Quick and dirty fixes for electronic gadgets have usually involved abuse of some kind. This included smashing, hitting, shaking, or kicking to get the device to work. The abuse worked because loose connections would reconnect if you were persistent enough. But the mechanical shock weakens other connections which make the device fail at a later time.

One of the better known fixes for the ring of death error is the towel fix or towel trick. It readily falls into this category of fixing something by abusing it. Instead of mechanical abuse, the remedy involves heating the internal chips at extremely high temperatures so that broken solder points get reconnected and badly warped components get reshaped.

The towel trick is done by covering your Xbox with 2 or 3 towels. Then your Xbox is switched on for around 15 minutes or so and you’re through. Then it’s time to do some gaming. The next time the ring of death shows up simply repeat the towel fix.

If it fixes your Xbox, then what’s wrong with the towel fix? As was mentioned previously, the towel fix cooks the Xbox’s components at very punishing temperatures. Damage caused by excessive heat during manufacture is a major concern in the electronics industry. Getting the correct soldering temperature for a good solder join without damaging chips is a tricky operation.

So the towel fix does it’s magic at the expense of further chip damage. Of course more damage will cause more problems later on. When the towel trick is used to fix these new problems, your Xbox is weaken further with more damage. There’s a limited number of times that this process can be repeated before there’s too much damage for the towel fix to work any more. This is a degenerative procedure that completely fries your Xbox.

Another issue that’s somewhat beside the point of this article is that the towel trick can be dangerous to do. The Xbox generates a lot of heat (hence the need for the cooling system in the first place). Because of the towels, the heat has nowhere to go and builds up fast. If your Xbox catches on fire, flammable things next to your Xbox (such as your house) can burn too.

The towel trick makes no sense at all and in this case, counterintuitive doesn’t help. The ring of death is caused by the Xbox producing too much heat and having a cooling system that can’t keep pace. Fixing this problem by applying more heat only makes the problem worse.