A few months back, my Xbox 360 gave me the dreaded ring of death. The counsel, which has not been moved from my entertainment center since I got it, decided to pass away with no warning. Being an early adapter, I was out of the recently extended warranty. Repairs costs, from the horse’s mouth, would be $140. There had to be another way!

Periodically, I would turn the 360 on, hoping that elves had snuck into my home at night and fixed it much like they cobble the shoes of tired old men. They did not. Lousy elves. I believed really hard in you! Doesn’t that make you real?

Next, being skeptical yet desperate, I wrapped my 360 in towels as so many on the internet have promoted. Aside from whetting my appetite for the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the towels did nothing.

I was out of easy options. The paths left to me were a huge repair bill or actually opening up the concave white box. Being opposed to bills of any sort, it was time to pry the sucker open.

Under the watchful eye of Skintari, expert PC messer-arounder-inner, we opened the Xbox 360 in a couple simple steps.

Part of that sentence was a lie. There is nothing simple about opening up a 360. Hidden latches and screws are your twists and turns in the maze to the heat sinks you wish to remove.

After a billion steps, the motherboard can finally be revealed. But before you can remove the heat sinks, you have one last bit of peril. The design flaw. The “X” clamps that must be pried off with brute force and patience.

It has taken you a minute or two to read this far, but you’ll spend about an hour and a half getting to this point in the repair process.

Our arms were tired, but we continued forward. Heat sinks and chips cleaned with Q-tips and alcohol. Arctic Silver 5 applied to said chips. Flawed “X” clamps replaced with $3 worth of hardware from Lowes.

That was all the tinkering we needed. Replacing some stupid clamps that were putting too much stress on the motherboard.

It was time to put the motherboard back into the Xbox 360 and overheat the system so it could solder some items in place.

Skintari and I plugged everything in, and started the system up. And just like that, there was joy in the air. The red lights had already been fixed. A rainbow made entirely of green lights pierced our eyes like the noon day sun peeking out from behind a cloud.

No overheating was needed. Patience and $15 in materials fixed what Microsoft had messed up.

The instructions used for this fix can be found RIGHT HERE. Of course, you should only do this if your 360 is broken, obviously, and if you are out of warranty. This fix might not work for everyone who is experiencing the three red lights, but it worked like magic for me.

Welcome back, Xbox 360! I must make up for wasted Halo 3 beta time.