XBox Death Screen

My XBox died yesterday due to manufacturing defect. Most Windows users have seen the Blue Screen of Death one too many times while using Microsoft's operating system. Instead of using the Blue Screen, Microsoft decided to give XBox a "Black Screen of Death" and I was unlucky enough to see one on my one month old system.

Frustration got the better part of me. I forgot to take a picture of my own Black Screen of Death. The image you see above was found here. My screen displayed the error code 09 instead of 07. According to llamma.com, error code 09 means my "Xbox motherboard is having trouble communicating with the Hard Drive...this is probably due to an ATA controller on the motherboard and not due to the hard drive itself." When the error screen appears, the light around the eject button flashes red instead of green. The disc tray will not open and the system will not boot up at all.

I bought my system and purchased the extended one year warranty from EBGames. Yeah, it is a good thing I did buy that warranty huh? Normally, I never waste any money on purchasing extended warranties, but I bought one for the XBox in case something like this happens. Sure enough, Microsoft did not let me down.

The guy at EBGames hooked me up. He let me exchange the defective unit for a new one without using the warranty. This means that I still have my one year warranty at EBGames to exchange for a new system if it fails to operate for whatever reason. We had to pry open the disc tray with a knife to get my Madden 2005 game disc. Unfortunately, we could not transfer game data from the defective unit to the new one. It is a good thing that I was not playing one of those massive RPG games that required hours and hours of logging. I do have to rebuild my Madden Franchise (it was not doing that great anyway) and rebuild my character for the tennis game Top Spin. I might invest in one of those memory cards just in case this new XBox dies on me.

That's that. Microsoft happens. Be sure to buy that extended warranty if you decide to get a XBox.