XBox Woes - the continuing saga....

I posted earlier about some XBox problems I was having, and had a bit of feedback, so I thought I would update you on whats happened so far.

I had some suggestions, from boiling some discs, to running a DVD type cleaner through it. The DVD cleaner seemed the less intrusive of the solutions so I went and bought a cleaner for $20. Its a CD-ROM with about 6 miniature little brushes on it. Track 1 is an instruction intro, tracks 2 - 4 are the actual cleaning tracks. It took my Xbox about 20 minutes of ejecting, re-inserting, turning the Xbox off and on, before the cleaning disc was recognised, but finally the tracks came up. I listened to the 1st track, run it through tracks 2-4 to clean it, then did the same another 2 times to make sure it really was cleaned.

Beauty I thought, this should hopefully make it better, at the worst I will now have a clean leaser reading head to read my discs. However, almost no disc is recognised at all now. I recently bought Hunter: The Reckoning - redeemer for Xmas, but this disc is not recognised either like the 13 other titles I have.

I can't begin to tell you the frsutration I was feeling and if it wasn't for my kids in the same room, I would have let loose with a series of vulgarities, and picked up the XBox and drop kicked it out the backyard.

So now I can either a) pay $180 o get the XBox repaired, b) pay $250? dollars for a new Xbox, or c) ditch the black brick I currently own, sell my existing game collection (or trade them in) and buy a PS2.

Which do I feel like doing? Well currently the PS2 is looking pretty good. I know very well how technologically advanced the XBox is compared to the PS2, but I also know for a fact the state of a PS2 disc can be pretty shoddy and it will still work. I still have some PS1 discs that look like they have been cleaned with sandpaper, yet the next door neighbours PS2 system (and my old PS1) reads them, seemingly without issue. I hate to ditch my entire collection and start again, but I fear that if I pay $180 to get it repaired, they will either (by luck), test out some brand new games on it and it may work, thus I get it returned with a completely non working collection of games and $180 down the tubes.

Not sure what I'll do yet, I'll calm down, sleep on it, and see. Logically I'll probably get it repaired, but I have yet to convince my wife about spending almost $200 on the Xbox. A lot of my friends have PS2's so maybe they'll convince me otherwise....(the thought of drop kicking it into the backyard is still very tempting though...)

10 Comments

  • Free tip: NEVER EVER use a cd / dvd cleaner, as you've noticed this will only make things worse. The good news is that the XBOX is expected to drop in price to $99 soon (workers day?)

  • I have a PS2 that I never use because half the time it does not recognize the disc. If I want to use it I have to take it apart and manually clean the rails the laser travels on, then it will work for a couple weeks.



    Both of these systems read from the dvd drive alot, and I mean alot. This leads to crappy dvd drives.



    -James

  • Is there somewhere around that will rent XBoxes overnight nearby? Maybe rent one and try out those disks that don't seem to work. Or try them on a friends box.



    Because it doesn't sound like you've got a problem with dodgy disks, you've got a problem with the unit itself. And if that's the case, then your posted reasoning for going for a PS2 is flawed.



    Not that you shouldn't get one, mind you. I don't have either, so I don't have any preference one way or the other.

  • Paul,



    sorry to hear about your problems. Any progress? I know a couple of the guys in the local xbox team, so if you haven't had any success getting it repaired, let me know. I can't promise anything, but I'd be happy to make a few calls for you.



    cheers,

    Cameron

  • Paul,



    sorry to hear about your problems. Any progress? I know a couple of the guys in the local xbox team, so if you haven't had any success getting it repaired, let me know. I can't promise anything, but I'd be happy to make a few calls for you.



    cheers,

    Cameron

  • Hey thanks for the offer Cameron. I spoke to some Microsoft buddies I had but they couldn't do any better. Its no biggie. If the unit doesn't come down much in the next couple of months (you know one of those super specials), I'll probably just offload my game collection on eBay or whoever wants it. At the end of the day $200AUS is not much, its just more than I am willing to pay for a repair. I might try opening it up and having a go myself...can't do too much more damage...or I might by a second hand unit. Not sure yet.



    Thanx again tho.

  • Sounds like your laser is dead. You can pick up a $50 replacement laser and install it easily and your problems will be gone.

  • Can you tell me where to get this replacement laser? I am having tons of issues recently with my xbox and MVP baseball, I have one from the original day they came out.

  • I had a look at that site and it looks really promising. I haven't ordered a laser yet though. I assume they are US based so that $50 would jump up in price for the conversion to Aussie dollar. Also, hopefully there would be no problems with delivery here in Oz. I'd be very interested if anyone has done this.

    Xboxrepairman, have you ordered a laser form here and installed one with success?

  • Most of the problems involving the XBox is the laser itself. I didn't research too much into detail, but the stock drives that it comes with are relatively weak. I replaced it with a modded Samsung 616T from eBay and now everything works, and load times are reduced!

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