After years of trying my absolute best to avoid the hardware failure of the XBOX 360 (aka The Red Ring of Death), it somehow seems that I couldn't escape from it. As I was hooking the 360 into the power plug and ready to play Ninja Gaiden II, I was shocked to see the three red blinking lights flashing around the power button. How did this happen? Could it be some heating problem? But how? I've never played the 360 the whole day since online gaming isn't my thing. Normally I would play it for an hour or two and immediately turn the power off soon after. I never leave it on the whole time so why did this stupid problem have to occur?

Microsoft has really gone too far. First Windows Vista, and now this. What kind of crack were they smoking when they were making this pile of vomit? Who's to blame? Ballmer or Gates? Anyway, looks like I have to send my poor XBOX 360 to the XBOX center. For the experienced ones, what is the standard procedure? Do they fix the machine or the replaced a new one? I'm not sure if my console is still under warranty but let's just hope so. Is there any possible way to avoid the Red Ring of Death? Will a third party cooling system help to solve the problem? Some have reported that it will make it worse. I bought mine about two years ago so I'm assuming that Microsoft has made some improvement to the latest line of consoles. Am I right?