Are you a gamer? I am and have been for about 15 years. In fact for someone my age, you might think I should be spending less time on video games. But I play games everyday on both PC and Xbox. And I know that when you can’t play, time seems to go by very slowly.

In the PC gaming world I use Steam for most of my games. When the Steam servers are down, I can’t play anything online and it sucks bad. You don’t have this problem with consoles much, but for Xbox 360 there are some other common problems.

The “red ring of death” and the e74 error for Xbox 360 are just two of the errors common to this console system. Most problems can be fixed, but it will depend on your tech-skills. In this article I am going to go over some of the most common problems and how you can fix them.

First is the red ring of death. This happens when the LED lights around the power button light up. Depending on the error codes, one or more of the four led lights will light up. You might have heard of the “3 light error” to signify when three of these lights are glowing.

If you have any of the lights glowing when they normally don’t you can do a search online to figure out exactly which error you have. Microsoft should have a list of all the errors on their website since they are the ones who created the Xbox.

If all four lights are glowing it could just be a simple problem with the AV cable. Unplug the console and let it sit for a minute, and then try turning it on again. If not all the lights are glowing, you have to consult an error code list to figure out the problem.

The Xbox 360 E74 error is another common problem. In this error, as soon as you turn on the console there will be a black screen with some strange words and a big E74 code showing at the bottom.

There are dozens of other errors for Xbox but the “RROD” and e74 error are some of the most common. When one of these happens the recommended course of action from Microsoft is to pack up the console and send them your machine. They will fix it, but this means that you won’t have your console for several weeks and depending on your warranty status they may charge you over $100 to fix it.