I am right there with you man. I got this xbox 360 from a repo car, I know crazy but hey sometimes it happens, and of course sometimes they don't work........
I've been messing with it for 3 days now. I've taken the whole thing apart, so I know what EVERYTHING does hahahaha At first it E74 visually on me and 0020. Did the fixes and stuff, wasn't working, decided to use the old x-clamp system and give it a go, well it loaded the welcome screen but anything that required GPU instantly sent it into overheat. So I thought maybe since I didn't arctic silver 5, it's not cooling enough, took it apart and put the arctic silver 5 on it, now it won't even give me a welcome screen.
Turns on for 30 seconds, green on power brick, and green PSU light, but after those initial 30 seconds, it gives 3 rrod, no visual, no sound, nothing anymore.
Is it a lost cause at this point? I didn't realize it, but apparently MS will fix them for free, even if it is out of warranty but still under the warranty period, I'd rather fix it myself, so I won't have to worry about it again, I must be close to the fix but can't get it up and running. It's off the floor, lying on it's side with a small fan next to it for extra cooling. Other than shoving ice in the machine, I can't think of another way to cool. Could it be too much thermal paste?? I put a penny sized layer covering the top of the 3 processors. I've never had such a problem with a piece of electronic equipment. I've dismantled my PS2 hundreds of times to fix problems, and ALWAYS got it working. XBox really dropped the ball on design on this one.......
Anyways, would the x-clamp replacement solve my problem? The heat sinks are a bit loose, and it was manufactured in July of 2006.
My next plan is to call MS up tell them how I traded ALLLL my PS2 games and system for games and controllers for the new xbox and I have all these problems. I jumped into the next gen with both feet and I'm getting shafted by Microsoft (which I shouldn't be surprised, considering the reputation they have for QUALITY software and hardware)
I got it, hard drive on the way, 2 controllers, and 8 new games. All that and I still can't get a working xbox 360 =(
Any help would be appreciated!!!!!