What is the Xbox Ring of Death?
There are several meanings of "ring of death" for Xbox 360. One definition of ring of death is when the Xbox lights up all three red error lights on the console to indicate a general failure. This forms a red circle which is known as the Xbox ring of death. Ouch.The definition to be discussed in this article is the ring of death that occurs when the Xbox scratches a game disc and forms a ring of damage. This will often render a game disc useless. The picture below shows an Xbox game disc with a ring of death. This game still played, but would crash due to the damage to the disc.
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| Xbox Ring of Death Image Source: Dr. Penny Pincher |
How to Fix the Xbox Ring of Death
The surface of the disc is scratched, which blocks the laser light inside the disc reader from properly reflecting off of the back surface of the disc where its data is encoded. The disc is made of plastic, and the scratched part of the plastic turns white and opaque. This layer of the plastic can be polished to make it transparent again.In the past I have taken a damaged disc to a nearby Family Video store for repair. This cost about $3, but it took a couple days to get the disc back since it was sent out for repair. This time, I wanted to find a shop that could repair the disc while I waited. I went to Video Games ETC! They had a machine that looked like a JFJ Easy Pro Disc Repair Machine or similar system. These machines can be purchased on amazon.com for about $120. They resurfaced the disc in about 30 seconds and it looked like new. The bill was $2.99. See picture of the repaired disc below.
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| Xbox Ring of Death Repaired Image Source: Dr. Penny Pincher |
There are suggestions on the Internet to use toothpaste, banana peels, and household polishing compounds to repair scratches in discs. This sounds feasible if it will remove the scratched plastic on the surface of the disc. There may be some chance of making things worse if you use the wrong abrasive material to polish the disc and end up making more scratches and damaging the surface further.
There are also do-it-yourself scratch repair kits for sale starting at under $5. Fortunately the Xbox ring of death has only happened twice in 2 years at our house, so paying $3 to have a professional repair makes sense for me. Another option: get a cheap disc repair kit on eBay
How to Prevent the Xbox Ring of Death
The high rotation speed of the disc makes it very sensitive to any movement of the console while the disc is spinning, which is basically all the time while playing a game. The damage in the picture above occurred while sliding the Xbox console very gently to plug in a headset with headphones and a microphone. The best way to avoid getting the Xbox ring of death is:
- Don't touch your Xbox at all while it is running! Any movement can cause ring of death...
- Turn off your Xbox or remove the game disc when your Xbox is not in use
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