Here Im going to outline some things that you can do to
keep your Xbox 360 running its best and hopefully out of the repair shops.

~Keep your Xbox 360 in a well ventilated area away from any sources of heat.~

This also helps to increase the airflow in your Xbox 360 with a
internal fan mod or by many of the clip on fans found on the market.


~Install the games you play the most onto your hard drive.~

Installing your games onto the hard drive helps by saving
wear and tear on your DVD Drive in addition to faster game
load times. How it helps is by not spinning the disc as fast and leaving the lens on standby mode.

To install your game onto the hard drive simply go to the game load window on your NXE Dashboard.

~Select Y Game Details when it appears (sometimes the Y option
wont appear right away).
~On the next screen it will show you a menu with the option
to install to hard drive on the bottom.
~You will still need the game disc to unlock and boot the game.

~Clean your console every once and a while.~

Use compressed air or an air can to blow the dust build
up out of your Xbox 360. In addition to this you should
bring your console into a shop for a professional cleaning
depending on how dusty the environment is and how often you use
your console. A laser lens cleaning CD will gently sweep the
dust away from the top of your optic as well.

~Dont smoke around your console.~

Smoke kills the lenses by blocking the photo
diode inhibiting its ability to read games. The smoke
stains the insides of the lens as well as the console
and it doesnt come off.

~Back up your game saves periodically onto a Xbox 360 Memory Unit (MU).~

Or a USB thumb drive now with the new Dashboard kernel
that supports USB sticks. You never know if or when your
hard drive may fail. Its a real drag loosing ALL of your game
saves plus if you dont have an Xbox Live account then your profile
is pretty much gone too.

---