My friend has an XBox and we have noticed a problem lately upon boot-up.
After we hit the power button, it comes on and the XBox logo appears on the screen, however, the XBox is making a "click-a-click click-a-click click-a-click" noise that is emitting from the XBox itself. After a while of doing this, the power button flashes red and a message comes up on the screen saying that the xbox needs service and to call customer support, etc...

It doesn't matter if a game is in the xbox or not, it still does it. After a while of turning the Xbox on and off, on and off, on and off, it will quit doing it and will work fine. But it has been doing it a lot more lately.
The Xbox has not been modded or opened or anything, it is the same as when he bought it about 3 years ago, or whenever it first came out.
Anyone know of a simple fix, or what the problem is? Without calling customer support b/c that will probably take forever.
I looked this up on google and some people reported a similar noise but they don't give much in terms of a solution or remedy to the problem. Thanks

8/10/2005 12:29:19 PM

http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=288786

Quote :

"Green/Red Flashing - This is known as the Christmas lights or FRAG frequent red and green error. Most of the time the screen is blank and if you were doing work recently such as modchipping this could be caused by solder splashes on the mobo or a shot MCPX chip. Removing the MCPX chip is impossible without very expensive equipment so if you can't find any solder splashes or you weren't soldering on the board junk the whole board."

The clicking sound sounds like your hard drive, so it may be starting to go. Or it could be the mobo like it says above. When it says to get your xbox serviced, what number appears in the corner? That is your error code number. Go to the link above for what the error code means.

8/10/2005 2:16:07 PM

that sounds like pure hard drive

[Edited on August 10, 2005 at 2:51 PM. Reason : .]

8/10/2005 2:51:40 PM

hard drive is gone.

go buy a new one and a modchip

8/10/2005 2:56:58 PM

ok so the hard drive is gone. would he be better buying a new one and fixing it himself (how hard is it?), or just getting a new xbox or what.... what is the cheapest solution?

8/11/2005 9:44:50 AM

you will need a modchip $40 - $60
and a hard drive of any size you want / can afford ( you can get 100GB for about $50)
http://www.system-mods.com/

Or

Get it serviced at an xbox authorized repair place (best buy probably) for another 10 GB hard drive $?

Or

Buy a new xbox with a 10 GB hard drive $150

[Edited on August 11, 2005 at 10:02 AM. Reason : you lose all your saves with each option]

8/11/2005 9:59:40 AM

the cheapest solution is a new hard drive, but with a new hd you would have to mod the xbox.

or you could look on ebay for an xbox hd that someone is selling.

or another option still, you could drive to my apt and you can have the hd from my original xbox that i dont use anymore

8/11/2005 10:34:08 AM

Get someone to put a chip in your box just long enough to put a new hard drive in, format it, load it with the MS dash, and lock it, then pull the chip and you're right back at the beginning with a working unmodded xbox.

8/11/2005 1:07:18 PM