Original Xbox won’t turn on? Read the light first

A console that does nothing when you press the button is rarely a mystery. The Xbox tells you what
it thinks is wrong, and it does that with the ring of light around the eject button — before it has
managed to put anything on screen at all.

Start there. On a 1.0 you have no choice: that revision never shows an error code on screen, only
through the LED. On later boards you get both, but the light comes first.

Green light, no picture

A solid green light means the console thinks it is running. Nine times out of ten the problem is
not the console but the path to the television: an AV cable that is not seated properly, or a port
full of dust. Unplug it, blow the port and the plug out, plug it back in firmly.

If that changes nothing, the next suspects are a corrupted BIOS bank or a bad EEPROM. On a 1.0 or
1.1 there is a known repair for the first: grounding A18 and/or A19. That is soldering work on a live
board, so read up properly before you touch it.

Flashing red and green, half and half

This one has a nickname in the scene — FRAG — and it means general system failure. Two causes come
up again and again, and both are capacitors.

The first is the clock capacitor leaking over the board. The second is the large capacitors on the
5 V rail underneath the CPU. If your console is from 2003 to 2005 and has never been opened, the
capacitors are the first place to look, not the last.

We have a separate walkthrough for the clock capacitor: it explains where it sits per revision,
how to tell it has leaked, and why removing it is usually better than replacing it.

Flashing red and orange, half and half

Also a general failure, and here bad capacitors are the likeliest cause outright. The worst
offenders are the Nichicons on the power rail near the power supply connector, and they fail most
often on 1.4 and 1.6 boards. When they go you get either video glitches or a console that will not
start at all.

The good news is that this is repairable. Replacing those capacitors brings a lot of these boards
straight back to life.

Flashing orange

A damaged trace, or solder splashed where it should not be. This is exactly what a clock capacitor
that has been leaking for years produces: the fluid eats through the copper underneath. Open the
console and look closely around the capacitor, on both sides of the board.

Flashing orange, fan goes to full speed, then it switches off

That is heat. Either the cooling genuinely is not keeping up, or the temperature sensor near
U6F1 is reading wrong. Check that the fan actually spins, replace the dried-out thermal paste under
the CPU and GPU heatsinks, and clean the area around the sensor.

A fan that has become noisy is usually not broken but dried out. Re-lubricating it often gives it
another few years and costs nothing.

Flashing red 75%, green 25%

A hard drive problem. The console cannot read the drive it expects. Note that an Xbox hard drive
is locked to the console it came from, so a drive out of another machine will not simply boot.

If the drive is clicking and the console still starts, back up your EEPROM to a PC now,
before it dies completely. Without that key you cannot lock a replacement drive to the console.

Flashing red 25%, green 75%

A DVD drive problem. See the tray and disc guide for the mechanical side of this.

It tries to start three times, then flashes

Sometimes called Christmas lights. If you have been inside the console recently, check your work
first: a modchip wired wrong, or an IDE cable plugged in upside down somewhere. If you have not
soldered anything, the suspects are the power supply itself or a poor connection at the MCPX or SMC.

If it does the same and then switches itself off, the EEPROM is corrupt or does not match the
board — usually the wrong version flashed at some point.

One fault that only exists on a 1.6

Two things can stop a 1.6 or 1.6b dead while the board looks perfectly healthy.

The first is the clock capacitor. Unlike every earlier revision, a 1.6 cannot start
without one. If it is dead or somebody removed it, you get error code 16. On a 1.0 through
1.4 removing the capacitor is a free win; on a 1.6 it is not.

The second is a single transistor, Q7C2. It has to stay above 3.3 volts. Drop
below that and the console will not boot, no matter what else you do. It can be replaced with an
MMBT3906LT1. Worth knowing before you write a board off — or before you buy one described as
“not working”.

What to check in what order

1. Read the light. Write down what it does before you change anything.
2. Try another AV cable and another socket. It is free and it rules out a lot.
3. Open the console and look at the capacitors and the area around the clock capacitor.
4. On a 1.6: check the clock capacitor is present and measure Q7C2.
5. Only then start suspecting the drive, the board or the power supply.

Not sure which revision you have? That changes half the answers on this page, and it takes five
minutes to find out.

“Your Xbox requires service”

Different from everything above, and less alarming than it sounds. This message with an OK button
is a warning that the DVD drive is on its way out — or, if you have been inside the console recently,
that a cable is not seated properly. You can keep using the machine. If the drive does eventually
give up completely, it is replaceable.

Bad EEPROM: three lights that mean the same thing

A solid red light, a flashing green light and a flashing red light all point in the same direction:
the EEPROM. That is the small chip holding your console’s identity — including the key that unlocks
its hard drive.

This is repairable, but it is the fault where preparation matters most. If your console still
boots at all, take a backup of the EEPROM and copy it to a computer. Without it you cannot lock a
replacement hard drive to the console, and a working console with a dead drive and no key is a much
worse position than a working console with a backup.

An error that shows the console trying to start three times and then switching off usually means
the EEPROM does not match the board — most often the wrong version was written at some point.

Missing or broken video cable

Orange and green alternating, half and half, means the console cannot find a video cable at all.
Reseat it, try another one. It can point at failed video hardware or a bad SMC, but that is rare
enough that you should exhaust the cable first.

When it is worth repairing and when it is not

Boards are repairable further than most people assume. Traces eaten through by capacitor fluid can
be bridged with a trace pen or a short piece of wire. Capacitors are a couple of euros. A fan is
cheap. None of that requires exotic equipment.

What tips the balance is corrosion that has spread under a chip, or damage around the CPU and GPU
where the traces are dense. At that point a tested replacement board costs less than the hours.

Whatever you decide: pull the hard drive and back up the EEPROM before the board goes in the bin.
That key is worth more than the board.

Parts that fix the common causes

Most of the faults above come down to a handful of components.

• Set of motherboard capacitors (excluding clock capacitor) — The electrolytic capacitors on the board, in the right set for your revision. The clock capacitor is deliberately not included.
• Original Xbox PSU Delta DPSN-96DP-1 (220-240V 50/60Hz 1.2A) — A tested power supply, for when the one you have is the problem.
• Original Xbox Fan Delta AUB0712HH — A replacement fan, if yours has stopped or is making noise.
• Original Xbox Motherboard V1.6A (Used) — A tested board, if the damage has gone too far to repair.
• Original Housing Screws Set — The Torx screws you need to open the console.