You'll have to send it to Microsoft to be fixed, and there really isn't much way of getting around it. Don't try and tamper with it yourself because then they will DEFINITELY charge you for the work they do if they notice something has been messed with.
But, don't lose hope in not having to pay for anything.
About a year and a half ago, my x-box would take 10-15 minutes to start working. I would turn it on, but nothing would show up on the screen despite the xbox being on. I would have to sit there and turn the xbox on and off for 10-15 minutes before everything would finally click. Eventually, however, the xbox just stopped reading discs entirely and all I kept getting were error codes.
I went online to the xbox support website, opened up a fix-it describing my problem, printed out the free shipping bar code, and sent it out. Two weeks later, my xbox was returned to me with a free 90 day warranty and a free xbox live gold card (even though I already have xbox live). I didn't have to pay anything. Just describe your situation in great detail when you set it up online.