Another one bites the dust...

Some of you may know the embarrassing truth that Dick and I own 3 (count 'em: THREE) Xbox 360 consoles in our house. This statement was a bit easier to say when Christopher was living here, but the truth is: we really do use all three on nearly a daily basis.

We have Xbox 360 #1 downstairs in the main TV room. This Xbox will know be referred to as "Dick's Xbox". This is the Xbox that Dick plays off of, and it's connected to the big TV, with the surround sound, etc.,

Xbox 360 #2 lives upstairs in the front room. This was originally "Trina's Xbox", until we got Xbox #3. Now we use it as the "guest Xbox", or, more importantly, I use it as a DVD player or Media Center Extender so I can watch recorded TV or a DVD while I work out on our elliptical machine. (makes the time fly by.)

And that brings us to Xbox 360 #3. We'll call this on "Trina's Xbox", where I play Xbox from our bedroom. We use it more often (every night) as a media center extender to watch recorded TV.

We bought Xbox #3 last August, when we got a new LCD TV for the bedroom. (Turns out that buying new TVs is "Dick's Thing".) Sunday night, when we just got back from vacation, Xbox #3 stopped working. The TV didn't read the input at all, and there were three flashing red lights on the "ring of lights" surrounding the power button.

I looked it up on Xbox 360 support, and saw that this must be a common problem. Enough so, that they have an entire article about it. According to this article, this is a problem that happens when the Xbox is experiencing hardware failure. Super.

I called Xbox Support yesterday, we tested a couple of things, and they acknowledged that yes, this is a reoccurring problem that they've been seeing. Xbox #3 is still under warranty (one year coverage) so they are sending a box for me to ship our console back for repair. All in all, it'll probably take about 3 weeks.

Okay. no biggie. Dick and I have several friends who have had problems with their Xboxes in the past, and we always felt fortunate that neither of our two original boxes ever had problems. We've owned 5 xbox/xbox 360s within the past 5 or 6 years without any problems.

Here's where the fun begins:

After Xbox #3 died, Dick switched it's removable hard drive to Xbox #2, and connected Xbox #2 to the power supply and cables where Xbox #3 used to live. (are you still with me?) This worked fine on Sunday. We also turned on the Xbox Monday night, wanting to play Xbox LIVE, but for some reason, we weren't able to connect me to "Live". Our internet connection was fine, and showing up. We figured Xbox Live was having some problems.

Last night, as I was getting ready to go to bed and watch TV, I turned Xbox #2 back on, and voila: 3 flashing red lights on the ring of lights.

WHAT?!

Is it me, or does this sound like too much of a coincidence? TWO Xboxes dying, with the same symptoms in the course of 24 hours?

So, I called Customer Support again this morning, armed with my reference number from yesterday, and explaining what happened to yet another Xbox console last night. They had me check the power supply again, and claimed it, and the external hard drive were not the culprits to our rash of problems. The kicker here is that Xbox #2 is no longer under warranty, and it would cost #139.90 to send it back for repair. The good news is that after it's returned to us, it'll be under a 1 year warranty again.

So, there you have it. It the span of 24 hours, we've gone from 3 Xbox consoles, to two, to one.

This bites.

I'll keep you posted on the progress (Because I know you want to know).

Anyone else experiencing this problem?