Xbox 360 having trouble reading game disks. Any tricks?
#1
Wed, 01/22/2014 - 10:02
Xbox 360 having trouble reading game disks. Any tricks?
Our old Xbox 360 Elite is starting to have a hard time reading game disks. It's a coin toss if it will read any given disk on the first try, and lately it's started to become more of a one in three tries and the game will load all the way.
I've googled this to death and found a ton of crazy things to try suggested by 12 year olds on YouTube - but I'm wondering if anyone here has some good advice. I would normally just replace the DVD drive it it was a PC, but apparently the 360 is mated to it's DVD drive and you can't just swap it out with a different one.
Thanks for any help.
This works but it is situation dependent. Supposing you have a cracked DVD disk. Very erratic behavior ensues. A long term solution is to copy the game to HDD. In that scenario, the DVD only has to read the disk for a moment and the rest is all HDD. All 'you' need is for the DVD to successfully copy the game to HDD once.
I have successfully employed this technique for a lengthy period. It might work in your situation.
I watched the 12 year old on you tube and opened up my X box and cleaned it, including the laser, and it works fine. I've done this twice in maybe two years now.
I haven't seen the cleaning video. Can you share that one?
Or should I just google "xbox cleaning video"? :D
This one's annoying but accurate.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RazbWSDep0
You can try a DVD cleaning disc, or use a qtip with some cleaning alcohol on it if u can see the lense in the 360 dvd, i'm pretty sure you can't though so the cleaning disc is the way to go.
Also , you can try and boil your game disc. I'll enver forget the look on my brothers face when I boiled his Resident Evil disc, he thought i was flippin crazy. HIs 360 wouldn't read it so i went to his kitchen, got apot of water, boiled it and threw his disc in there data side down. He almost lost his shit, it was the funniest thing. Boil for a minute, take off, dry and let cool, put it back in 360. IT worked. I"ve done that a handful of times for discs over the years.
I didn't even think of a cleaning disk. I'll give one a whirl. I really don't want to open up the system if I can help it. I'm already cracking open our PS3 for a failed drive and don't want to open the Xbox if I can help it.
What the...? I've never heard of boiling a disk. What is this supposed to do?
The FFXI beta disks supposedly had a blue film on it. Some said it caused the eye to adjust closer to the disk. Some said it would come off on the eye. What I do know is that when you could no longer launch and run that game, a quick dip in boiling water would let the disk load again.
Sounds like a pile of rumers but it seemed to work.
It cleans all kinds of shit off the disk.
Me and my mates use Deep's method. Get a working disk, store it to HDD or a pen drive, use knackered disk to boot up game. Works as long as the knackered disk still has a working copy protection code.
I would save boiling your discs as a very, very last resort.
http://www.instructables.com/id/Extreme-CD-Repair/step3/Boil-your-CD/
You need to replace your DVD drive. I don't know who told you that you can't, you can. You just have to replace it with the exact same model that you currently have and you have to swap the circuit board from your current drive to the new one.
http://hardandsoftgaming.wordpress.com/2011/03/12/replacing-a-faulty-xbo...
Thought I would post back to say that an Allsop Cleaning CD ordered from Amazon seems to have cleared up the issue!
Thanks for the suggestion, Tank.
random drive-related question
Does anyone else's 360, when you turn it off, sometimes just start revving up the dvd drive like crazy for like 60 seconds straight before it completely shuts off? Mine's been doing that lately and it's annoying. And yes, I install all games, so it's not like it's reading anything.
edit:
http://www.giantbomb.com/xbox-360/3045-20/forums/disc-starts-spinning-ex...
http://www.gamespot.com/forums/xbox-discussion-1000003/dvd-drive-spinnin...
Yes, I dicovered if I open and closed the tray it would go away. For my Slim, it would most often begin if I was in the XBox movie section.
Just added a cleaning disc to my AMazon wish list, we wait until the shippings free....yes, I'm that cheap.
But hey, this sounds better than tearing down my 360 to clean it, again, and again, and again...