X Box Read Error Question (Probably Off Topic)

[EdwardForrester]

To All X-Box Owners,
I have a question for all those out there, I know this is an out there topic but humor me please. I own an X Box and lately it has had problems reading some discs lately but there are no deep scratches or anything on the disc. Last night I tried to play GTA 3 and I drove into an invisible wall then the graphics caught up. WTF. My little brother wants to mess around with it but I am curious if this has happened before with anyone elses. We got it 3 years ago I believe as a christmas present. Any thoughts, and also if anyone could point me towards a good X Box site with good boards I would appreciate it as well.

Forrester

 

[Hardhead]

Eject your Xbox disc and look at the drive. It will look like one of these three:

Probably, it looks like the one in the middle. If so, congratulations! You have a Thompson Drive! These were on the first models of Xboxes and are widely known to begin failing later in the Xbox's lifetime, though Microsoft won't admit they're defective. I had the same thing happen to me. You'll have to get it replaced, and Microsoft will charge you.

Or, you could, in theory - not that I did this or anything, mind you, because it may be illegal - but you could go to Walmart, buy a new Xbox, switch the serial number stickers on the bottom of your two Xboxes, and then take back the old xbox with the new serial number and get your money back. Thus, you essentially get your defective drive replaced for free, and Microsoft gets charged for the defective product. Not that I would ever recommend doing that.

 

[morpheous1777]

Check out Xbox-scene.com, they tell u how to replace the original DVD drive with a replacement one, also with certian modifications you can replace your hard drive also, Ive replaced my dvd drive and hard drive using the info from there.

 

[MythosaAkira]

Probably, it looks like the one in the middle. If so, congratulations! You have a Thompson Drive! These were on the first models of Xboxes and are widely known to begin failing later in the Xbox's lifetime, though Microsoft won't admit they're defective. I had the same thing happen to me. You'll have to get it replaced, and Microsoft will charge you.

I had a Thompson Drive and had my Xbox replaced for free, even though it'd been out of warranty for over a year. At the time, I looked around on the Web and many, many people were having the same problem. The solution that most suggested was to contact Microsoft, describe the problem you were having and point out that you knew this was a common problem with the early Xboxes with Thompson Drives. In most cases, MS just replaced the box for free (some people were charged a $100 service fee, but I got the impression that they were "less than courteous" when dealing with MS tech support). It seemed like they were trying to avoid a recall or a class action suit (can't say for sure).

It's been awhile, but if you have a Thompson, it might be worth a shot. Like I said, it worked for me, but that was over a year ago.

 

[Zelgadas]

My Xbox started acting up after about a year to a year and a half. At one point, I bought D&D Heroes and it would only spin up once out of every five tries. However, I ran a CD lense cleaner through the drive on the Xbox, and that seems to have cleared the problem up completely. Before replacing the hardware, I'd try that; the lense might be dirty.

 

[KenM]

I got a CD read error when I tryed to load up KOTOR once on my XBOX.

 

[dpdx]

I have that Thomson drive Xbox, and stuff can happen no matter what game you've got in there. Of the games I have, Morrowind GotY edition fails the most often, with SW:KotOR a close second. It's not often enough to make me like, really angry or anything, but stuff can happen with any game. I had my normally reliable copy of FIFA 2004 screw up after I paused the game to set up a substitution; all of a sudden, it didn't show me the names of the players I was controlling during the game - just the shot power meter, and the arrow.

However, I am gonna try the CD drive cleaner, cause I've had the set long enough for it to get dusty. If that helps, great. If not, oh well.