Shitty stupid xbox 360 and its red lights

[SweetAudrina]

DS was playing a new game that he'd bought TODAY with his birthday money and the picture started going all funny. I told him "restart the xbox, it will probably be ok after that".

So he did and when the xbox came back on, it showed one red light (no.4) and an error message came on the screen saying "system error E 74"

I've looked around on the net and apparantly this basically means a £100 repair bill or a completely useless xbox.

I'm so pissed off as DS has now wasted all his birthday money on a game he can't play.

Please advice before I throw the stupid fucking thing through the window.

Have you been on the microsoft.com website?

When the red light came on on dh's, it was because the power lead was somehow hanging out at the back?

How old is the xbox? Ds got his fixed for free. They sent a courier to pick it up too. Ds has also fixed a friend's xbox with a kit he got off ebay. It was out of warranty though which is why ds did it. It invalidates the warranty if mess with it yourself.
There was a known fault on xboxes which microsoft will rectify iirc.