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As an owner of any kind of hardware knows, breakdowns arent uncommon and they always seem to happen right when you are in the middle of something. In the PC, we have the notorious blue screen of death. On the xbox 360 this phenomenon is known as the classic "3 Red Rings of Death".

So what do you do when this happens to your XBox? First of all, don't panic. In nearly all cases, your XBox can be fixed and the 3 red lights error will go away. Before doing anything, try these simple solutions first:

1. Is your xbox very hot? put your hand on the box. Does it seem unnaturally hot? If so, it may have overheated. Simply unplug your xbox from the power supply and give it some time to cool down. In future, make sure that your xbox has plenty of ventilation around it -- so dont throw your clothes on top of it or locate it with the vents next to a wall. Make sure air can circulate in and around it.
2. After youve unplugged your Xbox and while it is cooling down, grab a can of compressed air and use it to blow into all the vents. Dust trapped within your equipment can cause it to overheat -- both on your xbox and your PC. If you don't have compressed air handy, you can try using a hair dryer if it has a cold setting. just don't blow more hot air into the thing.

After youve let it cooled, plug it back in and see if the 3 red lights error has disappeared. If it hasnt now you need to consider what to do next. If your xbox is still under warranty, it is easy enough to return it for a repair or replacement -- however you need to keep in mind that if you send it in to the warranty center, you probably won't have it back for at least two months.

The other alternative is to fix it yourself. There are a couple of different repair guides available for the xbox designed to get rid of the 3 red rings and following the instructions is pretty simple and this is the best way to go if your xbox is either out of warranty or you do not have the patience to wait two months.

I fixed my xbox myself while it was still under warranty because I didn't have the patience to wait and since then haven't had any problems, but it's up to you whether you want to do that. If it's under warranty, you void the warranty when you open the machine up. However -- the red lights repair is very easy and since this is usually the main thing that goes wrong with the xbox, it's usually worth doing. Also, some of the available solutions dont even involve opening up your xbox, so if one of those works for you, you're all set with your warranty protection.

While the xbox 360 is a great console system there have been many complaints since its release in 2005 to do with hardware errors. The 3 red lights xbox 360 problem is what most people receive when something goes wrong with their console; this means there is a hardware problem which could be a number of different problems. This repair guide will show you the most common problems and a few possible fixes.

overheating

The xbox 360 overheating problem is one of the most common issues; it can be fixed most of the time by simply putting the console in a more open environment. Many people put the console in an enclosed area to save space but unfortunately the overheating issue means it needs more ventilation. There is a so called "towel fix" for the xbox but this has been reported to be a short term fix and dangerous in the long run!

Cabling problems

Sometimes it is simply that the cable in the back of console is not properly connected; make sure it is firmly plugged in. However it can also mean that the console is just not getting enough power which is much harder to spot and fix.

hardware failure

This is the scary one, when your console has Xbox 360 hardware problems you can unplug and restart the console and try again and sometimes this fixes the issue but often you will experience the same error immediately or after playing for a time then it will happen again. This can lead to a trip to the xbox repair centre which is expensive and time consuming.

It is unfortunate that the 3 red lights give so little detail into your xbox problems and microsoft have admitted there are some serious flaws in their product but hopefully this repair guide is enough of a tutorial to solve any easy issues quickly.

There has been much talk about PSP emulators and the like. Such emulators allow you to play and test PSP games and software on the PC. Of course, they are a closely guarded secret and available only to designated, licensed developers approved by Sony.

Of course, it cannot be expected that Sony will release this official emulator to the general public. For one, it is likely to contain protected code that hackers might be able to reverse engineer and result in a higher probability of games and protected hardware being "cracked".

Luckily, the PSPe has been released. This is the first known emulator of the PSP available for the PC. It only plays homebrew games and no commercial titles can be played on it. This is a very early release as denoted by its version number, 0.7. When a version number is less than one, this usually denotes that it is far from the finished product but has been brought to the public early so that they can at least test what functionality there is -- the product need not be perfect before release. Due to this the performance of this PSP emulator is quite poor -- the speed of the games is not optimum.

Games can be played on the PSPe by simply dragging and dropping into a subfolder and then this will appear in the emulator itself. Currently, there is no gamepad support and games can only be played with the keyboard.

Homebrew games are those which have been coded or created by home enthusiasts. Lacking the resources of commercial giants like Sony and their developers, these are usually much more simple and short than their commercially available counterparts. Nevertheless, they can still be a lot of fun, whether played on the PSP itself or on a PSP emulator.

There is also another PSP emulator available although this instead plays snes or Super NES games on the PSP. Snes9x has been a leading SNES emulator for the PC for many years and recently they have created a version for use on the PSP. Again, this has been released early and has a version number of 0.02. Again, due to this, the performance of this PSP emulator is a little slow compared to what you might be used to.

Sometimes, people will resort to a PSP emulator such as Snes9x because they lack enough good games on their PSP. Instead of buying commercial titles from the store at a high per game cost, one alternative is to enlist the services of a dedicated PSP download site. These sites offer the latest games as well as music, movies and wallpapers -- all encoded especially for the PSP. These sites are also guaranteed to be free from spyware and viruses and technical support is available, should you need any assistance.