If you’re reading this right now, your worst nightmares have become a reality – your Xbox 360 is broken. Maybe it was fine at first, but then that green ring of lights turned red, and you knew something was really wrong.

Now, of course, you’d like to know if there’s a way for you to fix your Xbox 360.

Up until now, if you were someone who wanted to repair your Xbox 360 on your own, the methods available were often strange and unreliable.

For instance, you might have heard about or tried what’s called the towel trick. If you don’t know about it, don’t be tempted!

That’s because the towel trick – wrapping your Xbox 360 in a towel – isn’t reliable, and it’s much more likely to set the machine on fire than it is to make anything better. This isn’t a good fix.

This trick, like many others, is another Internet myth.

Another solution that’s almost a myth is that you can open your Xbox 360’s case and fix the problem using a soldering iron. This suggestion’s been floating around the net for a while, but it’s a bad one. After all, unless you’re a trained technician, you shouldn’t mess with an important, complicated piece of technology like your Xbox 360. You could break things and you’ll be voiding the warranty.

So, what’s left?

One option is to follow the advice of the manufacturer and send your Xbox 360 back to Microsoft to repair. However, that’ll cost you a hundred forty dollars plus shipping if your warranty is over, and you won’t see your console for at least six to eight weeks. That’s a lot of fuss and money to fix your machine.

With a valid warranty, you can skip the repair fee, but you’ll still need to pay shipping and pack the console up securely enough to get it to Microsoft in one piece. There’ll also be that two month wait for its return.

This is clearly a big hassle. None of us want to wait this long, and it costs an awful lot, too.

If you’re among them, your best choice is finding an Xbox 360 repair guide you can trust. It’ll show you just how to repair your system by yourself – safely. It’s not all that hard to fix an Xbox, but you do have to know what you’re doing. The Internet is full of bad information – find a good source for repair info.

If you fix your Xbox at home, you won’t lose your system for months at a time, and you can avoid spending the repair money, too.