Well, I bought a guide for fixing my RROD xbox off the good ol' internet, the guide was crap.

Not only was it unclear and hard to follow, but it only briefly mentioned how to do the most difficult part. however, i persevered, and lo and behold...my xbox works again!

essentially, it seems that if your xbox breaks 'randomly' (i.e. while you were playing normally) chances are the thermal compound has gone, and needs replacing, this is a simple job to fix, and cheap to boot.

In essence, the CPU and GPU chips on the xbox gets VERY hot (to 100 degrees celsius plus) above them are heatsinks, to cool them down, however neither the surface of the heatsinks, or the CPU/GPU are perfectly smooth, so the imperfections trap little pockets of air, air is a bad conductor of heat (it's used in clothing to keep you warm) so the chips reach a critical temperature. Thermal compound fills these gaps with a conductive material, to stop this happening, however the thermal conductor can seemingly need replacing...

Fortunately for us, the good old RROD is there to say: STOP! if the heat reaches too much.

Anywhoo, I'll post a blog sometime of exactly how to fix this problem.

JJpenguin