Xbox 360 not reading discs
Hi, so, my Xbox 360 started playing up last summer- it'd struggle to play Forza 2 for long and rarely plays Mass Effect. It freezes, then I get the "disc is dirty/unreadable" error.
Long story short, the console is out of warranty. It's taken this long to sort it because I haven't really used it, but now that GTA4 is out...
Anyway, I see these as being my options:
1. Pay Microsoft £65 to replace the DVD drive and give 6 months warranty.
2. Pay £60 to 3rd party repair companies to replace it.
3. Pay £30 for a new DVD drive off ebay and attempt to fix it myself.
4. Pay £8 for a laser and try to fix it myself.
5. Buy GTA4 and hope it's the type of disc that works.
(1) and (2) seem the safe bet, but they're expensive. (3) I might give a go, but it seems complex (getting inside the console, hooking the drive up to a PC, booting PC into safemode, copying driver keys across), and messing up any of the steps seems likely to brick the console.
(4) is really what I'm interested in- but I don't know if it's likely/certain that it's the laser that dies with these problems. If any of you can tell me it's the most likely thing to do, there's not a lot of harm in messing with a broken DVD drive for £8.
(5) is chancing it. I'll be p***** off if I spend £40 on GTA4 then find out it doesn't work.
For what it's worth, the console uses the Samsung drive; Halo 3, Splinter Cell DA and Fight Night run fine, Bioshock is iffy; Forza 2 and Mass Effect frequently go belly up.
Long story short, the console is out of warranty. It's taken this long to sort it because I haven't really used it, but now that GTA4 is out...
Anyway, I see these as being my options:
1. Pay Microsoft £65 to replace the DVD drive and give 6 months warranty.
2. Pay £60 to 3rd party repair companies to replace it.
3. Pay £30 for a new DVD drive off ebay and attempt to fix it myself.
4. Pay £8 for a laser and try to fix it myself.
5. Buy GTA4 and hope it's the type of disc that works.
(1) and (2) seem the safe bet, but they're expensive. (3) I might give a go, but it seems complex (getting inside the console, hooking the drive up to a PC, booting PC into safemode, copying driver keys across), and messing up any of the steps seems likely to brick the console.
(4) is really what I'm interested in- but I don't know if it's likely/certain that it's the laser that dies with these problems. If any of you can tell me it's the most likely thing to do, there's not a lot of harm in messing with a broken DVD drive for £8.
(5) is chancing it. I'll be p***** off if I spend £40 on GTA4 then find out it doesn't work.
For what it's worth, the console uses the Samsung drive; Halo 3, Splinter Cell DA and Fight Night run fine, Bioshock is iffy; Forza 2 and Mass Effect frequently go belly up.
Comments
A.) Is it just those disks? did you check for a pinhole/try it on a diff XBox?
B.) If not, if you think you can fix it yourself, then there's no reason not to try. If you don't think you can fix it yourself then you're either a.) trying it for the learning experience or b.) probably wasting money. If money isn't that big of a deal compared to the learning experience OR you think it's reasonable that you could fix it yourself then I see no reason to try everything in that list in reverse order until it works.
C.) Seems unlikely this part will break again, you'd be more likely to get a RRoD. If MS will insure the whole console if you send it to them then I'd say strongly consider this as a first option. If they only insure the DD I don't see any reason to do this over the third party/any of the other fixes.
A dvd lens cleaner disc solved it.
Okay, the first thing you need to do is check your discs for scratching. There is a percentage of 360s with faulty drives scratching dvds. If this is your problem then in theory GTA4 will work until it too is scratched.
Secondly, it may be a faulty drive. This happens at a much more than acceptable level. In which case I'd pay a third party repair service to sort it out.
locallyunscene makes a very good point though. If you go to a third party and then get RROD, you will not be covered under warranty.
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360_technical_problems" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360_technical_problems</a>
After about 3 hours of play it's only crashed once during a loading screen; though I hear the game is bugged so fingers crossed it's that. If I can ever stop playing GTA4 I'll load up Mass Effect and see if that works as that was real problamatic.
Thanks for the info too, puzl.
<a href="http://www.maxconsole.net/?mode=content&itemid=189" target="_blank">http://www.maxconsole.net/?mode=content&itemid=189</a>
Very cheap and soo worth it. Makes a lot of noise tho...but hey, the box already is noisy so no harm done on that part.
So I replaced the DVD lens on Monday, everything worked fine on Monday and Tues; but I've been getting the same problem since then and it won't even load Halo 3.
As I removed all the genuine Microsoft seal stickers to get at the DVD drive, I guess my next job is to buy a replacement DVD and just refit the whole thing.
Bit of a pain though as you have to hook them up to a computer and flash the drives- and one wrong move = bricked console!
f***ing Microsoft.