Raymond Camden's ColdFusion Blog: Have you seen this? XBox 360 freeze on some games only

Have you seen this? XBox 360 freeze on some games only

Ok, I've googled this quite a bit and am about ready to give up and call Tech Support. Before I do I thought I'd ask my super-intelligent, incredibly handsome readers. I know one of you have probably seen this before and can share some advice.

So - my XBox 360 has always frozen once or twice. Not very often though. I remember COD3 freezing twice in the 5-6 hours I played it. Before that I know a few other games did it - but just as rare.

I'm now on an XBox 360 Elite. Everything was fine until I got Red Faction. It froze, and continued to freeze, after about 30-60 seconds of play. After 5-6 instances of this the first night I just put the game down. The next night I tried it again and it worked.... for 45 minutes or so. This continued for the next couple play sessions until eventually, it's like the game healed itself. I stopped getting freezes and could play for as long as I wanted.

So fast forward to last night. I get Sacred 2, and the same thing occurs. Freezes. I can start a game session and just sit there and within a minute or so it will freeze. I thought maybe it could be a bad HD copy. So I switched out the hard drive on the Elite and it didn't help. I read a recommendation to go offline but that didn't help either. I also did the system cache clear thing as well. Nogo.

Must be hardware, right? Well I switched to playing Gears 2 and it worked fine.

So any ideas? Oh - and the disc is about as perfect as I've seen. Not even the faintest scratch.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 19, 2009 at 8:03 AM. It was filed in the following categories: Video Games. It has been viewed 3,428 times and has 27 comments.

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Comment 1 written by JesterXL on 19 September 2009, at 8:14 AM

Sorry bro, no ideas, but same prob. Elite, although she doesn't freeze as much as you state, and only on 1 game (Fallout 3); the rest are fine.
Comment 2 written by Raymond Camden on 19 September 2009, at 8:17 AM

And FO3 works perfectly for me. How about you come over and we swap Elites? ;)
Comment 3 written by Raymond Camden on 19 September 2009, at 8:27 AM

One thing I forgot to mention - and I'm looking for feedback here. Does anyone think it could be HDMI related? Maybe I should consider switching back to my non-HDMI cables.
Comment 4 written by Paul Dynan on 19 September 2009, at 8:39 AM

1) You have a perfectly good PC for games.
2) You should be playing Batman: AA

;)
Comment 5 written by Raymond Camden on 19 September 2009, at 8:41 AM

I used to be a PC gamer, and I still game on my Mac laptop (Warcraft), but I really prefer playing on my HDTV. ;)

Oh, and yeah, I need to add the new Batman to my wishlist.
Comment 6 written by Dale Fraser on 19 September 2009, at 10:11 AM

Your Xbox is about to die.

It will get either the 3 or 4 red rings very soon. This is the pre cursor sign. You can't do anything until it happens, then should be covered by the 3 year MS warranty.

This exact same thing happened to me on 2 xboxes already.
Comment 7 written by Raymond Camden on 19 September 2009, at 10:34 AM

Then why is it _consistently_ ok for most other games, arcade, video watching, etc?
Comment 8 written by Kris Korsmo on 19 September 2009, at 1:09 PM

I had the same thing happen with 2 of my 3 360s as well. It was explained to me that it's the DVD player that scratches some of the discs. MS was excellent about replacing the xbox each time, but still a PITA because the discs won't work on any machine eventually. I would suggest laying the box horizontally if it's not already.
Comment 9 written by Palmer on 19 September 2009, at 5:10 PM

Happened to me too... I had bought Halo 3 and it would freeze on me. No other games.. Turned out to be a bad hard drive. Replaced the hard drives, that exact game worked perfect.
Comment 10 written by Dale fraser on 19 September 2009, at 5:24 PM

It's because certain games fire up the gpu differntly the same reason some games make laptop DNS go crazy

the ones that are hanging are stressing the unit until it will fail try playing one of the games that causes the problem for a long period it will red ring
Comment 11 written by Adrock on 19 September 2009, at 6:58 PM

I'll say a prayer for your 360, but as I mentioned over IM, you are likely heading down the slow road towards a RRoD.

I know it hurts to think about it, but you should probably wrap a towel around your 360 and let nature take it course. Don't worry, your 360 won't feel much pain and this is really for the best. You'll save it from suffering and if you act sooner than later you'll get it back before the holiday release season is over (CoD4:MW2).
Comment 12 written by Raymond Camden on 19 September 2009, at 7:02 PM

I'm calling them on Monday. I should still be under warranty (it's 2 years I believe) so it should be no big deal I guess. Watch Halo Wars show up as soon as I send it off though.
Comment 13 written by James on 20 September 2009, at 5:40 AM

It has just started happening to me but only with Saints Row 2. All my other games are fine. I think it maybe related to the games as friends of mine also have these problems on SR2.

I'm going to keep playing it though as the game itself rocks!
Comment 14 written by Raymond Camden on 20 September 2009, at 8:39 AM

I'll let folks know what MS Support says. FYI, Sacred2 worked for me last night - for a good 4 hours until I myself crashed, and the game kicks ass. Very good Diablo clone, and a good sense of humour. (Some NPCs will die and bemoan having 'bit' parts.)

And James - Saints Rows 2 is _very_ well done. I've always found GTA to be a bit too complex. Sure, it has a good story, but I found the control scheme to be a bit much.
Comment 15 written by Ludovico Clemente on 21 September 2009, at 6:34 AM

A friend of mine had the same issues with The Force Unleashed: since it was the only game giving him problems, he thought it was just a bad disc or something.

After 2 days of lockups suddently he was able to play it again and finish the game without further trouble (also, in many sessions, not just one lucky shot). Weeeird! :)
Comment 16 written by Raymond Camden on 21 September 2009, at 6:39 AM

I was able to play 4-5 hours of Sacred now - then again last night I played for 5 mins and it froze, twice. Ugh.
Comment 17 written by Akira on 21 September 2009, at 8:24 AM

I had this issue right before my Xbox died. Anything that drove the graphics too hard (Oblivion) made it freeze.
Comment 18 written by James Morrow on 21 September 2009, at 6:54 PM

Just another confirmation - this is definitely a precursor to the RRoD state... had it happen twice to me already.

The PITA part is that you're not eligible for the extended warranty unless it actually shows the RRoD... merely overheating and locking up within minutes of playing any game isn't considered sufficient evidence of faulty hardware, sigh.
Comment 19 written by jozne on 24 September 2009, at 2:10 PM

Hi, I have the same problem. Let me explain a bit..

I can play games like NHL (08-10), Fable2, Crackdown etc. for hours without a crash. Then, when I insert BIGS2 it crashes after logos when the LOADING screen comes. Rock Band: Beatles always crashes somewhere between movie-start menu (never got past start menu) and Ninety-nine Nights also crashes at start menu.

I tried clearing the cache, reseting factory defaults, without HD, formating HD, without signing in to any profile, logged to live... those games still freeze the box.

To be specific with the freeze: The pic freezes to screen, get some music/sound loop which is currently playing for about 2-5secs and then complete silence -> xbox only responds to poweroff (from console, controller doesn't work) and 'open tray' (closing it again doesn't change anything). Turning off the controller and turning it back on gives flashing green lights (trying to connect to box I guess).

I googled for hours and found some users with same problems and they said that they started to experience those problems after the new Dashboard update. Someone even stated that he sent his XBOX to MS and after MS returned it, it had the old dashboard and the game (Tiger woods golf IIRC) worked fine... UNTIL he updated the dashboard and the problems began again.

Any way to downgrade the console back to old dashboard? :(
Comment 20 written by Raymond Camden on 24 September 2009, at 2:28 PM

Interesting note about the dashboard. As I mentioned, I had freezes in the past, but VERY rarely. I didn't have consistent freezes till Red Faction, and that was certainly on the new dashboard.

Personally I can't stand the new dashboard. Too cutesy.
Comment 21 written by jozne on 25 September 2009, at 1:47 AM

Just to check. Which DVD drive do you have? I have BENQ VAD6038. I was just thinking that could it be DVD related problem, since some ppl have it and others don't and I was just pondering what is different between the consoles, and this is one main thingie.
Comment 22 written by jozne on 25 September 2009, at 3:18 AM

Forgot one funny thing. When I tried to play BIGS2 and it froze/lock up the console (before main menu), I downloaded the BIGS2 DEMO from marketplace... and, it did the same thing... Go figure ^^
Comment 23 written by Raymond Camden on 25 September 2009, at 7:55 AM

How do you determine the DVD model #?

FYI - Had another good night with Sacred2. No freezes. And I really, really recommend it for folks who miss playing Diablo.
Comment 24 written by jozne on 25 September 2009, at 2:52 PM

http://www.llamma.com/xbox360/Xbox_360_DVD_Drive_C...
Comment 25 written by oxydize on 26 October 2009, at 12:51 PM

I am in the same problem with madden 10. Cant play a game with the hard drive in but can when i take it out. I already swapped dvd drives, did the thermal paste thing and no big changes. I dont think it is RROD in our cases but just a bad HDD. gonna replace mine soon. Should clear everything up.
Comment 26 written by jozne on 13 November 2009, at 4:38 AM

In my case HDD has nothing to do with the freeze. Tried without/with HD and also tried HDD clear and after that full format. Did not help.
Comment 27 written by Raymond Camden on 13 November 2009, at 6:01 AM

As just an FYI, my XBOX began to red ring last week or so, so I ended up sending it in. It's back home now but I'm out of town. Anyway, I'm hoping the freezes were just part of the hardware problem and not the game itself.