XBOX 360 Issue

[Guyverarmor]

So...the 360 I have started to fail on me. I bought it from lolGamestop last year as a refurb. Been working ok until today. Now the 360 will not read the disk and will ring it (etch the ring into the disc.) Anyone had any experience in repairing these, or what way I could go about doing it. 360 has been laying flat on the ground and hasn't been jostled around either. Appreciate the help BG !

Edit: Will play Halo 3 perfectly fine, and without a scratch as well !

[TheTaru]

If you exited out of the game without logging out of POL(power outage, just pressing the power button, etc) it'll tell you the disc is unreadable. You either have to reformat the hard drive, or do some weird thing involving playing music on the 360(or so I've heard, I haven't done the latter). It's an enormous pain in the ass, but that's just how it is. There have been two or three threads about this before(including one started by myself), can search for a better explanation

Either that or your disc really just is unreadable.

[Blabj]

Can ebay replacement drives for reasonably cheap. Make sure you get one that isn't pre modded (unless you want one that's pre modded...) because it'll likely result in a ban - even if you don't play downloaded games on it. Also, if you do go down this route, you'll wanna head to your local electronics store and purchase a size 10 torx security screwdriver (or a Torx 10 or a T10 as you might see it named)

After that, you can follow video guides on youtube for getting your xbox open, and then it's a simple task of just swapping out the drives and reassembling.

[Guyverarmor]

So more than likely the lense could be causing this and would have to replace the CD drive then?

[Blabj]

It could be a number of things, but I personally don't have much knowledge of how it's fixed, I just know that 9 times out of 10 you'll be told either to send it back to microsoft (still under warranty) or buy a replacement drive.

You mention you keep it horizontal... What happens if you put it vertical?

[Trelution]

If you have a warranty by all means send it in, but if you don't and like tinkering with electronics open that bad boy up and have a look around. Sounds like you might have one of those hitachi drives where the magnet comes unglued and sticks to the case. Does it make an awkward sound when it tries to read?

I had a drive crap out on me, Samsung I think it was. It wouldn't spin the disc fast enough to read it. Would sound like its powering up and then just die out. I did get a replacement drive off eBay. But its not as simple plug and play replacement like the old xbox. First you can only replace with the same type of drive and second the drive and the mobo are "married". So you have to take the chip out of your old drive and put it in the new one before you install your new drive. That is unless you deal with flashing drives then you can buy whatever.

But hell nowadays as cheap as you can find arcades sometimes I would just save up some extra dough and get that and not worry with the headache of messing with replacing the drive.