Forza's Killed my Launch 360

Snake Plisken

Yeah I know some u will think this is bull, but having played Forza since it launched couple of weeks back thats all I've played, not large sessions either an hour here two hours there, but started it up the other day and played for 10 mins and the pic froze with kind of lines running up it, but no 3 rings of death, so tried a couple of other games like Call of Juarez, and that freezes straight away once u start playing, Spiderman 3 worked for about 15mins and froze, then tried GOW, which actually worked for the rest of the day, but when I strated it up the next morning played for 10 mins and froze, obviously when the machine gets warm, it cancels out the issue, but I think I'll soon have the 3ROD's, might try a couple of fixes I've seen on XBox scene to see if I can fix the issue otherwise, i',m off to find a core with a samsung drive in it.

Snake

Ciaran500

Forza didn't kill your machine. Your machine died while playing Forza.

feileacan

snake - mine has just died as well (while playing forza)

now have the three flashing red lights

did some reading on the old tinternet - doesnt look good

basically the machines up the swanny and it seems like it costs about £80 to fix if you live in the uk - so double that at least for over here.

it'll be a visit to games store in the morning

of course its about three months out of warranty.

conspirators will think that its an evil microsoft plan as its seems that theres lots of machines failing about 12-16 months after release.

what a fecker - just starting to get into forza

anyone want to buy some 360 games ???

Gran Hermano

Relax... your warranty is not 1 year, it's 2 under Irish consumer law.
Check the recent posts on this forum. Plus there is another
post on here today stating MS are giving everyone 3 years.
Call MS and see how you get on before you start flogging your
games or shouting about conspiracies. Take into account it may
take the news of the 3 year warranty a few days to filter
down to the peons in the outsourced MS call-centres in Egypt.

Snake Plisken

yeah well I opened mine to flash the DVD Drive, so that rules out going back to microsoft. I'lll try some home made fixes first see how I get on.

Snake

Rochie IRL

A lot of 360's are dying lately and as it happens it seems to be while playing Forza 2. Some people say the game is not at fault and your 360 was going to die anyway. Others are blaming Forza for pushing the 360 beyond it's capabilities. I for one am in that camp. I've had my 360 since launch and it never gave any problems until I played Forza. Then it froze the same as Snakes but no red lights. The graphics card is gone. What is making me think the game is to blame is on the official Microsoft forza website a forum with over 900 complaints about Forza killing the 360 was removed by Microsoft. There is now a new thread on the site. Now all of a sudden the warranty is extended to 3yrs. I'm sorry but I smell a rat. My 360 is off getting repaired at the moment. Snake I don't think any home made fixes will work. It's time to ring MS and get it sent in. Mine is already gone two weeks.

Snake Plisken

yeah sounds like we're in the same boat Rochie, also Microsoft today admitted spending 1.1Billion dollars on console repairs(http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=40817) and thus the increase to 3 year warrenty, but my machine is out of warrenty as I've opened it up so I'll have to pick up another core soon. Will try the fixes just for a laugh see if they work.

Snake

Rochie IRL

Now why did you open it Snake tut, tut, tut.
I was thinking of getting a core myself to keep me going while my other is away and to have it as a backup if I have another failure in the future.

Snake Plisken

decided to flash the drive the week before they started banning modded consoles off of Live, then machine decides to die, its been a bad 2 months for my box

Snake

Kinetic^

Man send it back anyway, just say nothing. Tell them you bought it 2nd hand.

kleefarr

I heard on the radio today that Microsoft are extending the warranty to THREE years and will be reimbursing everyone who has paid them to fix a box.

mobileplaza

im reluctant to play forza 2 now reading this thread!!

cubix

Snake I have a spare sticker if you want;) ,pm me an address or if your in Dublin can organise something

Cubix

Ciaran500

mobileplaza wrote:

im reluctant to play forza 2 now reading this thread!!

Don't bother, every time a big game comes out people start playing there 360 alot and their consoles start to die. Then they try and blame the game even though no link has ever been shown to a game killing consoles.

Snake Plisken

Ciaran500 wrote:

Don't bother, every time a big game comes out people start playing there 360 alot and their consoles start to die. Then they try and blame the game even though no link has ever been shown to a game killing consoles.

Well obviously a game like forza puts additional pressure on the GPU & CPU by the amount of calculations and processes that have to be run through them this creates additional heat inside the box, not saying that it was the one cause but it certainly put the final nail in the coffin. Gonna take the heatsinks off next week clean them up and the cpu and bolt them down rather then use the Xclamp which stresses the board and see how I get on.

Rgds

Snake

Rochie IRL

Ciaran500 wrote:

Don't bother, every time a big game comes out people start playing there 360 alot and their consoles start to die. Then they try and blame the game even though no link has ever been shown to a game killing consoles.

How do you explain when you play your console a consistent amount of time anyway regardless of a new game meaning you play it more. I played mine the same amount of time per day or per week. I never had a problem until Forza 2 came along. Snake is right it put additional pressure on the console and put the nail in the coffin.

Let us know how you get on Snake with the spanner set and the hammer :eek:

Ciaran500

Snake Plisken wrote:

Well obviously a game like forza puts additional pressure on the GPU & CPU by the amount of calculations and processes that have to be run through them this creates additional heat inside the box, not saying that it was the one cause but it certainly put the final nail in the coffin.

Forza doesn't create any more heat than other games, since launch the CPU and GPU would of been running at 100% in any game. The only difference is that as time goes on devs use that power more efficiently, doesn't create any extra heat though.

How do you explain when you play your console a consistent amount of time anyway regardless of a new game meaning you play it more. I played mine the same amount of time per day or per week. I never had a problem until Forza 2 came along.

Because 360's die kinda frequently if you haven't noticed. They don't die because of the game they are playing, they die when the solder under the GPU cracks

Rochie IRL

Ciaran500 wrote:

Forza doesn't create any more heat than other games, since launch the CPU and GPU would of been running at 100% in any game. The only difference is that as time goes on devs use that power more efficiently, doesn't create any extra heat though.


Because 360's die kinda frequently if you haven't noticed. They don't die because of the game they are playing, they die when the solder under the GPU cracks

No hadn't noticed mine dying frequently. It's been fine since launch. It's also very suspect that the forum on forzamotorsport.net with the reems of complaints about the game killing the 360 was removed by Microsoft and then the warranty was extended to 3 yrs. I doubt if it's an a coinsidence that the failure rate of 360's just happen to go up as Forza came out. Like I said I hadn't played my console for any more or any less than I would normally have done. It's also a bit suspect that on the replacement forum that was put up a few guys who had a failure and told Microsoft that Forza 2 was to blame had their console repaired FOC and that was before the extended warranty came out. I'd also say that playing a game causes the solder to crack it hardly happens when the machine is sitting there idol.

Snake Plisken

No what happens is that the solder points on the CPU & GPU are constantly getting hot while in use, if its running something that is really processor intensive then the whole chip will heat up and the solder points will expand with the heat and when the machine is off it will cool down, as the solder used in the 360 is lead free, this leads to the solder being slightly more brittle and eventually cracks will appear and points will lift off, causing 3 rings of death, now in my case it looks like its the GPU thats acting up, I think that forza accelerated the process by putting the 360 under constant pressure and causing errors.

Snake

Ciaran500

Rochie IRL wrote:

No hadn't noticed mine dying frequently. It's been fine since launch. It's also very suspect that the forum on forzamotorsport.net with the reems of complaints about the game killing the 360 was removed by Microsoft and then the warranty was extended to 3 yrs. I doubt if it's an a coinsidence that the failure rate of 360's just happen to go up as Forza came out. Like I said I hadn't played my console for any more or any less than I would normally have done. It's also a bit suspect that on the replacement forum that was put up a few guys who had a failure and told Microsoft that Forza 2 was to blame had their console repaired FOC and that was before the extended warranty came out. I'd also say that playing a game causes the solder to crack it hardly happens when the machine is sitting there idol.

Failure rates would go up everytime a big game come out as there is more people playing there console for an extended period. Gears of War, PGR3, Dead Rising, Splinter Cell, Guitar Hero and Crackdown were all blamed for consoles dying with huge threads. The announcement was done now because E3 is next week, not because Forza is getting blamed.

What do you think Forza is doing to consoles? They are dying from the solder is cracking (the fact people can fix them by adjusting the xclamp shows this) and Forza would generate no more heat than any other game. So what could it be?

Rochie IRL

Ciaran500 wrote:

Failure rates would go up everytime a big game come out as there is more people playing there console for an extended period. Gears of War, PGR3, Dead Rising, Splinter Cell, Guitar Hero and Crackdown were all blamed for consoles dying with huge threads. The announcement was done now because E3 is next week, not because Forza is getting blamed.

What do you think Forza is doing to consoles? They are dying from the solder is cracking (the fact people can fix them by adjusting the xclamp shows this) and Forza would generate no more heat than any other game. So what could it be?

I've no idea what it could be. I just think things are a bit suspicious with forums been deleted, extended warranty etc. Maybe I've just got a suspicious mind (and I'm not Elvis). I do honestly think Forza did put additional pressure on the console. Yeah maybe it was going to happen eventually I can't answer that. I'll be honest I've no clue what is inside the console or what happens when it heats up. My own opinion is my launch console wasn't able for it, maybe the later ones are a bit better??

thebman

Ciaran500 wrote:

Forza doesn't create any more heat than other games, since launch the CPU and GPU would of been running at 100% in any game. The only difference is that as time goes on devs use that power more efficiently, doesn't create any extra heat though.

I don't think the 360 GPU and CPU run at 100% the whole time, otherwise the fan would be going full blast constantly to try to cool it. It seems much more likely that it runs at the speed that the game requires. The Pentium M does this in laptops and it has almost zero impact on performance.

Ciaran500

brim4brim wrote:

I don't think the 360 GPU and CPU run at 100% the whole time, otherwise the fan would be going full blast constantly to try to cool it. It seems much more likely that it runs at the speed that the game requires. The Pentium M does this in laptops and it has almost zero impact on performance.

I didn't say the whole time, just in every retail game would have the CPU and GPU running at 100%. Every dev wants their game to look great and wants to get the most from the machine, they aren't going to do that underclocking the hardware like a PentiumM does.

lee_baby_simms

Ciaran500 wrote:

The announcement was done now because E3 is next week

Why would E3 have anything to do with it?

If anything this announcement just attracts more attention to the problem. If they were worried about it causing PR problems they would have made this announcement after E3.

Microsoft were definately looking at a class action lawsuit if they didn't act soon. That kind of PR is a lot more damaging than what a few journos say at a convention.