Xbox 360 Troubles Return

Earlier this year I got the dreaded Red Ring of Death (RRoD) on my Xbox 360.  I sent it in for repairs and I was pleased with the service and got my Xbox back and it has happy...for a while.  Since I got it back, it's been problematic.

Now, the system is prone to random freezing and not booting up properly. It's usually the first time I turn on the Xbox for the day that it will not boot up.  The power light comes on but none of the quadrants light up and I do not get the Xbox POST screen.  I turn it off and back on and it's good to go, unless I start to play something for a while.  Bioshock, Oblivion, MLB 2K8 and NCAA Football 09 have all frozen in the middle of the game numerous times.  Sometimes, it'll be a dirty disc error, other times it'll just completely freeze up.  The CD drive spins down and then I just know that the game is going to freeze.  The frustrating part of all this is that I've only got an explicit error message once (E74).

The other day I finally decided to e-mail Xbox support regarding this since it gotten to the point where it's happening more often.  I gave them the same story as above and they replied with the following:

I understand that you see one quadrant of the Ring of Light flashes red and you receive the following error message: E74. System Error. Contact Xbox Customer Support on your 360. I apologize for any inconvenience.

This behavior occurs when the Xbox 360 console experiences a hardware failure.

Here are some steps that you can use to try to resolve the issue.

1.  Turn off the console, disconnect all the cables, and then reconnect all the cables. Turn the console back on. 

2.  Turn off the console, and then disconnect any accessories that are connected. For example, disconnect any Xbox 360 controllers, Xbox 360 Memory Units, and the Xbox 360 Hard Drive. With the accessories disconnected, restart the console to see whether the problem still occurs. This can help you determine whether the console or an accessory is experiencing the problem. 

3.  If you continue to experience this problem, contact Xbox Customer Service.

 It's like they didn't read all the details I sent to them.  I'll jump through their hoops but I don't think there's any problems with any of the accessories or cables.  I'm thinking this is a problem with "ANA"/"HANA" chip.  We'll see what happens but I really hope that they'll cover this under the RRoD warranty since the repairs they did earlier in the year only seemed to fix part of the problem.  Oh yeah, of course my console is out of warranty so if I don't get it repaired at no cost then it'll be $100 to get it repaired or I'll just live with the annoyance of the system freezing on me.

Anyone else got any similar stories or experiences with their Xbox?