red ring of death

Derived from the phrase blue screen of death, a type of failure on a personal computer running Microsoft Windows.

red ring of death (plural red rings of death)

1. (video games) A fatal hardware exception in the Microsoft Xbox 360 video game console characterised by 3 or 4 red indicator LEDs around the power button. Abbreviation: RRoD.

While red ring of death can be used as a verb, often expressed by the initialism RRoD (in the past tense "having red ringed" or "having RRoDed") it is more commonly used as a noun ("I got the RRoD..." or "my console has the red ring of death...") However, either usage is acceptable as they can tend to be situational.

• red ring