Xbox360 250gb stuttering/locking up

iwb

My son has one of these which is about 18 months old. It is totally stock with no mods. It has the Kinect also. He went about playing Battlefield 3 today and it is terrible. The screen that plays when the game starts is distorted and jumpy. I had a look and even before getting that far, the console is slow to react. Navigating menus is hesitant even. We checked and cleaned the disk but that didn't help and the disk is new anyway and isn't scratched.

I have little knowledge and little interest in Xbox so I can't be of much help. I went through settings to see if there was anything obvious. If it was a PC, I would be checking for a full hard drive or overheating or something but nothing like that presents itself with the console.

Any help or suggestions greatly appreciated.

chin_grin

If it's the new black slim one make sure the vents on either side are clear of dust. Get a hoover to those as after eighteen months it'd accumulate some debris. Be sure to plug it out first!

Does it give any whirring noise or beeps? A few problems were related to the disk drives. If it's not clicking\whirring you can rule that out.

iwb

Thanks for the suggestions. I didn't think it was very dusty having looked at it but just for pigiron, I took the hoover to it just now and very little dust came out of it. I can see the fan through the grille also and there is a small amount of dust on the fins put thats about it.

I can't say there is any noise out of it at all except when the disk spins up and that sounds normal also.

Anything else I can try?

iwb

Any harm opening it up? I assume it is out of warranty at 18 months. Is it easy to open? Anything else I can do to get an impatient son off my case?

chin_grin

iwb wrote: »

Thanks for the suggestions. I didn't think it was very dusty having looked at it but just for pigiron, I took the hoover to it just now and very little dust came out of it. I can see the fan through the grille also and there is a small amount of dust on the fins put thats about it.

I can't say there is any noise out of it at all except when the disk spins up and that sounds normal also.

Anything else I can try?

iwb wrote: »

Any harm opening it up? I assume it is out of warranty at 18 months. Is it easy to open? Anything else I can do to get an impatient son off my case?

I wouldn't if you're not confident that you can put it back together again.

Try searching here. http://support.xbox.com/en-IE/

Also does it only happen on Battlefield 3 or have you tried other games?

Rochie IRL

Is it only battlefield? and is it when online or offline. My 360 can be slow to react but only in the menu of MW3. I have the game saved to the memory. I press start and then multiplayer and then xbox live then it gets very slow and a bit jumpy. As if it is having issues connecting to a server or something. I press the guide button and then close the guide and it works fine. If I don't press the guide it stays jumpy. I don't have the issue all the time and over the last week or so it has improved. I cleared the cache etc but it made no difference. It had me baffled.

TheMooseInNam

iwb wrote: »

Any harm opening it up? I assume it is out of warranty at 18 months. Is it easy to open? Anything else I can do to get an impatient son off my case?

All electronic goods sold in Ireland have a 24 month warranty. Before opening it up, pursue either the retailer or MS directly. Perhaps someone better versed in mercantile law can clarify this.

Jimbobjoeyman

is it just battlefield or is it all games ?

It could be a rrod type error if the screen looks all distorted and freezing,
-Yes slims do suffer from these errors just not as much yet-

I'd be calling Microsoft, you have a 24 month warranty on electrical goods purchased within the EU.

Don't go anywhere near it with a hoover as mentioned above.
You could destroy it doing that.

Meesared

TheMooseInNam wrote: »

All electronic goods sold in Ireland have a 24 month warranty. Before opening it up, pursue either the retailer or MS directly. Perhaps someone better versed in mercantile law can clarify this.

This is true

iwb

All Games. I didn't know all goods have a 24 month warranty. I will check out what Rochie says above in the morning and provide feedback.
I don't know about the rrod. Wouldn't that show red lights around the on button? There aren't any of those.

MiniNukinfuts

I had this same problem with mine last year.

Try removing the HDD, clean the socket and putting it back in. Also, try clear the HDD cache, that helped me.

iwb

Problem sorted. First off, I had it wrong. The video wasn't ever a problem. I saw the startup screen for Battlefield 3 and thought that the video was hesitating and jumping. It is, but that is the way its meant to be. The sound was the only problem. It was like someone was turning up and down the volume about once a second or so.

Anyway, I got onto a chat page with a Microsoft tech today and he was very helpful. We tried taking the hard drive out and also deleting files that were corrupted to no avail. He eventually asked me to bring the Xbox to another TV. The only other one we have isn't hd, so we connected the Xbox to scart. No problems at all.

Brought it back to the HD TV and used a different HDMI cable which fixed the problem. Just sound failing due to a bad cable I guess.

Thanks for all the help. I hope this helps someone else out with the same problem.

MiniNukinfuts

Glad to hear you got it fixed. My problem was nothing like yours so in the end :P