won’t do anything useful.

Trying any of these “Xbox 360 repair tricks” will only make the red ring of death problem worse. Unless you want to turn a simple repair into an expensive one that needs replacement parts, you will steer clear of these fake Xbox 360 repair tricks.

Find out the real cause of the red ring of death.

As you may have already guessed, heat is the main problem, but this is what happens on the technical side. As the system heats up (and can reach temperatures of up to 100 * C!), The motherboard begins to flex. This bending action begins to cause loosening of the GPU (graphics processing unit). Once the GPU gets loose, your system freezes and you get that annoying red ring of death.

But did you know that the whole red lights and system freeze thing is a problem that Microsoft admitted was their fault? When making the first model (that is, before the elite model came out) they had a space problem. They were running out of space and needed to put in the DVD drive. So they decided to shrink the LSI heatsink (the cooling unit) to make room. As a result, the motherboard doesn’t stay as cool as it should and many people now have the red ring of death issues.

Okay, I won’t try anything silly with my system, how can I fix it?

The problem is heat, and what you need to do is take the system apart, clean the GPU and the motherboard, and put a spacer (like a washer) between the heat sink and the motherboard. This will allow it to “breathe” and will keep the motherboard cooler.

If that scares you (and you’re not technically competent) don’t worry. There is a step-by-step video repair guide that you get (available at the end of the article). The whole repair can take less than an hour, you can use ordinary household tools, and it will remove the red ring of death once and for all.

Now you know …

Now you know that the annoying red ring of death issue in online multiplayer ruining game progress is caused by heat. This heat causes the GPU to loosen and fake repair tricks will only make this problem worse (and possibly permanent).

The problem is not going to go away on its own, but the basic problem is to give the motherboard a break, and you can fix it permanently, at home without prior technical experience and you can use common household tools. There is an Xbox 360 repair step-by-step video guide available at the end of this article if you are interested in help with the process.

Good luck fixing the red ring of death on your Xbox 360!