So you have been playing call of duty for the past 5 hours then all of a sudden your Xbox 360 goes blank, the room is now glowing red from the front of the console. You have got the red ring of death also called the rrod for short. The next step to take is to work out just what those flashing red lights are actually trying to tell us. The number of flashing lights can help us figure out what the problem is and the best ways to fix it.

1. One red light in the lower right hand quadrant is letting us know that our console has suffered a hardware failure. When this happens the light is also accompanied by an error code on your TV or display. E74 is a common example of this error; this signifies an A/V cable error. The best thing to do is determine whether or not you need a new cable. You could try borrowing a friend's to see if that works.

2. When two red lights are displayed this is telling us that our Xbox 360 is overheating. This is not unusual especially if you do enjoy playing your console for extended periods of time or if you leave it on whilst downloading the latest movie. If this has occurred, turn your console off and leave it alone for about an hour after which time you can turn it on again. If the console still feels hot or it happens again shortly after try purchasing an external fan for your console. You can get them relatively cheaply from most online video game retailers, it will fix snugly on to the back of your console and help keep your machine cool during the longest sessions of gears of war.

3. 3 red lights, this is the one you don't want. This is letting us know that we have a general hardware failure. This normally occurs when the circuit board overheats and some of the solder can become brittle and break. It is fixable, you either send your console off to Microsoft, attempt the towel trick (which I don't recommend) or fix it yourself using a Xbox 360 repair guide (this is what I did).

4. Four lights are displayed when the AV cable has not been detected; this could be something as simple as the cable has become loose and wiggled out. This normally happens when my kid brother trips over the cable and pulls it out. You will not see this error if you use an HDMI connection.