In the entire time I’ve had my XBox 360, I kept getting disconnected from the XBox Live service after 30 minutes or so, no matter what. I could be downloading or playing a multiplayer game, it didn’t matter. I thought at first that it was my wireless setup (I am using a Netgear wireless router as a “client” and going straight into the XBox 360) but it turns out I was wrong.

The XBox Live service has a “heartbeat” and if it can’t connect to specific ports after specific times, it assumes your connection is garbage and disconnects you. If you’ve got a UPNP (Universal Plug-n-Play) router, this doesn’t really affect you, since your XBox 360 tells your router to forward those ports and everyone’s happy. But I do not have UPNP compatible router; in fact I have the semi-expensive business-class Cisco PIX 501 firewall. Therefore these ports needed to be routed manually.

According to this Microsoft KB article, you need to open/forward the following ports:

TCP 80
UDP 88
UDP 3074
TCP 3074
UDP 53 TCP 53

My problem is now solved. I hope this can help someone else out there.

Since getting my console back after having it repaired, due to the red ring of death problem, I haven't played it much. I decided today to sit down and play Assassin's Creed, and about five minutes into it, my screen starts to look posterized. Basically, it looks like the colors are reduced. Think cheesy 80's music video special effects. Here's some shots:

Of course, if I go to XBox.com and look up my repair information, it says I'm out of warranty. Fantastic. A console I hardly play is broken yet again. I'm going to try to call and deal with their customer service people (in India.. ugh.) But I doubt I will be able to get them to fix this for free.

I haven't found any other information online about this problem. I can't be the only one, though.

Stuff I've tried:

- Changing from 1080p to 1080i, 720p, etc. -- no change.

- Jiggling the entire cable, in case there's a short.

- Unplugging/re-plugging in the video cable.

- Performing the "Reset Video Settings" trick per Microsoft's KB article.

How *$()@% frustrating is this? Microsoft really doesn't get it sometimes.

Update: According to users who replied to my XBox.com forum post, the problem appears to be that the GPU is either overheating, or beginning to break away from the motherboard. This is similar to what causes the "Red Ring of Death" errors, but not the same. I think I'm going to just have to bite the bullet and pay for repairs, even though this is clearly a design flaw, and not a problem I caused.