360 disk read error

[Dreadi]

Hi guys.
Friend of mine bought an elite second hand from a large high street retailer around a month or two ago and it has just killed itself with the open tray disk read error whenever he tried to play a game. The fool cant find the receipt so i doubt it's worth taking it back to the shop under the one year warranty they offer with their consoles. Anyone know a possibly fix to try to get it reading disks again ?

 

[sja360]

it could just be the lens on the drive. i think its able to be replaced. you cant however just swap the whole drive out as each drive and console motherboard are linked by unique key.
certainly to me it seems a pain in the ass. your mate should have kept the receipt! it may be that its in warranty by microsoft if he's lucky in which case it can be RMA'd

 

[DreXeL]

Replacing the laser is cheap and dead easy to do.

You can replace the entire drive but you have to either flash the replacement with the key from the old one (easy if you know what you're doing, difficult with potential for big ****-ups if you don't) or you can just swap the logic board from the old one into the new one, this is easy on some drive models (Samsung and Hitachi drives) but requires some soldering on others (BenQ and Lite-on drives).