The Infamous E74
July 4th, 2009
This is what summer is really meant for: video games. You can feel all your troubles melt away as you and your buds trash talk over who is winning in the Halo deathmatch. Ah yes, this is truly the purpose of su–the TV goes blank. Then some type of message comes onto the screen. “What is this?!” you yell at your friends, but they are innocent. This is not a trick, your Xbox has E74.
You aren’t the only one; many, many people have gone through this same thing–in fact, it’s among the the most commonly reported Xbox 360 problems. If you really have E74, there should be one blinking red light on the ring of light, and lines of text going across your TV screen. It should also say “E74″ in pretty big letters right in the center!
The English line reads, “E74 System Error. Contact Xbox Customer Support.” Okay, fine, you may think to yourself, but what’s that? Whats a man got to do to play a video game around here?! You can follow the TV’s advice and call up Microsoft, but all they will tell you is that your console has some kind of “general hardware failure.” As if you didn’t already know that! This means that somewhere inside your 360, something broke somehow.
But, we should not get too far ahead of ourselves; we must first check the basics. This E74 could be the result of the AV cable, or some other cord, just not being attached, or attached properly. In order to check this, just turn off the Xbox and disconnect everything. Plug all the cords into the right places again, and hit the power button.
Then, see if you can find yourself another AV cable. Every once in a while, an Xbox may think something inside itself is broken, when really the AV cable is to blame. With a friend’s cable connected, try to run your 360. If, all the sudden, everything is back to normal, your AV cable must have somehow been damaged. If you aren’t able to borrow one, however, you may be forced to skip this test.
If your E74 still hasn’t gone away, there’s one more thing to check–separable components. Once again, turn off your console. Then, keeping the cords in, take off the hard drive, and the controllers, etc. Without them, turn on the console. If that annoying red light is still flashing, the E74 error originated inside the Xbox 360.
Most E74 errors are due to the HANA chip. It may not be broken, in fact chances are, its connection to the motherboard is what’s broken. This can happen if your Xbox overheats; over time, hairline fractures form and prevent it from functioning properly with the rest of your console. Maybe 10% of the time, the HANA chip is innocent and the problem lies with the GPU. Even then though, excessive heat causes its connection to the motherboard to be compromised, and results in an E74 error showing up on your TV.
Tags: arts and entertainment, arts, guitar
Tags: Arts and Entertainment, consoles, e74, electronics, entertainment, errors, games, Hobbies, issues, problems, technology, troubleshooting, video games, xbox, xbox 360
Posted in Arts and Entertainment | Comments (0)
No comments yet