MS Extends 360 Warranty to Cover E74 Errors

The saga of Xbox 360 hardware failures never seems to end. Those buying Jasper models thought they were out of the woods in regards to system crippling hardware errors got an unwelcome surprise. Last month, it was discovered that Xbox 360s purchased in the last year or so seemed to be suffering an unusually high number of E74 errors. This particular error is similar to the red ring of death but is not related to the CPU or GPU. The chip that controls display scaling can become unseated, causing image atrefacts and noise to appear on the screen. It eventually results in total failure when the system displays the E74 message screen and a single red light appears. Originally, Microsoft had only covered this issue under the normal one year Xbox warranty. They have now extended it to fall under the RRoD three year warranty. This is retroactive meaning that customers who already paid for their system to be repaired will get a full rebate.

For what it’s worth, I think it’s important to point out that the Xbox 360’s motherboard is assembled by Taiwanese firm Foxconn. It’s not a well known company outside of the tech world but it is a primary subcontractor for many major consumer electronics companies. Aside from the 360, Foxconn also assembles the motherboards for the Wii, PS3, iPod Nano, MacBook Air, Macbook Pro, iPhone, various cell phones, and the Amazon Kindle. Since most of these products are considered to be some of the most reliable in the industry, we can chock up the 360’s issues to design flaws rather than manufacturing oversights. While the 360 has been a widely successful product for Microsoft, the console has generated a lot of negative press in regards to its extremely poor reliability; which is far below industry standards by a significant margin.

Source: The Register