I emailed Microsoft about the problem, and they had some suggestions — make sure the disc is clean, basically, and try other discs. Did all that already of course, but I can’t blame them for having that sort of front-line defense. Anyway, after a couple of emails with no improvement in the situation, they tell me I should call to figure out what to do next. I have a ticket number, so I should be able to bypass all of that front-line stuff and get straight to it, right? No. We go through all of the “does the disc look like it has scratches?” (which disc, since all of them I try have the same problem?), etc questions.

About 15 minutes in to it, we start talking about actual solutions. I could either a) take the console back to the store I bought it from for an exchange, or b) send it to Microsoft and get a refurbished model back in 2-4 weeks. The receipt I had said they had a 7 day exchange policy on open “systems”, but Microsoft suggested I try anyway. Turns out, GameStop must have some sort of “secret” 30 day policy, because they exchanged it for me. The guy at the store was nice enough to let me keep my original hard drive (with Oblivion save games and all). And the best part is: the new console works great. It’s a little louder, and a little older (a couple weeks), but it plays games, which is all I really expect of it anyway.