Xbox 360 problem.....Please help

[newbie]

My son is going mad because his Xbox 360 has suddenly thrown a rivet. He has one red ring flashing and we think the error message code is E74. We have tried ringing Microsoft customer support but this is an automated system that keeps going round in circles. We have done all they suggest. Can anyone give us a telephone number where we can speak to a real person or has anyone got any idea how we can resolve this please. The school holidays have just started and my son is very stressed that he will lose all his tournament data, Live and everything else. Please help his poor mum to keep her sanity as well!

[Therema]

Have a look at this, this actually happened to my son a week ago and he got his working again, just type in Xbox 360 Error E74
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0katvvV3ric

[nigidivitch]

He won't loose his data as that's stored on the hard drive/removable storage and also on the xbox live servers (and the error message he is getting is not related to that stuff). If the console is still in warranty xbox offer a really good repair service, but I'm assuming it isn't. There are places that say they will fix it, and there are a million online references to fix it yourself as this is not an uncommon problem.
If the worst comes to the worst and you have to replace the console you can rest assured that he'll not have lost any data as long as he keeps his old hard drive!

[eire123]

sounds like he has one of the rings of death. basicall means it overheated and you need to take out the hardrive and send the console to microsoft

[newbie]

Thanks for all your suggestions. In the end I found a local firm who corrected the problem and did something that would make it unlikely to happen again. So one happy teenager and one relieved mum!