When your Xbox 360 breaks down and displays the red rings of death it can leave you feeling a little confused. It can leave you wondering what has happened to cause this problem with your beloved games console. There are five main causes of a red ring of death failure on your Xbox and below I will tell you a bit more about them.

1. A faulty power brick can cause the red rings of death. Sometimes if there is a power surge it can affect the adaptor and result in the error. Also if the brick overheats it will cause you problems, it is advisable for you to keep the power brick on a flat table and off of the carpet as the carpet traps heat and will restrict the air flow in and around the power adaptor.

2. If your console has problems detecting your audio video cable then this can result in the rrod. Thoroughly checking the cable making sure it is firmly in place and the connections into the TV are connected properly. Take a look for signs of damage to the cable as this will give you problems too.

3. Overheating is a common problem when you are playing games for a long time, or perhaps you leave the Xbox on while you are downloading for prolonged periods of time either way if you are not careful it will result in the red rings of death. Ensuring your machine is in a well ventilated are is crucial to keep your gaming sessions uninterrupted. So keeping your console in an enclosed cupboard is probably not the best idea.

4. The next cause of the red rings of death is when your Xbox 360 suffers from a hardware failure. When this error occurs you get a helpful message on your TV letting you know what has caused it. An example of this is E68 this means that there is a hard drive error. There are quite a few different error codes, more information on all of them can be found online.

5. Last but not least is the 3 red lights error. When this happens this is caused by a general hardware failure. It normally requires fixing in a couple of ways.

I. Sending your machine off to Microsoft. You will be charged if your machine is out of warranty and you will be without your console for around six weeks.

II. At your own risk you could try the towel trick; this involves wrapping your console up in a towel and turning it on. This is particularly risky as it causes the machine to operate in temperatures it was not designed for. This has been known to solve the issue but many people have said that the rrod occurs again shortly afterwards.

III. Finally you could attempt to fix the Xbox yourself. It is really quite easy to do as long as you are using a decent Xbox 360 repair guide. James Dean has written a guide that takes you through the whole process step by step with videos so you can actually see what you should be doing. Oh and the best thing about this point is that you don't have to send your console away and you can save around $100 too which you can spend on that new game you have been after.