Broken Toys

You know what really sucks? My Xbox 360 is on the blink. An E74 error message popped up last night, which means one of two things. One, I'll need to replace the AV cables. That's the best case scenario, because that'll be the easiest thing to take care of. The only problem is that I don't know anyone else who owns a 360, so I can't swap out the cables to see if that's what's wrong. So I'll probably have to take it to a GameStop or somewhere like that, and see if they would be willing to test it for me. If all I need is a new set of cables, that would be no big deal.

The second possible problem is the worst case scenario. In this event, the problem is an internal error, and I'm screwed. The first year of my warranty expired (two weeks ago, frustratingly enough), and I've heard that an E74 error isn't covered by what remains of that warranty. So that means if I have to send it back to Microsoft for repairs, it's going to cost me over 100 bucks. And that's not a fee I'm willing or able to pay right now.

Right now, I'm hoping it's just the cables. I can live with buying replacement cables if I have to, since they're relatively cheap. At the very least, I'd hope that I could find a professional to refurbish it at a price cheaper than what Microsoft would charge. Because paying 100 dollars or more for something that should be under the entire warranty is outrageous. I'm sure I'll end up having to spend some money to fix it, since the only other option is to crack it open and work on it myself. And that would probably just make things worse, considering I wouldn't know what I was doing.

Sigh... why can't I have nice things?