Xbox 360 Update May Cause System Failures

Microsoft's Xbox 360 has come under criticism once again as reports emerge that say the latest round of updates may have caused far more problems than it fixed.

A 13-page thread on the official Xbox.com forum is filled with users who updated their consoles with the February 3rd mandatory Dashboard update and experienced a range of problems after shutting down the console and powering on again.

Common problems that users have reported are the system refusing to power on with a "Red Ring of Death," an error code E71 or E74, random freezing in games after varying periods of time and graphical glitches. Microsoft does not give many details about the aforementioned error codes, only that they are caused by "hardware failures." Microsoft states a few basic fixes on this support page such as disconnecting and reconnecting cables and devices such as the hard drive.

Some of those who did not end up with failed consoles reported problems running certain resolutions over HDMI, including one user who couldn't output more than 480p.

The mandatory update was released to address "the issue that a few folks were having with audio and their HDMI connection." It seems that those "few folks" won't be able to tell if the issue was resolved or not.

The Xbox 360 console is infamous for its frequent system failures. Last year, Microsoft was involved in a lawsuit over the so-called "Red Ring of Death," where it was claimed that the software giant had concealed the failure rates of the console to prevent damage to its reputation.