Oh Microsoft, only you could pull this off. You with the most technilogically flawed piece of hardware in the history of electronics. But your still around somehow, breaking gamers hearts with your inability to produce high standard hardware. Xbox-Live saved the Xbox; Xbox-Live killed mine.

When I woke this morning, I picked up my 360 controller and sat down to play some vids. I hit the power to find that the 360 would freeze right before it loaded the dashboard. I wasn't worried for I thought it was just a simple glitch but upon restarting again I find out that it would do that continually. Next thing I do is unplug my HDD and turn on the system and it loads just fine. I turn the 360 off, put the HDD back in and voila, it'll work again, right? Nope! I do this process another time and this message pops up before the dashboard appears, 'Update available'. Sweet, after this update it will work right? Well, no unfortunately although fortune has nothing to do with MS's lazy venture into the videogame world. The update does absolutely nothing. My xbox would only work if I wasn't connected to Xbox-Live.

I go online to check to see if anyone else has had this problem and I couldn't find anything. I search how to fix this problem on the Xbox Customer Service website and it eventually tells me that I need to send it in for repairs and that it will cost me around $119 after tax.  So finally I go to my other 360 in the other room and the EXACT same thing happens...how? Unless this is a nation wide problem I find this hard to believe. Just...how? These were my sixth and seventh Xbox 360's and yet I am still going to go out and buy another one! Why? I have a PS3 but I have too much history on my gamertag to want to not play on Xbox-Live. 360 is the system all my friends have and MS is making me feel like nothing but a piece of shit, a sheep, someone to be taken advantage of. I guess I'm just like 90% of the other 360 owners who feel the same way. Xbox-Live saved the Xbox.

What happens if you remove the HDD, start up the system, and then insert the HDD?

PS3 disappoints again

The same thing happens. It just freezes with that little loading symbol that goes in circles. Sometimes the friends thing will pop up in time but it never gets past that point.

Probably 2009< models. BTW RIP your Xbox 360(s). Better get the slim model. Theres crazy deals outhere still. 

One's an elite. About 3 years? Not entirely sure but it's been sent for repairs before and that was the week before gears 2 came out.

The other one is the original white one and came with no HDD but I got it about 4 years ago new.

So it works fine without the hard drive?

Older models including the elite had these problems. You could do the old towel trick :P lol Seriously that is unfortunate and pretty bad luck specially now because the failure rate is pretty low now.

Jeez!!! Such ancient technology. Just sell your 2 360s then buy a slim from ebay? 

six and seventh xbox 360's?? you got to me fucking kidding me