Fixing a BROKEN Microsoft XBOX 360 Slim

[Music] one of my favorite things to do is take neglected well-used consoles and make them look and run like new again consoles like this 360 slim which has certainly seen some better days i think with a bit of hard work and a little tlc we can bring back a little bit of that lost luster hey everyone how's it going my name is tito and welcome to another episode of retro renew today we'll be refurbing repairing and repasting this tired and old xbox 360 slim and we'll even do a small upgrade to the console as well now as you can see this 360 is a bit rough around the edges but the bigger issue is that the disc tray won't eject the console itself actually runs and turns on just fine but with an optical drive that doesn't open it might as well be an oversized paperweight now these are my favorite types of projects nothing gives me more satisfaction than taking a neglected console that may or may not be working and making it look and work like new again this is actually how i got into the retro console modding hobby as i'm sure many of you are aware the prices of retro and even consoles that are just a couple generations old can be fairly expensive especially if those consoles are working and in good cosmetic condition so instead of looking for working mint condition consoles i would hunt on ebay for untested or for repair listings of consoles that i wanted it was much cheaper to buy used non-working and even untested units sometimes i would luck out and the console would work even without doing any repairs others however required a bit of elbow grease to get functional again but for me that's where the fun was which brings me back to this 360. this particular unit was very generously donated to the channel by one of my long time patreon supporters eric castro so i just gotta give a big shout out and thank you to eric for sending it over anyway enough of the banter let's see if we can make this 360 work and look like new again okay so while we really only need to get to the disk drive we're actually going to completely disassemble this 360 slim so we can give it a deep clean and also reapply fresh thermal paste to the cpu to start off let's first remove the bottom vent there's a small latch that you can slide to open a door which gives you access to the hard drive bay but as you can see mine doesn't come with a hard drive pre-installed but don't worry we'll fix that soon enough now with a plastic spudger gently pry the other half of the vent cover off let's go ahead and flip the console over and again with our spudger pry the plastic vent cover off you want to take your time and make sure to not break any of the plastic retaining tabs and as you can see we have quite a bit of dust moving back to the other side grab a metal spudger we'll need to very gently release the retaining tabs holding the plastic bezel they are recessed but you can access them through the small opening shown here there are four tabs that we'll need to release please take your time and don't rush this part the last thing you want are broken tabs i'm also using a plastic spudger to assist in separating the bezel from the 360. after working your way around the bezel should come off as shown now with a t10 torx bit unfasten the screw securing the wifi card then gently pull it out it's interesting it looks like that it's connected to the 360 using a usb connector now again with the metal spudger gently release these two tabs i'm inserting a plastic pick here to keep the two halves separated then i doused the warranty sticker in some ipa to loosen the adhesive and then just lift the top half of the label off so that it is no longer adhered to the shell i proceed to release the remaining tabs on this side of the console again with my metal spudger and then to keep the two halves separate i stick a plastic spudger in between them the last tab sits right behind the warranty sticker i carefully pried it separate taking care to not mar the plastic with the two halves separate we can finally remove the bottom shell next we'll unfasten the five long t10 torx screws which secure the upper shell to the opposite side with all of them removed you can flip the console over and lift off and remove the upper shell this will then also release the 360's front panel which is still connected to the console with a flat flex cable to remove it lift the clear blue retaining flap over the connector then release the bale securing it and you can set aside the front panel now let's move our attention to the optical drive remove both the cables connected to it and then lift it out if you'll notice here and here you can see that the vibration isolation band has degraded and broken so we'll address that later moving on unfasten the two t8 torx screws securing the rf module to the console and with a spudger carefully pry the board off next flip the console over and locate the gold t10 torx screw with the letter g next to it unfasten it and then flip the console back over this will allow you to remove the fan shroud which unsurprisingly is super dusty moving over to the hard drive connector unfasten the single t10 torx screw securing it to the caddy and then set it aside on the rear panel of the console we need to unfasten another t10 torx screw which secures the caddy to the 360s frame now that we have freed the hard drive caddy go ahead and lift it out next let's remove the cooling fan assembly it's secured to the heatsink with two phillips screws before removing the fan though disconnect its cable from the motherboard and then again flip the console over remove the six t10 torx screws around the perimeter and then the four t9 torx screws here which secure the heat sink to the console's frame with the console right side up lift off this retaining bracket and then very carefully remove the motherboard from the mid frame by lifting it up at an angle and then out as shown alright now for the tricky part we need to remove the x retaining bracket from the heat sink using a thin metal tool like this flathead bit on my screwdriver gently pry off the clip [Music] you want to be extra careful doing this as any sudden move could cause damage to the motherboard after removing the bracket you can flip the motherboard back over and lift off the heatsink exposing the old and dried out thermal paste and here's a look at just how crusty and dusty the heatsink is now go ahead and remove all the remaining cables from the motherboard with all the cables out let's clean off all the old thermal paste from the cpu i'm just using a q-tip doused in ipa i'll also occasionally use a kimtec wipe to pick up some of the clumps of dried thermal paste with the cpu nice and clean let's grab the disk drive to get it open we need to remove the four phillips screws on the bottom and then we need to eject the tray as shown annoyingly this foam gasket helps keep the two halves of the disk drive together so we need to gently peel it off once it's been removed we can take off the bottom casing [Music] and then slide out the drive assembly from the top casing so i couldn't really see any particular reason why the drive wasn't working so let's go ahead and remove the tray lift here and then pull the tray out it does look a bit dusty but honestly it's in overall pretty good condition and the drive belt seems to be fine too anyway now that everything is apart let's head outside to blow off some of this dust as you can see there is quite a bit i'm initially using some compressed air to get the majority of the dust and debris off then i come in with my esd safe brush to agitate the dust and get into all the nooks and crannies of the various components i then follow that with some more compressed air i then rinse and repeat for all the other components until i think most of the dust is off now for some more cleaning fun let's take care of all the case parts for this i like to use warm water some soap and an old toothbrush let the montage begin [Music] now i also gave the heat sink some much needed attention it's looking pretty good and because the front plate has some integrated wiring i decided to use a dry method to clean it i found that a damp microfiber cloth does the trick the fan also needed some extra attention the esd safe brush and compressed air just wasn't enough i also finished things off with a damp microfiber cloth and i think it came out looking great i mean it looks brand new just take a look at the before and after now since the disc drive was the main issue with the console i decided to clean all the rails and re-grease them i then proceeded to reinstalling the disc tray making sure that i didn't forget about the foam gasket and before i slid the tray back on here you can see some of the grease that i put on the tray guides which will hopefully alleviate some of the disc tray issues once the tray is back in we can then slide the assembly back into the metal casing drop the bottom shell back on and then secure everything with the four phillips screws [Music] before moving on we can't forget to carefully reapply the foam gasket onto the casing all right now let's bring our attention back to the cpu i'll be applying some thermal grizzly cryonut paste this is my go-to thermal paste that i've been using for years watch as i apply the absolute perfect amount of paste to the cpu perfect now go ahead and drop on the heatsink making sure that it is properly oriented then while holding the heatsink down flip the motherboard over we now need to reattach the retaining bracket lay it down on one of the standoffs but before proceeding i found that placing a wooden block below the heatsink really helps make it easier to reinstall the bracket now all you need to do is press the clip onto the pegs it does take a bit of force but again the block underneath the heatsink provides a solid foundation to press down against awesome now that the heatsink is attached all that's left to do is put it all back together in reverse [Music] [Music] now unfortunately the foam gasket on the fan shroud disintegrated while i was cleaning it so i will need to find a replacement if anyone knows where i can find a suitable replacement for the foam gasket please let me know down below in the comments now if you remember the vibration isolation band broke so i just cut off the excess band and kept the isolation pads for each of the four corners thankfully they sort of stick in place [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] and to finish things off i like to use 303 aerospace on the outer shell not only does it add a nice matte sheen to the plastic but it also hides some of the small scratches protects it from damaging uv rays and conditions the plastic i really like that this doesn't leave a greasy shiny residue and actually on the 360 i think it just looks fantastic wow this actually came out looking a lot better than i expected many of those small surface scratches and imperfections don't appear to be as visible anymore thanks to the deep clean and the aerospace 303 protectant which really did a number to bring out the luster from the 360 slim but most importantly the disc drive works like a charm now i couldn't pinpoint the exact problem with the drive itself it may have just needed some grease on the guide rails or could have just been knocked out of alignment either way there's lots of consoles out there that may initially appear to be broken like this 360 but in reality it just needs a bit of tlc and some elbow grease to get working again now earlier in the video i did say i would do a small upgrade since this particular 360 didn't come with a hard drive i went ahead and bought one this one is a third-party 500 gigabyte hard drive which is more than i need i got it off amazon and i think for this project it'll be more than sufficient now with the console working again i have to say i am rather enjoying it this is my first xbox 360 and now i'm able to play some of the exclusive titles that as a playstation 3 fan i never got to enjoy one such title is blue dragon which i remember vividly wanting to play back in the day with character design by akira toriyama of dragon ball fame and a musical score composed by an industry giant in nobuo uematsu who made many timeless soundtracks of some of my favorite jrpgs this seems like it will really be an awesome game another one that piqued my interest was allen wake which at the time was a 360 exclusive i'm actually really excited to dive deeper into the 360 library so let me know if you all have any recommendations for games i should check out by commenting them down below so what did you all think of this refurb did you enjoy this type of video and if you did what console should i fully disassemble and refurb next again let me know your thoughts down below in the comments anyway thank you all so much for watching and i'll see you all next thursday [Music] you

Channel: Macho Nacho Productions

Views: 98,625

Keywords: macho nacho productions, macho nacho, macho nacho xbox, xbox 360 slim repair, xbox 360 slim full teardown, xbox 360 slim disassembly, xbox 360 slim teardown, xbox 360 slim hard drive, xbox 360 slim disc tray not opening, xbox 360 slim mod, xbox 360 slim cleaning, xbox 360 slim restoration, xbox 360 slim thermal paste replacement, xbox repair, xbox 360 restoration, console restoration videos

Id: A9R8OffTriw

Length: 16min 37sec (997 seconds)

Published: Thu May 26 2022