My Xbox 360 is flashing one red light and giving me an E73 error.

I got this once before (about a week ago) and again tonight.  Both times, if I overheat the console using the toothpick trick, it has started working again.

But I’m sad.  I think something in the internals has gone bad and my guess is that it has to do with the solder that holds some important connection together.

I want to have a more permanent fix (as the toothpick hack only seemed to last a week or so), but my 360 is out of warranty.  I may open it up myself and see if I can find some cracked solder or loose connections and fix them.  After all, there’s no warranty left to void, right?  And sending it back to Microsoft to fix for $99 is pretty ludicrous.

I know it’s old hat when it comes to 360s now, but what shoddy construction.  I don’t feel like I did anything wrong in terms of caring for it, and it’s only a little over 2 years old.

I guess I’ll just be playing my Wii in the meantime.  And teaching myself basic soldering.