Hammers and baseball bats are usually good solutions. If those don't work, try tall buildings with large windows.

This is why I'm reluctant to get a 360 myself. Might have good games on it, but I'm not about to plop down $300-400 for a machine that's going to last only a couple of years before it fails. Microsoft could really learn a thing or two about quality and longevity from Nintendo.

Sorry to hear of your problems I.D., as I seem to be headed down a similar path myself.  My current 360 has been locking up for no apparent reason and/or not wanting to start up cleanly.

 

To clear up a few things though -- your game saves are on your own local storage, either the hard drive or a memory card if you used one.   If you buy another 360 you can quickly and easily move the hard drive or memory unit over to the new system and start playing on it right away.

You'll have issues playing any Xbox Live Arcade content on the system when you aren't connected to Xbox Live.  That *might* be fixed by going through Download history and redownloading that content over again so it 'brands' itself to the new console serial number.

If you buy a new box you could go for the cheapest alternative, one of the Xbox Live Arcade bundles.  Those come with (if I recall correctly) a wired controller rather than wireless and *no* hard drive unit.  Take the hard drive unit from your current box, snap it on to the new box and bingo, back up and running.  At that point take the existing unit, send it back to Microsoft with the check for the repairs (or however they demand payment) and get it repaired.  When it comes back put it into the Xbox Live Arcade box with the memory unit from the one you just bought, along with the wired controller and then sell the whole thing on eBay or Amazon or similar and get most of your money back (you'd be out the cost of the repair and the seller fees and some amount that made it enough of a bargain that the new buyer would want to purchase from you versus buying brand new...)

By the way, in my case I'm not sure I'd replace my own 360 myself.  Repair it yes, replace it no.  Just can't justify the cost at this point.  I'd love to upgrade it to an Elite system (with the bigger harddrive), and get the HDMI connector in the process but it's not worth dropping that much money on for now.

That stinks.  I've been considering buying my boys a new game system.  I have always liked Nintendo because I thought they had more young kid friendly game.  I am a non-gamer this is just from a mom standpoint.  Though I have to say that I rocked at Tiggers hunny hunt.  My boys are getting older now though.  Brendan wants the Wii.  Bret wants the xbox 360, I think mainly because he wants to play Halo.  I think rock band looks like fun.  Moola is an issue too.  Ach.  Anyway, it helps to read about others experiences with the different systems. 

I thought the HD was tied to the specific unit, and couldn't be swapped.  That was an idea I had though.  Maybe I am wrong.

 

Yeah, that's kinda how I feel, but I'm just not sure.  I need to make a decision though because I have games ordered, and I'm paying for XBL.

I have a Wii as well, and aside from this problem, I have been very happy with both.  My daughers love both systems because they have all the Mario and party games on the Wii, then they use the Xbox 360 for like racing, skating, etc. games.

 

Definitely not tied to the specific unit and very easy to remove and install on any other Xbox 360 you care to use it on.  Makes it very easy to take your save gamed files over to a friends house and use them there (not that you can copy them to his/her storage unit that way, you'd still need a memory unit to use for shuttling content if you wanted to do that).

I've done the swap the hard drives trick a few times on the two boxes I have.  Basically one box serves as my spare and is available to my wife and daughter to play with.  They very, very rarely use the box in the room for them, so when/if mine dies I reclaim the spare box and have one to use while mine is in for repairs.  When mine comes back I return theirs and everyone remains happy while I keep gaming on.

Expensive to have the second box, but not so bad if you get the arcade unit and live with it's limitations.  If you have children that would like to play more, it's actually a nice investment as they'll have their own box to play that way (though it would have wired controllers, rather than wireless, unless you buy extra controllers).

Note you can use all of the accessories you currently have with another box *but* you have to 'connect' those accessories to the new box (think wireless and think of how you have to press the little 'connect' button on the wireless controller to get it to mate/sync up with the Xbox 360).  It's a painless process, but one you have to go through so the box knows that the controllers it is hearing from are ones it should respond to (and so the controllers know they should be talking to that box).

That stinks! You shouldn't have to pay. I didn't have a warranty when mine broke either...but I called Microsoft and pissed and moaned until they saw it my way...They kindly returned the favor by sending me another broken XBOX...but my Third one seems to work fine so far. Maybe try complaining more...that worked for me.

For anyone who is weary about buying a 360...

The fun factor for the XBOX 360 rivals that of the GREAT Sega Dreamcast...Buy a Wii or a PSP to play when your 360 is in Texas being repaired. Thats what I did