Currently, my housemate’s XBox is in the custody of Microsoft after suffering the Red Ring Of Death, and as he plays more than I/has the 120gb HDD to my 20, we’ve had his HDD plugged into my XBox. Fail #1 of the story, I guess; if Microsoft could invent a console that didn’t habitually fail to work, there would have been less faffing in the first place.

As part of my watching such files each week, I get the joy of the XBox failing to decode them. I have no idea why, but each week the XBox delightfully informs me that it needs a media update to play the files. This, of course, despite me having installed it the previous week. This also involves logging into XBox live. Fail #2.

Unfortunately, said housemate transferred his gamertag to another XBox over the weekend. Grr. Ok, so fine, I’ll transfer mine over. So after (twice, I had to take 2 stabs to remember the info) typing in all my email and password details (fail #3 – god it’s painful typing on the onscreen keyboard. I don’t know the solution, but it can’t be this), I get told that new Live accounts can’t be created. Which is annoying for the following reasons.

• The obvious; the service is down
• It spits you back to the main menu, which if you want to try again means you have to type everything in again on the awful on-screen keyboard (see above)
• I’m not even trying to create an account

But ok, fair enough, I’ll just plug in the other HDD. Except no. Fail #who knows, I’ve lost count. My gamertag, though not added to the new HDD, is now ported away from the old one. It’s in limbo. And of course, I can’t pull it back to the old HDD, ’cause the service is down (I know, I tried).

ARG!

I’m not loving Microsoft tonight.