How to void your XBOX 360 warranty

WARNING: Following these instructions will void your XBOX 360 warranty

I have recently had a chance to learn more about the cool hardware and technology in a XBOX 360. My boss's XBOX 360 had failed and would not boot or work. After contacting the point of sale and Microsoft, he found that his warranty had expired and they could not help him with repair service. After spending some time looking at forum posts on how to disassemble the 360 I set to work. Armed with my Torx screwdrivers, a chunk of plastic from a DVD spindle cover and a long bamboo kebob stick I started to strip that 360 down.

The First step is removing the front faceplate and hard drive (if you have one)

After removing this you will need to use the pointy end of the kebab stick or a small jewelers screwdriver to push in the retaining tabs on the top and bottom plate.

Be careful while you do this as you have to apply a bit of outward force to get the plate to continue to release the tabs as you go.

Once both top and bottom plate are off you now have a bit of fabrication to do to proceed.

Shown below is the tool design I used to split the front and back of the main XBOX 360 body.



I just used a pair of scissors and cut up the dome from a dvd spindle cover but an old credit card works  as well.

The plastic should be fairly rigid as it is pushing back four tabs at once.

The other end of the 360 has a three tab configuration but I only pushed the two closest together to get the sides to split.

Once the white sides have been removed, you have 6 torx screws to remove and the body is open.



As I did not know why I had the three lights of the ring of lights green I did a search to find out the possible causes.

This particular unit was reporting a hardware failure so I set about cleaning it of all the dust, debris and obvious signs of stress.

Inside the case is a white plastic shroud that directs the air from the fans to the heatsinks, I removed this after disconnecting the SATA and power connections to the DVD drive.



I opened the DVD drive and cleaned the optic with 99.99% isopropanol and used compressed dry air to clean the rest of the body of the drive.



After putting the shroud and DVD drive back into the 360 I connected the video and power connections to do a little boot test.

It booted without any red lights!!!!!!

So I reversed the process and put the whole thing back together.

One repaired XBOX 360.

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