E74 Error

	Inside the 360
	E74 Error

	Disclaimer: Attempting any of these techniques will void the warranty on your Xbox 360. I will not be responsible for your attempt to fix your Xbox yourself. All information on this site is to be used at your own risk. Also DO NOT poke a sleeping bear, it is very dangerous!

	Inside	Basics - FAQ	Error Codes	Tear Down	E74 Fix	TROD	Ref Links

The E74 Error and attempting to fix it is what has lead to this site. I received this error on game night of course and was not pleased. I started searching the web frantically while eating dinner and quickly came to the conclusion that calling MS was the thing to do. No extended warranty on this error ... enough said. I had posted what I thought was a joke a month before on using a towel to wrap the 360 and let it overheat. While searching for a cure I had found 3 more hits to this fix ... at that point why not. Doing this got me 2 - 1 hour stints to play that night. The next night I took it apart and gave it an air bath, put it back together ... same error, but hey I just read about a possible fix??? One of the fixes to the TROD is to tape 4 stacks of 3 pennies to the Ram to put pressure on them and keep them seated ... this was an off shoot of that and was only posted 2 days before. Ok I am grasping at straws anyways so why not, it is either that or start drilling and shim up the heatsinks. It originally called for a stack of 15 pennies but I only used 12. Why did I try this fix? Because the towel worked! Once I had tested that heating the socket for the "Hana/Ana" chip worked, this seemed like a sound theory. I have also seen this chip called the "mystery" chip and the "may have something to do with the networking controller" chip. Whatever it is, when heated up, my machine would start normally.

Setup and Remove Casings

You will require - 12 Canadian Pennies and electrical tape. You may also want some card stock to cut to size to increase the Fans Shroud. Tear down your 360 as per Tear Down.

Original Fix - Tape 15 pennies in a stack. Heat the Hana/Ana chip with a hairdryer for 2 minutes, then plug in and test it starts correctly. Place stack on chip and close up 360 except for the 6 long silver screws.

Result - Seemed to start at first but would shut down in 5-8 seconds and posting a quadrant 1 and 3 error ... overheat!?! Everytime. When I opened the 360 up the next day, I did not find anything out of place. The pennies had stayed standing, nothing was obstructing the fans, just the shroud held up by the pennies...

Inside 360

Minor Adjustments

As you can see, my first stack of pennies was not that neat. The original fix called for using 4 stacks of 3 pennies taped together, then the four stacks taped one on top of the other.

I could see from the imprint on the tape from under the Shroud, that my placement was perfect, but it may be too much pressure...?

I removed most of the tape and redid it more sparingly and much neater. I then tested the height by putting the Shroud back on.

1st Penny Stack

Shroud

The Penny stack would still be raising the Shroud quite a bit, over the GPU heatsink.

As I saw no other indication of what might be causing the instant overheating, I started trying to tackle this at the GPU heatsink.

Shroud

Extended Shroud

The GPU heatsink is covered by the DVD but I thought an extention might stop the overheat as it looked like most of the air flow would escape at the top of the heatsink.

I redirected the main loss of air flow back down over the GPU by cutting a peice of card stock to fit over the entire GPU heatsink and taping it to the Shroud.

The DVD then sits over top of the card stock extention and holds it about 5-10mm above the heatsink and should help keep the heat down on the DVD as well ... sweet!

Extention

The Penny Fix

Ok, here we go. Heat the Hana/Ana chip for 2 minutes with a hairdryer turned on high. It should get quite warm. Connect power and video, power up and see if it starts up and goes to standby instead of erroring.

If it started correctly proceed, else try reheating the chip.

Quickly (while chip still hot) , place the penny stack on the chip, put on the Shroud, place the DVD back, do a double check, put the Top Case on and flip the 360 over.

I only put in the 6 long silver screws this time (and the 8 black of course). This should hold the Top Case and apply the pressure to the Shroud but not bolting it down or the DVD.

Pennies

Finish

Put the rest of the 360 case back together. I have left off the Right Ventillation Shield, seemed pointless. Test your 360 to see if it continues to work.

Mine has been running (almost constantly) for 4 days since Oct. 21/07 and I first saw this fix posted on Oct.19/07. This is not really a tried and true fix yet, it is a tried and still working though... 8~)

Results

Up to Oct 25/07 - 360 has been on and off as needed all week, including about 30 hours straight on Halo3's menu screen. Played 4 hours of Halo3 on the 25th with no issues.

Oct 26/07 - Played a bit then had strange graphics effect as before but would restart without erroring. My 360 has been running much cooler, due to the air bath, so I let it heat up a bit and back to Halo3!

Oct 27/07 - Played a few games again and then, same thing with the graphics, posted the 4th section error light once. Let it heat up by blocking the fans for 5-10 min and then it was game on again. Strange 8~)

Oct 28/07 - It has been on all day, with several shut downs and power ups, on Halo3's menu with no problem. When the graphics go, the menu's background is not viewable, it looks like the Matrix ... really!

Matrix Effect

Nov 3/07 - Still some issues. Does not want to run a very graphic intensive game like Halo3 or NHL08 when cool. It will show a DVD ok cool but not a game.