Microsoft has been bombarded with complaints and returned Xbox 360s after they had the dreaded Red Ring of Death, but some of them seem to have no problems at all and have been returned as a result of a misunderstanding. Originally, 3 of the 4 quadrants of the ring blink red when there is a hardware failure in an Xbox 360 console. However, all 4 quadrants blink red when the AV/component cable is pulled out of the console.

This makes me wonder if some of these people who claimed their system had a hardware failure were really telling the truth, or were even aware of the fact that all 4 quadrants turn red when the AV cable is pulled out when the X360 is on. It happened to me once when I tried to move the AV/component cable. Of course I never sent it in for a possible hardware failure problem.

Sure Microsoft has been flooded with a slew of Xbox 360s returned after blinking the dreaded Red Ring of Death, but we hear that not all of them were due to overheating.

When the console seizes up and dies, three of the "circle of light's" quadrants blink red, but when the video cable pops out four of the quadrants blink. Apparently, a large number of consoles returned to Microsoft with the dreaded Red Ring of Death were perfectly fine and just the victim of a bit of red ring hysteria.

There have been so many returns, in fact, that we've been told Microsoft plans on disabling the four ring error code on future builds of the console. No word on whether they will remove the three-ring coding as wel

Supernouva via kotaku.com »