“My Xbox 360 console, which has been with me since launch day, has finally decided to throw in the towel. When I try to turn my Xbox, the lights around the power button flash red and the top left, bottom left and bottom right quadrants light up. I have heard about the feared ‘Red Ring of Death’ but never thought it was going to happen since my console has always worked perfectly. What does this mean and is there anything I can do to fix it? ”

--Gideon S.

“I was recently moving into a new home and managed to accidentally drop my computer in the process. My computer now refuses to read anything off of the hard drive and losing all of this data has been catastrophic. Outside of being more careful, how can I prevent disk failure from happening in the future? The amount of data I lost has really got me worried about hard drives failing on my other computers.”

--Marcos C.

Hey Dr. FixIt,

The other day I was at your store in Boston because my HP laptop had a virus, and one of the technicians told me that The Tech Center only installs Microsoft Security Essentials on customer’s computers. Why is this? Is Security Essentials better than Norton or Avast? The guy at Best Buy was really pushing me to buy Norton Anti-Virus.

--Kenny L.

“My home computer seems to be continually attacked by viruses and is starting to slow down considerably. I clearly need to find some anti-virus software but I am reluctant to pay the price for the protection. Are programs like McAfee or Norton worth the money or are there free programs available that can get the job done?

-- Daniel M.

“I am a big gamer and am looking for the best way to hook up my PS3 and Xbox 360 to my brand new HDTV. I am currently using the component cables the systems came with, but have heard great things about HDMI cables. What are the benefit of HDMI connections and are they worth the purchase? What about other methods such as S-video?”

-- Andres F.

“No matter what I do, it seems impossible to protect my computer from viruses and spyware. I have so many viruses my computer is slowing down and some programs have stopped working correctly, while others are now refusing to work at all. Why does this happen and what can I do to prevent this?”

-- Ryan C.

Could you explain what cell phone unlocking is? Is it the same as jailbreaking my phone? Isn’t doing this illegal? Why would I want to do these things?

-- Julie B.

“What causes my iPod or iPhone’s battery to die?” 

-- Richard H.