Microsoft’s Xbox 360 Red Ring of Death problem is bigger than I thought. Strange, then, that the company didn’t even tell us that the new Slim may have it solved.

I wouldn’t say I’ve lived a charmed tech life—believe me, I’ve suffered my share of blue screens—but, overall, I’ve been pretty lucky. Things took a turn, recently, when my family experienced the Xbox 360′s Red Ring of Death.

I’ve talked to people who’ve suffered through the trauma of the Red Ring of Death (RROD), that blinking red indication that their beloved Xbox 360 has gone caput. I’ve often counseled them, imploring them to make sure the over-heating console is well ventilated. This always seemed like well-reasoned advice. Inside the now 5-year-old product is—at least in its very first version—a pair of powerful 3.2-GHz CPUs and an ATI graphics card with DDR3 memory. Even if all of this technology is no longer cutting edge, it still generates its share of heat. Most people—me included—assume that if you put this console inside an unventilated cabinet, you’re essentially asking for a RROD.

Years ago, we bought my son an original Xbox, which he loved. I can’t remember exactly why we caved and bought him an Xbox 360, but I do remember how he begged and begged to play Halo III. Unfortunately, you couldn’t do that on an original Xbox console, so we bit the bullet. Of course, what we didn’t realize at the time is how many of his original Xbox games would not play on the new console.

Still, I don’t regret buying the Xbox 360, it was so much more versatile than the original system and, for a time, it served as our Netflix streaming movie player. When it lived in our den, we made sure to keep the cabinet door wide open whenever it was running. That Xbox 360 was eventually stolen and, for all I know, it’s still running now. My son’s replacement Xbox 360 has spent most of its life in his room on his desk. It’s never enclosed. And he’s has played marathon gaming sessions on it—some lasting as long as four or five hours. We’ve had gaming disks that wouldn’t play, but never any hint of RROD trouble. That changed with the arrival of the apocryphally-named Red Dead Redemption.

This is the first game release that my son was so excited about he convinced me to take him to a GameStop for the midnight launch. We waited under the stars, my son’s fingers gripping his pre-order receipt as if it might blow away in the non-existent breeze. At 12:01 AM, the line started moving and we were in and out of the store in minutes. By the following afternoon, my son was playing Red Dead Redemption on his Xbox 360.

He played the game for days. However, just seven days into my son’s gaming nirvana, tragedy struck. My son called me to his room to check out his Xbox. Red Dead Redemption was dying and showing no redemptive qualities. I tried plugging and unplugging the Xbox 360 to see if I could get it to reset and see the game and disc anew. Nothing worked, and each attempt ended the exact same way—with three of the four lights encircling the power button blinking red.

This was the Red Ring of Death. I know, it wasn’t all four lights, but search Google for “Xbox 360″ and “Red Ring of Death” and you’ll likely end up on this Xbox 30 support page, which seems to accept just three red lights as an indication of very big trouble.

Microsoft Steps In
As most people know, and Microsoft clearly acknowledges, the flashing red lights indicate a hardware or power supply problem. Few people are lucky enough to simply have a problem with the power supply, but Microsoft gamely tries to walk you through a series of steps to troubleshoot what probably isn’t your problem.

Carefully, I checked out my son’s Xbox 360 power supply and found that the light was green and all was fine. The actual console was another matter.

Honestly, I was stunned since my son’s console had been given all the room it needed to breathe. Its vents were not needlessly clogged with dust. Naturally, I tweeted my RROD death horror and immediately got some truly fascinating suggestions for how to fix it. My favorite, by far, is the freezer trick. People are actually taking their wonky Xbox 360s, wrapping them in towels, putting them in the freezer, and then taking them out after just 10 minutes. Then they plug them back in. People say this really works, but everything I understand about technology tells me that this is a temporary fix—at best. In fact, a few people told me they had done this fix more than once on the same Xbox 360. Like I said, a temporary fix. By the way, the crazy fix for a PlayStation’s own Yellow Ring of Death is almost the exact opposite—you’re supposed to heat the thing up with a blow dryer or hot-air gun. Insane.

The best bit of advice I got for our Xbox 360, which was proven almost immediately by Microsoft’s own Xbox 360 support site, was to work with Microsoft. The company fixes out-of-warranty RROD Xbox 360s that are up to 3 years old. While I’m thrilled the company is doing this, there can be no clearer admission of guilt. The Xbox 360s have a real problem and Microsoft’s best solution is to create a RROD pipeline.

To the company’s credit, it greases the pipeline in remarkable and relatively unexpected ways. First of all, all I needed was the Xbox’s serial number, which is on the bottom of the console. Once I entered my specific issue—RROD, duh!—and then the serial number, which quickly provides Microsoft with the age of the console, I was told that we could send it in for repair, probably free of charge. Microsoft even provided the UPS label for me to print out. It also gave me crystal clear instructions on how to prepare the console—no hard drive and no power supplies needed for the trip to the Xbox 360 repair shop.

Ship It
My son and I took the Xbox 360 to the UPS Store where they wrapped it up for us (for , so I didn’t get away scott free). As the clerk prepared the package, I asked if he saw a lot of these. He laughed and said about 10 a week—at least. I was stunned. Not only did the Red Ring of Death problem happen to somebody else, it seemed to happen to virtually everyone else who owned one of these consoles.

Two weeks later, an Xbox 360 arrived at my home. No, it was not the same unit. As has been reported numerous times on the Web, Microsoft often provides refurbs or even unused units, but rarely returns your original Xbox 360. This is preferable, since there is nothing intrinsically ours about the original unit. All of my son’s data is on the hard drive anyway. And who wants back an Xbox 360 that essentially suffered a melt-down?

While all of this was going on, I happened to attend E3 where I watched Microsoft launch the Xbox 360 “Slim.” As the name promises, it’s much smaller than the now 5-year-old Xbox 360 design. It also has, I’d venture, double the number of vents. Though, from what I’m learning about the Xbox 360 internals, this may not even been necessary.

What Microsoft neglected to mention in its Xbox 360 Slim rollout were all the component changes it made, many of which could radically reduce the over-heating issue. According to Anandtech, Microsoft has been updating the Xbox 360 components all along, but the Slim makes some of the most radical changes, combining multiple CPU die into one space, which only needs one heat synch and one fan. The Xbox 360 Slim also eats far less power—something that consumes less power is, by nature, far cooler.

I really wish Microsoft had spent a bit more time giving us the geeky details on the new Xbox 360 Slim and a bit less time showing and re-showing the Kinect motion-controlled gaming system. Perhaps, then, the headline for that day would’ve been: “Microsoft Conquers the Red Ring of Death.”

Has Microsoft solved the RROD problem? Should I run out and buy this new console before my son’s likely refurbed Xbox 360 coughs up another Red Ring of Death? Maybe so. One thing I won’t be doing is shoving it in the freezer.