Xbox 360 S Shuts Off Mid-Gameplay

I have a 4GB Xbox 360 S with two external hard drives: a 32GB PNY Attache and a 32GB Lexar. I’ve had a problem with my xbox since late-April to early-May. Usually after ten to thirty minutes (sometimes longer if left unused for a few days) into playing a
game, the whole system shuts itself off. The on/off switch on the xbox doesn’t work and the light on the power supply turns red. When I unplug and replug the power supply, the light turns orange and the xbox is usable again.

Though, the thing is: the xbox has never shut itself off at the home screen and it seems to only happen to
some of my downloaded games. Clearing the cache of the flash drives seems to add a few minutes to the playablility.

I’ve thought that it might be the power supply overheating so I hung it up where it could get more air and that didn’t make a difference.

So right now I'm thinking it’s a problem with one or both of the flash drives. I remember the first game this happened to was Assassins Creed 4 when it was free for Games with Gold. Around that time there was an update that allowed the Xbox 360 to support
2TB hard drives and I’m not sure if that may have caused this problem.

On a possibly related note, I’ve noticed that some of my saved data in the Cloud Saved Games has lost its game icon and the status of the data is “Cloud Only.” I thought this might be related since some of the data that this has happened to are games that
the xbox shuts itself off with.

I’ve been reluctant to reformat the hard drives since I’ve been told that it erases everything but right now I’m thinking that might be my only option.

:)

 

xbox shuts off after 30 seconds into game *no red lights*

Xbox 360 shuts itself off after 30 seconds into gameplay (both off disc, and arcade games off of hard drive).

 

xbox restarts mid game??

Your xbox itself shuts off mid game or you just lose picture and sound?

 

More than likely the issue is with the flash drives. PNY is known to have issues playing nice with Xbox consoles. Although I cannot speak for the Lexar flash drive as well I'll bet that may be an issue as well.

I would recommend removing all flash drives and restarting the console. Then play a game and see if the console shuts down. If it does not then turn the console off and add one drive and repeat the process. If the console shuts down then the drive you
have added is the culprit and must be replaced.

I would suggest getting an official Xbox hard drive or an external hard drive (up to 2TB) to store your games and data on.

 

Thanks for the quick response, however, I've done what you suggested and even tried a new flash drive and the problem persists. Now I'm thinking it might be a problem with the power supply itself.