Print

[Xbox-Scene]

Xbox 360 E74 Hardware Failures are on the Rise and Full of Fail Posted by XanTium | March 20 13:18 EST | News Category: Xbox360

From 8bitjoystick on seattlepi.com: West Virginian Joystiq.com super blogger and Monte Cristo sandwich fanboy Justin McElroy has authored a series of stunning posts that bring the rising trend of a disturbing Xbox 360 error to light. The E74 error is caused when the "ANA" image scaler chip fails, overheats or there is serious AV connection problem. The hot air flow from the CPU and GPU goes right over the location of the ANA chip so it might be slowly cooked by normal use. An Xbox 360 that is suffering an E74 error will have the lower-right quadrant of the Ring of Light flash on the front on the console and a multiple languages error message may display that will read "E74. System Error. Contact Xbox Customer Support." or the screen will simply glitch out and display a feild of video snow. The more disturbing trend is that this errors seems to be affecting Falcon motherboard based Xbox 360 system. The Falcon system has a cooler 65nm CPU and a hot 90nm GPU. The newer Jasper motherboard has both a 65nm CPU and 65nm GPU and hopefully it won't succumb to either the E74 or RROD but only time will tell. The E74 Error is the annoying cousin of the RROD since while it is not a direct failure of the CPU. GPU or RAM but it is caused by the high amount of heat eventually damaging the ANA chip causing it to fail. While it is true that the rate of RROD errors are dropping but it might bring other hardware failures to light such as the E74 that we never saw because the spot light was on the RROD. Microsoft's official statement on the E74 error that they sent to Joystiq.com is: "E74 is a general hardware error on Xbox 360 indicated by a single red flashing light in the Xbox Ring of Light and an error message visible on the television. This error is unrelated to the three flashing red lights error and there is not a single root cause. We encourage anyone who receives this error to contact Xbox Customer support through www.xbox.com/support or 1-800-4-MY-XBOX. The majority of customers who own Xbox 360 consoles continue to have a terrific experience from their first day, and continue to, day in and day out." Full Story: seattlepi.com

[Reaper527]

great   my falcon's running strong so far, so hopefully i won't experience anything like that.

[Serious Sam]

E74 has been happening since launch consoles. It's nothing new. Is it affecting falcons more? I doubt it. I've seen it in all versions of the 360 and I'm sure the Jasper will have the same issues with E74

[jackflash]

"This error is unrelated to the three flashing red lights error and there is not a single root cause"  

All I have to say to that is BO****S,   Ive fixed tons of these errors using exactly the same method as a 3 red ring fix. Maybe not all E74s are caused by the same problem, but a hell of alot are caused by bad solder joints under the VGA Chip.

[spurs2k5]

the sad part is that E74 is only covered for 1yr. So my year is up in 2 months, and if i get another E74, i gotta pay 100 bucks plus shipping. thats just insane and M$ should be ashamed of themselves. They make the end user, pay for their own mistakes.

[wawnord]

Have 3 boxes to repair here, 2 Xenons with ROD (0020 and 0102) und one with E74 (falcon)

[AmyGrrl]

My XBOX 360 died about 2 weeks ago with E74, it was a falcon as well. I called in to see if it was still under warranty. The women on the phone told me my warranty ran out the day before. I was a little pissed that my XBOX 360 died one day after the warranty was up. She then said I would have to pay $100-150 (depending on if I died the repair order online or over the phone) to get it fixed. I ended up buying a new Arcade instead. I plan to attempt to repair my broken XBOX 360 myself and save some money. It will be nice to have 2 XBOX 360's for when friends come over to play.

I would also like to say I never had a problem with my XBOX 360 at all until that day. I played on it for several hours the night before, then when I attempted to use my XBOX 360 the next day I notice all these graphics glitches in the game. I the restarted my xbox and got E74.

[Paperstack.1]

One of my friend's Elite 360 gave an E74 right before the Call of Duty: World at War map pack released. He's so pissed about it because he was REALLY looking forward to buying them.

Now i'm paranoid about my Elite getting that error sooner or later.

[GamerBR]

Almost every single Falcon console I've heard failing here was because of the E74.Maybe this problem came to be more known here because as it's hotter here it will fail ealier,which doesn't mean that it won't happen often with the rest of the [colder] world,it will just take more time.

This post has been edited by GamerBR: Mar 20 2009, 10:00 PM

[Bjodom]

QUOTE(spurs2k5 @ Mar 20 2009, 09:51 PM)

the sad part is that E74 is only covered for 1yr. So my year is up in 2 months, and if i get another E74, i gotta pay 100 bucks plus shipping. thats just insane and M$ should be ashamed of themselves. They make the end user, pay for their own mistakes.

I had that same problem. My 2nd xbox started showing a bunch of glitchy graphics. I restarted,  3 rlod. Restarted again, e74. It was like a 50 50 chance that the 3rlod or e74 would show up. I called and they said 1 rlod isn't covered under 3 years. They said they could fix the 3rlod though. I said fuck it did the xclamp, that only fixed the 3rlod. Still have a broken e74 laying around here somewhere.

[SpikeMage]

Is this chip on the top or the bottom of the board? Couldn't we just slap a heat sink on it? Problem solved?

Can anyone post a pic of this ANA chip please?

[Frogman7]

That's the error code that finished off my original xenon, I spent days trying to fix it but gave up awhile back.  I now have an Opus and no problems so far, got it at half the price of my original Xenon.

[option350z]

Its on top of the board and many people have put a heat sink on the HANA chip. As far as I know,the ANA chip really seems unaffected but it is still possible. The red square is the Hana Chip.

(IMG:http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t259/option350z/f_360elitemobm_b1b37ef-1.jpg)

[frieko]

CONFIRMED SOLUTION:

[XLNC]

I had this E74 problem and to the xbox to work I had to over heat the thing and then it would work but the games were heavily glitchy as in loads of artifacts.

I sort of gave up as my xenon had died and tried fixing that for months and then this one died so I just bought another elite, after a month I thought I might as well give the xclamp fix a go, it sorted the problem and it hasn't glitched or done the E74 at all. I only did the GPU as that get very hot, the CPU HS only gets warm so it's really a waste of time doing it.