The Xbox 360 Towel Trick - Why You Mustn't Try It

By Dave Simpson

It can be devastating, as a gamer, when your beloved Xbox 360 starts to display the 3 red lights on the front, so you may be tempted to search on the internet for a free way to fix the problem.

Most of the time you will be told by these 'experts' to try the Xbox 360 towel trick. Before I go on to describe what the trick involves, and why its very dangerous, let's examine what causes the Xbox 360 red ring of death in the first place.

In a word, overheating, that's what causes the Xbox 360 3 red light error. In the early days, Microsoft sacrificed good looks for safety with the Xbox 360, and the cooling systems they put inside were not up to the job.There are 2 cooling fans at the rear but they aren't up to the job and the case is very narrow, and doesn't allow enough heat to escape. Add to this, the fact that the 2 main chips - the graphics chip and the main processor are both connected via a common heat sink and you have a recipe for disaster.The bad news is that by the time you find out about the problem its already too late.

The towel trick was devised by someone to fix this problem. If you want to try the Xbox 360 towel trick all you need is.. well, a towel. Just take a bath towel and wrap it around the console, switch the machine on and let it overheat for a few minutes. Although it seems hard to believe there is some good theory behind the madness of wrapping your Xbox 360 up in a towel. Basically, you are trying to heat it up to a point where the motherboard 'fixes itself' by allowing the solder on the bus to re-flow fixing the previous damage.

It should be obvious the problems and dangers with trying this. The very real danger of fire is present here. The only sure way to fix the 3 red light error is to get a good guide from the internet and perform the fix yourself. There are many guides available, all of them cheap, and the fix needs only a few simple tools and takes about an hour to do. Best of all its safe and permanent.


Hopefully I have convinced you not to try the Xbox 360 towel trick on your broken console. Instead, get a guide, and if you want to know what the best ones are check out my reviews HERE