Part of the outer ring is coloured red and the game wont work

Yikes! red ring is not good, if the whole ring is red you need to check your AV cables, three sections is the Red Ring of Death and you need to send your Xbox in for repairs(http://support.xbox.com/en-us/pages/xbox-360/troubleshoot/flashinglights.aspx). Off the top of my head I can't remember what the two or one red sections mean, I do know their not as serious as the three. my girlfriends freezes from time to time and red rings, but when we restart her system it all goes away (sometimes it still jams at the Xbox load screen)