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     And brand new, out of the box it doesn't work.  I went and bought a premium box and oblivion from Gamespot(all new) with some summer savings+birthday money and the thing will no run a game more the 10 minutes without freezing indefinitely, sometimes as little as 45 seconds.

     So I called the hotline and followed instructions.

1.  Ventilated?(In middle of a dormatory 3rd floor lobby on table).  Check

2.  Not overheating?(doesnt run long enough to be a possible).  Check

3.  Time set right?(WTF?).  Check

     So I talk to the guy on the phone again, he suggests trying to play without the hard drive.  Still freezes.  So the only thing he says I can do know is bring it back. 

Yes, I did try multiple games, just in case it was my new Oblivion causing the problem.  I rented Chromehounds and even played the little game that came with it and everything froze.

 

So before I bring it back today, have any of you had this problem before?  Were you able to fix it?

Was that a phone tree or an operator?

I don't have a 360, I'm just curious about how you got tech support.

Your first mistake was buying a console platform instead of a PC...

Well, first I got the automated service, but selected talking to someone as the auto-fix didn't work. I had to call the number on the back of my manual. Anyway I brought it back for a new one anyway, the manager said that about 1 in 100 he sells do that. So I rented Chromehounds and bought oblivion and am now having fun.

I did have one friend who had the same problem: Bought a 360 and Oblivion: got lock ups.

Returned both, got new both, tried again...worked fine.

No idea why.

Actually, it does sound like it was overheating, but not because of poor ventilation.  The main processing chips (CPUs, GPUs, and possibly RAM) generate a fair amount of heat, and if they can't dissipate it, the chip will stop running and lock up the system.  One common cause of this is that the thermal paste isn't conductiing the heat from the chip to the heat sink (poor assembly, loose heatsink, etc), so the chip overheats. 

You shouldn't have to deal with stuff like this, so a replacement is the obvious solution.

Could also be a bad RAM chip.  Dunno.

Yeah, the new one works fine, the first one seemed like the back part of the system(where the top and bottom plastic shell pieces connected) and the section the hard-drive attached too seemed loose. Probably and assembly problem. Yay for outsourcing and all that.

I had a similar error with my 360. I got it within a week of it's release last year and had no problems up until a few weeks ago. It suffered the same freezing errors, i.e 30 seconds to 5/10 minutes of game play then freezing. After some phone calls, I was told to send it in with my hard drive, which led me to worry that I might lose my old hard drive. Week and a half later... Brand new 360 with the old hard drive, so I lost nothing (except the 100 something dollar repair fee, my warrenty was long expired). Everything works fine now.