XBox 360 Unrecognized Disc Error

This is going to be a bit long -- but very detailed, so please read it carefully. There are several reasons that an Xbox 360 system will have problem reading discs. The error messages also vary from unreadable disk, unrecognized disc, no message at all but the game skips, "please insert disc in a 360 console" to "open tray." There are a few reasons this may happen:

1.Bad disc. Check the back of your disc for scratches. If it looks good (or plays fine in another console), then the disc is probably fine. Also-- try more than 1 game to be sure.

2. Bad laser. The XBox 360 has a DVD drive very similar to a PC's DVD drive inside. The drive contains a bunch of parts including a few motors and gears and a laser.The laser is the part that actually reads the disc. The reality is...with all the hours and hours of game play, lasers do eventually wear out. The laser isn't very easy to replace, but it is replaceable. You can find any and all XBox 360 lasers at the following website:

http://store.richspsxparts.com/xb360ac.html

3.Bad DVD Drive. Sometimes other components inside of the DVD drive can become bad such as the motor that spins the disk, the motors that open the tray, etc, etc. You can get a new DVD drive to just replace everything,including the laser, in one shot but there is a catch. The XBOX 360's DVD drive is tied to the motherboard using a software lock.The easiest way to overcome this lock is to buy the exact same manufacture DVD drive that is in your system now, remove the circuit board from the old DVD drive (which contains the software key) and transfer the circuit board into the new DVD drive that you purchase. If you do this simple procedure, there is no flashing involved. The following website carries DVD drives and also provides instructions on swapping the circuit board from the old drive into the new one.

XBox 360 parts: http://store.richspsxparts.com/xb360ac.html

DVD Drive Swap Info: http://store.richspsxparts.com/imnooninxb36.html

Do I Need To Flash an XBox 360 Drive to Replace It?

You may have heard, or you may not have heard, that you NEED to flash an XBox 360 drive when you install it into your XBox 360. True? FALSE!

The truth is, the XBox 360's DVD drive and motherboard are "locked" together (by a special software lock and key)! You can not simply purchase a new XBox 360 DVD Drive and install it into your XBox 360. If you do this, your XBox 360 will read DVD movies with no problem... but it will not read games.

So how can you replace your XBox 360's DVD drive and have it read games? There are two ways. One way is to flash the drive. Flashing a DVD drive, in essence, is reading the special software key from the broken DVD drive and writing that special key to the new DVD drive you've purchase. Sounds easy? It's NOT! It requires special hardware, special software, and if you're not careful you can kill (or brick) the new drive!

The second, and much easier way, to transfer that special key from your old DVD drive to the new one is to simply remove the 4 (or 6) screws on the bottom of your old broken DVD drive, pull out the old green circuit board at the bottom of the DVD drive (which contains the special key), and install that same board into the new drive you purchase. The trick here is that you MUST purchase the SAME make and model DVD drive as you have had in your system. This is not that difficult as there are only 4 in the original XBox 360s and only 1 in the XBox 360 slim as of this writing.

Original XBox 360:
Toshiba Samsung TS-H943 [Var: TS-H943A]
HL Hitachi GDR-3120L
Philips BenQ VAD-6038
Philips Lite-On DG-16D2S [Var: DG-16D2S-09C]

XBox 360 S:
Philips Lite-On DG16D4S

The following page on my website shows you exactly how to find out which drive is in your system and contains step-by-step instructions on changing out that circuit board. You can also send in your dead drive and we'll send you a replacement drive with your original circuit board inside. Just click the following page:

http://store.richspsxparts.com/xb360reti.html