Think before you disassemble!

Your xbox 360 has a warranty when you buy it, unless this warranty is expired or you have already taken apart you xbox 360. disassembling your xbox will void your xbox 360 warranty.

The Problem

The main problem that causes the three ring error for your xbox 360 is heat. If you go to Microsoft to find a solution they will tell you to look at your power supply if its led light on the big charge pack is red then that is whats faulty. You can try turning off the xbox 360 and disconnecting the power cords wait a little bit and use a different outlet. For the actual real general hardware failure it will commonly be caused by the heat sinks not being attached to the xbox 360 mother board correctly. Unfortunately when xbox 360 first came out these bugs and system flaws are not shown usually until the xbox 360 has been used for a period of time. Making your warranty expired "like mine" or you just don't know what to do after you reach the point of knowing you have the three red rings

Next step

After you have come to find you have the three red rings and are confident that the heat sinks are the issue. You have to choose if you want to disassemble your xbox 360 by your self and fix it or pay someone to or even send it to Microsoft with the warranty (if you send it to Microsoft odds are they will just send you back a new or already refurbished xbox 360). Anyways here is a video that shows you how you can take apart your xbox 360 you will need a small screw driver and a star head screw driver just to disassemble the xbox 360 not actually fix it.

Solution

Ok now you should have taken apart your xbox 360 if your with me at this point you should just have the mother board of the console separate for all other components. the problem are the two stacks that are a bunch of metal plates spaced evenly from one another called heat sinks. These two heat sinks are attached to the CPU chip and processor with x clips and thermal paste makes sure of good transfer of excess heat. Your x clips should be fine as long as you didn't mangle them while disassembling, the real problem is the thermal paste on the three chips (two larger chips and a smaller one that have residue from the old paste on them). What you have to do is replace the thermal paste on these chips, you can find this paste at radio shack or another electronics store. If you just want a quick fix instead of going to get the paste you can carefully scrape of the old thermal paste and then as evenly as possible you spread it back over the three chips. In order for this to work you must run the Xbox 360 console with out the fan connected to overheat the console and basically re-adhere the heat sinks to the chips. If your not using new thermal paste then the problem has a chance to re occur but you can do the same steps again to fix again. I've done it about 6 times and it has worked every time for about 3-4 months except this last time where i bought new thermal paste and havent had a problem since.

Any other trouble try one of the other links on the page