This isn’t my first experience with errors on the 360. Not too long after I purchased it, I received a E 86 error. This was fixed by removing the hard drive and cleaning the contacts. In early June of this year, just 3 months after the warranty had expired, every disc that I put in indicated it could not be read. I disassembled the 360, cleaned it out thoroughly, and reseated the magnetics on the optical drive. Problem solved and a working 360 for another month.

After researching the E 74 error code it appears to be either a problem with the video cable, scaler chip or GPU. A co-worker had a spare video cable so I swapped it out with no success. The problem is definitely hardware related and probably needs to be sent in for repairs. I don’t feel like doing a hack repair job only for it to work a limited amount of time.

So why the frustration? I can honestly say that the XBox 360 is most unreliable piece of electronics equipment I have ever owned. I have an original NES, a Playstation, Playstation 2, Sega Genesis, GameCube, and Nintendo Wii all older than the 360 that are still fully functional to this date. The 360 has quit working 3 times in one year! Hell, my father in law still has a working Atari 2600.

Taking a cue from my good friend Patrick, who likes to write letters to Senators, Presidential Candidates, newpaper editors, etc. I fired off an e-mail to Steve Ballmer, expressing my frustration. Surprisingly (tongue in cheek), I haven’t heard anything back. The decision now..to repair or opt for a $400 paper weight.