Xbox Hello, I've had an xbox for the past 7 years or so. Lately, the games aren't able to be read on a regular basis. More than not, unfortunately. It says cannot read disc, may be damaged or dirty. Any suggestions on how to fix this or will I need to just call it quits? I called the Microsoft hotline and, of course, it would need to be sent in for repairs. Thanks for your help.

Your Xbox 360 has a bug known as the open tray error. This means that the Xbox is unable to read your discs. You have 2 options

1. Get a new Xbox.
2. Open up your Xbox and attempt to repair it.

Unfortunately option 2 will void your warranty, but is much cheaper option tan purchasing a new Xbox.
Option 2
Here is a YouTube video on disassembling your Xbox 360: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uj2A7mGGjuY&feature=related Note: You will not need to do any steps past the 7:30 mark
Here is a Youtube video on fixing your open tray error: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnVKjlpORYw&feature=related
Best of luck

Hello,

The link below will go over some troubleshooting steps if your Xbox is having trouble reading a disk.

Click here for disk read errors

Regards,
G33k

Hang in their friend - fate has been very unkind to you lately, but the PS3 is really a great system - I've had mine for a few years now with no trouble. Also, from a pure probability standpoint, the XBox 360 has even higher rates of broken hardware - Microsoft has spent billions of dollars combating the red ring of death. Especially after investing so much money in games, I would stick it out with Sony on this one. Sorry your luck has been so terrible!

Hi you have got the dreaded red ring of death, this is very common with all xboxes and their are people out their that will fix them for you for a fee.

their is nothing you can do yourself to solve this problem as its a case of taking the xbox apart and removing the heat sinks and the x clamps and fitting new parts and new heat sink paste, this is a big job and requires special tools. so its not for the novice to do.

i do the repairs to these on a regular basis and 8 out of 10 i fix work again but others tend to be to far gone.

any way the reason you are getting this warning light is due to it over heating, check the date on the sticker on the back of the xbox as it is covered by warranty for 3 years for this exact fault so if its less than 3 years old go to the xbox website and get them to replace it for you, if its outside this time then you have 2 options you could either repair it or sell it.

you can buy repair kits and get the instructions off the net but without having done it before it can by really hard to do and you could do more harm than good.

when they built these they used cheap parts and cheap heat sink paste now over time this causes it to over heat and then you get the dreaded red ring of death and this shows you the either the gpu or cpu chip has over heated.

now the repair involves taking the xbox apart which is not easy but can be done you need to then remove the x clamps and then remove both heat sinks. once their removed you need to clean them up and remove all the old heat sink paste and use new paste, you also need to get xbox rrod repair kit as you wont be using the cheap x clamp bits anymore these will go in the bin as this is what caused the problem in the first place.

let me know what you would like to do or if you need further assistance ok

i also be damaged xbox's but im based in UK

plz rate this solution as i have a whole page of unrated posts, thanks

Is it always the same map or just happens to any map?

this has happened to me today and many times in the past.What i did the first time is carefully check for any peices of dust or fluff on the disc,or just leave the xbox for a while then try again later.If none of these work then just take out the power cables and slowly blow into the disc tray to clean the laser as it may have some dust on it.

If it's a regular xbox,it's way past warranty.
The insides of the DVD reader need to be cleaned.
Lens : pure alcohol on a cotton swab and chrome rails with a swab then a coating of silicone.
Dust out the thing too.

il y a de l'eau qui passe en dessous du plateau avec du café moulu

Well it's kinda hard to tell exactly what when wrong, but this is my suggestion you could try.
Uninstall your video driver, restart and reinstall the driver. If possible try to get the latest driver possible.