This will invalidate your warranty

My Sister and Brother-in-Law very kindly gave us their old xbox when they were making space for their new arrival. Unfortunately recently it experienced the Red Ring of Death, which many xbox owners will be familiar with. As it was outwith its warranty they got us some thermal paste to try a fix that sometimes works.

Today we began the task of disassembling it and trust me, they do not make it easy! Torx screws that are smaller than you'll find in the normal toolkit, plastic casing that was almost impossible to separate, X-clips that hold the heat sinks to the motherboard that cause no end of frustration as you try to pry them off without damaging the motherboard. Once the relevant chips were revealed we then had to begin the very careful task of using a cotton bud and nail varnish remover to gently clean away all the old paste before applying a new layer and reassembling in reverse.

Plugged it in *fingers crossed* turned it on....

...Red Ring of Death!

Oh well, it was an interesting process and it would have been worth it if it had worked.