Xbox disc drive screwed up

[mirhagk]

My 360 decided that it was going to die today. Actually it continues to function perfectly fine, except 99.9% of the time it can't read discs (sometimes it doesn't even spin them). a disc goes in, it tries to load it, then just goes back to giving me the option to open the tray. Now the xbox is like 4 years old, so it's way out of warranty, so that's not an option. I'm left with 4 options:

1. Send it in to microsoft anyway, and pay their fixing fee, and wait like 6 weeks

2. Take it into future shop/canada computers/other computer shops, and get them to fix it

3. Open it up myself, possibly screw it up more lol, but try to fix or replace the drive (I have other dvd drives lying around, just not any that would conform to the size, so it might mean having a cable hanging outside to attach to a dvd drive).

4. Buy a refurbished xbox with no harddrive (since I already have one) They cost $80.

5. Buy a new xbox ($200).

I'm trying to decide which option to take. My family watches netflix A LOT and I will be moving out in a year, (meaning they might want one for themselves to watch netflix on, because the tv is big, but too old to take vga/hdmi), so it might be a good option to buy a new one for myself, and have them keep the one without a disc drive, since they only use it for netflix anyways.

Is there anybody that has any experience with fixing xbox's, opening them up, or know if other dvd drives will work the same? Or does anybody have any input into what I should do, whether I should risk opening it up or not?

[Insectoid]

http://www.360drives.com/howto

You can probably hunt around to find a drive on ebay, or ask your friends if they have any broken xboxes lying around to snag parts from. A drive swap should be fairly trivial.

If you can't find one, I'd say grab a refurbished box and swap parts into the better machine.

[BigBear]

You can't just swap Xbox 360 Disc Drives you need to figure out which drive and firmware you have and find the same one.

Or you can flash it or swap the logic board.

I'm surprised you didn't get a new one on Boxing Day.

[Insectoid]

If you'd bothered to click my link Bigbear, you'd see it accounts for the drive model AND firmware.

[mirhagk]

@BigBear, this year everything that is boxing day is boxing week lol, so I can still get it (it's $10 off)

[Velocity]

incase insectoid didnt already solve your problem this is a really easy fix, and being a mass xbox 360 fixer upper (you should see my xbox, works like a charm with three red rings on permenately.) just open up the xbox unscrew the disc drive open it up but careful with the green label around the push to open button. Once you have the two peices apart look at the bottom of your disc drive and get a soft clothe and some (softly blow on the disc reading syrinche, the thing that reads the disc.. .its like right on the bottom of the disc drive, youll see it) then take 4, 8 or 9 milimetre washeres and put one beside each of the screws you unscrewed clean out the dust and consecutively blow on and clean the disc reader with the clothe and then just clean out all the dust and close it up. Then it should work like a charm, oh and instead of netflix i have this god like website you could go to that streams videos 100 percent free and im not even kidding it uber organized and youll find any movie and tv series on it date and most watched categorized, just reply to this post if my tip helped and if you would like to know the website. Its absolutely free, i just dont want to post it here cus then ppl bwill all use it and like... It could get shut down, anyways... Yea xD

[mirhagk]

Lol well I know how to watch movies illegally for free, but I prefer to support movie makers and tv show makers.