Do you have the three red light error otherwise called the red ring of death
? If so, then you may have heard of or read about the towel fix or towel trick. Although the red ring of death is aggravating, you needn't get all stressed out over it. Don't allow your frustration to cause you to try it.
The towel fix requires that you wrap some towels around the console and then run your Xbox like this for several minutes. This causes the internal soldering to heat up making it soft so that broken connections get repaired. At any rate, that's the theory behind it. It's certainly an easy thing to do but will it actually work?
Although there are tons of videos on YouTube explaining this method, a great deal of these are posted by amateurs and kids. They don't worry much about whether their fix causes any lasting damage. Better solutions exist for dealing with the ring of death.
People using this technique often end up with a severely damaged Xbox while the lucky ones get a temporary fix. Continual usage of this fix causes additional damage to the electronics. When the cumulative damage becomes too severe, the towel trick doesn't work anymore.
This technique is flawed because you don't get a fix that deals with the root of the problem. The method makes your machine even more prone to overheating.
The reason for this is that micro electronics are sensitive to extreme heat. That's why fans and heat sinks are employed to begin with. If heat is used to fix a problem that is also caused by heat, then this should raise red flags about the correctness of the method.
The towel fix is the wrong approach. There are plenty of people with damaged consoles who can attest to that.
Don't destroy your console. Return it to Microsoft for a replacement if your warranty is still intact. Otherwise, fix it yourself or hire a professional.
If you decide to do it yourself, you must get a good repair guide. Of course this means opening up the console. This might result in further damage if you aren't careful. But if you're able to use some basic tools and can exactly follow the guide's instructions, you will do OK.