Topic: Something Making Contact With My Disks (Read 40 times)

Arizona Black · « **on:** November 22, 2007, 01:32:00 PM »

Lately my xbox has been eating my disks, the day after I got CoD 4 it wouldnt load some of the maps and took forever loading the ones it did. Upon examination of the disk there was a decent amount of scratches on it. I took it to my local video rental store and had them buff it out yesterday and already today I got a disk read error, I took it out and sure enough there is a section about 2/3 inch thick of scratches towards the center of the disk (about 1/3 of an inch from the inside edge of the readable part of the disk). Obviously something is making contact, I dont really know much about the technical aspects of a DVD drive so I dont know what is scratching my disks (my uninformed guess is the laser) but It didnt always do that so I figure there's probably a way to reverse it. Oh, and my warranty is voided so I can't just send it back to MS. Also I rarely play at home I usually go to LAN parties at my friend's house so It does get moved quite a bit (not with a disk in the drive mind you). My question to those better informed than I is do you know what is scratching my disks and is there a way to lower it so that it doesnt make contact?

SlickWilly440 · « **Reply #1 on:** November 22, 2007, 03:58:00 PM »

Yeah you are right, it's the laser lense that is scratching the disc. I'm assuming the laser has trouble reading the disc and the laser lense bobs up and down while it's spinning, causing the disc to scratch.

I'm not sure exactly what the remedy is.

Does this happen to all types of discs such as cds and dvd movies? Also does it happen even if you let the 360 cool off after a while and try to boot a game?

Arizona Black · « **Reply #2 on:** November 22, 2007, 09:15:00 PM »

The only disk that had been damaged prior to my CoD 4 was my Halo 3 but that was because someone accidently kicked it while it was running. I took it apart and brushed the laser off with a cotton swab, probably didnt help but we'll see. I have a DVD running in it right now just to see if what I did had any effect (it's a rental and I have insurace on it so I'm not concerned about ruining it). Is there anywhere I can buy a new DVD drive from? I'm assuming there's not really much I can do to fix it, so I'm just going to use D-skins to protect my disks until I get a new drive or Xbox, I read that it's a bad idea to use them with 360's but will they wreck it that quick or is it more of a long term thing?

RDC · « **Reply #3 on:** November 23, 2007, 05:11:00 AM »

There's no way the lens on the laser is making contact with the disc, if it is then you have a more serious issue to worry about, and even if it was it would be doing it to all of the discs and not just a select few.

What drive is this?

Have you ever had it apart before?

Is it making any type of grinding scratching noise when you insert a disc and it first spins up?

You can find replacement drives on eBay and in the 360 B/S/T section of the forums, you'll have to get the key from your original drive and inject it into the new one as well as spoof it if the replacement is a different model/version than the original.

Arizona Black · « **Reply #4 on:** November 23, 2007, 11:03:00 AM »

Im not sure which drive it is, I know that it's one of the older 360's though. And will replacing the drive in any way effect my ability to play on live? Also I didnt really notice any noise when the disk was first loading but I wasnt really playing attention, however I did notice some while playing, particularly while loading a new map.

This post has been edited by Arizona Black: Nov 23 2007, 07:10 PM

BlackWar · « **Reply #5 on:** November 23, 2007, 01:40:00 PM »

It got kicked while it was on? not good, lol.

If it only scratches discs in the same spot regardless of which disc (music, dvd, game, ect) then it sounds like the rail that the laser is on got bent somehow causing it to ride closer to the center of the disc. I would check to make sure that it is straight. A simple way to find out is to loosen the one screw that holds it in (there might be two, but most drives I have seen are only held in place with one), give the rail a 1/4 turn, tighten the screw back down, and see what it does. If it still scratches, then that was not it, if it did stop scratching, well, I think you can put 2 n 2 together (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Vatamin R · « **Reply #6 on:** November 23, 2007, 01:48:00 PM »

naw its the dvd lens ribbon cable. I had a cd scratched by ut and also a ribbon cable rubbed threw by a cd. I dont know what causes it.

Author Topic: Something Making Contact With My Disks (Read 40 times)