This is my 2nd XBOX 360 in se7en years of owning consoles and I’ve had the misfortune or fortune (depending on how one sees it) of having the RED RING OF DEATH as pictured appear after a boot up.

It normally occurs when you are starting up your Xbox and about to play a game and it is extremely annoying as there is little one can do to fix it. If you search the Internet there are a few fixes available, which take time and effort and they will cost YOU money and most likely void your warranty completely.

DON’T WASTE YOUR TIME AS THERE IS A FREE SOLUTION:

Go to the XBOX Live website and register your console, then submit a ticket to them describing the error and you will find the “red ring of death” is covered by them regardless of your warranty, as it is a known XBOX fault. – Well that was my experience as my Xbox was over 3 years old and had definitely passed it’s warranty date.

After a successful fault submit, Xbox send you an email with your a UPS barcode stamp that covers the postage. All you need to do is buy a box to hold the console safely. My total expense was £5 and UPS delivered my broken Xbox to Microsoft Repair Centre in Germany within a day. I received an email from them saying they had my Xbox and it would be repaired within 2 weeks.

Well, imagine my surprise when I received my Xbox today (it took 10 days from the day I sent it off, to receiving it back in working order). That is incredible if you consider the UK had a bank holiday weekend in between.

That is fantastic support and service from Microsoft / XBOX.com and UPS.  Well done to all concerned.

Woweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! June 2010 is going to be one awesome month for music! Not only are we seeing Green Day live at Wembley Stadium, but they are releasing their very own Rockband XBOX 360 game on the 8th of June… Clive, are you reading this? Imagine playing your favorite Green Day songs on your big 42″ Toshiba LCD.

I see XBOX just took £39.99 out of my bank account for my gold membership. There is no email confirmation saying “By the way Mike, we are taking the money from your account if that is okay with you?” Nothing. In fact I don’t even remember agreeing to a Direct Debit or a date for renewal.

What if I didn’t want to sign up for another year? What if I only wanted Silver membership? It does seem a bit wrong that they have just assumed I will want it again and have taken the money without asking.

Has anyone else had this happen to them?

After downloading XboxMCE05Lite-enu.exe from the Microsoft Media Extender website, I came across a small problem. The bloody program wouldn’t load. (See Image). The annoying part is when you go into the Add/Remove programs in the Control Panel, you will not find the “Update to Media Center Edition 2005″ listed, so that message is a waste of time.

The actual problem is that when Microsoft made this media extender, Windows Service Pack 2 was current. I have Windows Service Pack 3 loaded and they have not made instructions for this change of service pack.

Anyway I found the solution on Jason Tsang’s Blog and he has kindly included instructions for everyone. They are pretty simple to follow if you know how to use your command prompt (You would be surprised how many people don’t even know what the command line or command prompt is!). So open the command prompt and type the following or cut and paste this line:

reg add “HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\HotFix\KB895961″ /v Installed /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f

Once you are done, you will see “The operation completed successfully”. Now try running XboxMCE05Lite-enu.exe again.

Note: There is a New Media Center Extender update (KB956148) available from Microsoft.

So we’ve played Guitar Hero World Tour a couple time now since I bought the game 6 days ago. A really awesome experience once everyone in the band knows their roles and plays properly.

Jo and I and Whiskey (pictured) tried out Rock Band last night and think it’s actually better than Guitar Hero World Tour. The music choice is better and the game play is a lot more exciting and rewarding, but hey, that is our opinion.

Anyway, this morning the bloody red drum refused to work from the start. Just like that it stopped working. I went online and surprise surprise, quite a few people all around the world are experiencing exactly the same problem. (Bugger!). I called GAME at Bluewater, the shop where I bought it from and they confirmed this as well. Apparently loads of people have called up with the same problem. Great I thought, so they can fix it… Alas, they don’t have any in stock. The shop representive gave me a number to call and said “Don’t worry, just call them up, explain the problem, and they will tell you where you can get a replacement”. I gave the number a ring and gave up after listening to the same repeated message “we are busy, please stay on the line“.

In that time I found a brilliant website called Good Input and they explained ‘How to fix the drums for Guitar Hero World Tour‘. Nothing ventured nothing gained I thought and decided to open my drum kit up. There are quite a bit of screws on the back, but fear not, it comes apart really easily. I found the exact problem as described on the web site. In a little under 15 minutes, we had the problem solved and the red drum is working better than ever.

Simple solution: Use an Allen Key or Hex Socket or small Phillips (crosshead) screwdriver or Torx driver bit to unscrew all the screws on the back of the drum kit. There are at least 16 screws. It’s best to remember the location of each screw because some are different lengths. Remove the cover gently watching out for the control panel, as it comes away from the kit. It’s attached by a bus cable, so be careful. Underneath the read drum, the wire that is meant to connect to the inner sensor is probably loose or just making a connection and no more, in fact for me it came off the second I touched it. I exposed abot 4mm of the wire from the sheath and used plastic tape to stick it directly onto the sensor. It’s as good as new now and there will be no need to send it back to the supplier only to wait weeks for a replacement.

Thanks to Pat and all the other people on Good Input.

[late edit] – Here is another site called Instructables detailing a fix for the drumkit problem.

Hex or Allen Key

Phillips Screw or Crosshead

Torx Screws

Torx Driver bits common in all screw driver sets.

One of our kind commentators mentioned that their drumkit had Torx screws securing the back cover.  A Torx screw has a 6-point star-shaped pattern and in that case you would need a torx driver bit to unscrew it. Below right are some examples.

So guess what we did this weekend, besides cleaning the house and watching two episodes of Dirty Sexy Money, one episode of Prison Break, and two episodes of Heroes? (and I think Jo bought groceries as well)!

Well let me back track slightly. I bought Guitar Hero World Tour on Friday evening from the Bluewater “Game” shop. I was surprised to see boxes of the game still in the shop. The pimple faced kid behind the counter blamed the Credit Crunch. Whatever!!!!

So Mrs Bowen became Tico Torres for one song, and I was Richie Sambora, and we battled through Livin’ on a Prayer. Not so easy thats for sure, the drums that is. It took quite a few attempts on easy, even after we swapped roles. I must say I battled to master those drum sticks.

The red, blue and green drum, pad or whatever you want to call it, is a pleasure to thump, but the two yellow and orange cymbels are hard and hurt like hell when you hit them. They are meant to be hit with force, but the shock wave you feel in your hands is not pleasant.

I’ll put it down to us not being use to the drum sticks, or perhaps we are holding them incorrectly or perhaps they are just crap. I did read somewhere on a review site, that it was recommended that we “go out and buy a pair of proper drum sticks“. They make quite a noise when one strikes the cymbals, but if the music is loud enough, I am sure the neighbours would just think that we are hammering all day long to loud music… Ha Ha!!!

I have mixed feelings about the drum kit overall. I found a similar review to my thoughts on IGN. Although I don’t feel like it will break if too much force is applied. It’s just those cymbals. But overall, what good fun to play all these awesome songs? I downloaded the latest Bond theme, and that is a bastard to play. More practice needed Bowen!

Dammit, Guitar Hero World Tour is released today but is not available in UK shops until the 7th of November. I can’t wait for this game. The new guitar looks brilliant, but the drums are what I am looking forward too.

Guitar Hero World Tour released today

Mmm, Jo I think we are going to need another TV very soon (an early Xmas present don’t you think?).

I can’t tell you how much I am looking forward to this weekend. This will be the first time in a month that I actually have a whole weekend to myself. All three previous weekends have been taken up by work.

Today is Independance day in the US. Let’s hope that alien spaceship with it’s big laser can take out George W. Bush properly this time. Wouldn’t the world be so lucky.

Remember the film Top Gun, that cheesy movie from the 80′s with Maverick, Goose, Cougar and Iceman and of course the very sexy Charlie played by Kelly Mcgillis?

or do you remember the catchy theme tune (anthem) that was played every time Maverick did something stupid like ‘a fly past‘ which Commander Mike "Viper" Metcalf gave strict instructions not to do.

Do you remember it? – Well if you don’t, then fear not as I know someone who can hum it for you (Hey James, is it ok if I give out your mobile number 07955 555 555).
Anyway, because it’s a holiday today for some reason XBOX 360 have released the Top Gun Theme tune for free to all Guitar Hero III fans. James and I have downloaded it already, and it’s pretty awesome. I just wish I was sitting in that cockpit, but playing a guitar and flying would be a problem. I’ve completed it with five stars already on Medium difficulty. It was a little tricky in the middle, but the rest is easy.  

Still on the topic of Guitar Hero, I bought the Aerosmith pack. It’s very cool, although there are only 41 songs, and most of them are not their main hits, which is a shame. The best songs for me is ‘Livin on the edge and Love in elevator‘. It is a lot easier that Guitar Hero III for some reason or other, although that is a bad thing, because it gives one a chance to tackle some of the harder levels.

Moving on… this weekend is action packed although if you can call Wimbledon in the rain action packed, then there is clearly something wrong with you. The Andrew Murray game the other day was exciting, but I can’t imagine another game like that this weekend.

There is also Formula 1 at Silverstone, home of the British Grand Prix (for how much longer Damon Hill)?

My money is on Kimi and Ferrari to hopefully ditch the bad luck and show the rest of the pack just how fast they are. Lets hope Massa doesn’t steal his thunder again and we can only hope and pray that the arrogant **** of an idiot in Mclaren only crashes himself and no one else. (Perhaps Lewis should swap places with his Daddy… although they are both accident prone). I read somewhere that they were on a yacht recently or in a race of some sorts and their yacht crashed into another boat before the race even begun. 

Saw an interesting article on the Idiot over at PaddyPower.com about his decision to live in Switzerland. It’s quite funny, you should read it.

Damn, I see Coulthard is planning to retire soon. That is a shame. Pity Button is doing the same. He has no future where he is at the moment.

Please note: My comments on this site are purely my thoughts and feelings and since it’s my website, if you don’t like what you read, then you can quite easily go else where.

So it turns out if you own Guitar Hero 3 and want to play Rock Band solo, there is no need to fork out for the expensive game and guitar, because you can use your ‘Les Paul’ from Guitar Hero 3 in the Rock Band game, but alas, if you are a Rock Band player, your luck is out if you think you can use your ‘Stratocaster’ in Guitar Hero 3…

Suckers who bought that game first!!!!

And contrary to most peoples belief, Guitar Hero 3 is an absolutely awesome game!

If you want to see the rest of the compatibility test, then head over to Joystiq for the full test.

I know this topic is already covered over at Guinnespig.net, so I decided to add a different spin to it, especially if one doesn’t have either of what was discussed on their site. Apple iPod or Nokia N95 Sony Playstation 3 or Microsoft Xbox 360