Poor, poor pitiful me.
 

My story of woe.

Last night, my wife was out of the house having dinner with some friends of hes. I bathed the kids, placed them in their warm jammies, brushed teeth, read them a story and put them to sleep., Now it was my time. I decided to spend these few precious moments wisely and do what I liked to do when I'm alone...crank up oth ol' XBox. I managed to revive my XBox Live account after letting it go extinct since March, Popped the Halo 2 disk in and let 'er rip. Ahhh, bliss. The first map-a game of slayer, I killed. Second, I held my own. Third map, a rousing game of "Odd ball", I came in third. I was doing great after my little vaction. I was keeping up. About the fourth game in, I waited for the map to load and the game to configure, then, my console froze up. Locked up tighter than a drum. Hmmm. I waited for a few, still nothing. I went over to the box shut it off, turned it back on and....NOOOOO! I got the dreaded "Christmas tree lights!" This is where the power light around the eject button flashes alternating between green and red. This coupled with an onscreen message means death for the XBox and my game playing days. What a wonderful source of entertainment for me, is now a 10 lbs. paper weight.

Just needed to get this off my chest. Thanks for listening. *sob*

So like, unplugging it, counting to ten, and plugging it back in doesn't fix it?

Well, it _is_ an Xbox, so you're probably better off. This is God's way of telling you that you really want a PS2.

I was trying not to rub that in ... but I figured that treating it like a locked up PC would set everything right.

Naw, that's ok. Believe me, I already tried that anyway. :)

Useful sounding link Your specific problem is mentioned here.

I am in deep waters when it comes to xbox troubleshooting, much more of a pc guy. Certainly there's plenty of overlap, though.

Plus, I'm trying to generate good karma for this.

CTRL+ALT+DELETE

It IS a Microsoft product afterall.

Well, if that's the case, then all I would have to my typical:

FORMAT C:
followed by a complete OS reload.