This is getting re-goddman-diculous. A few months ago, I sent my Xbox in for whatever replacement/upgrade was being offered to people having disc read problems who bought it when it first came out. I was one of those people.
Now I’m getting those problems again, but worse. I cannot get through a game of Top Spin with its long loading times, because the game freezes. Sometimes it even locks up during a match. Crimson Skies is almost guarananteed to drop me to a ‘cannot read the disc’ error. Some games aren’t even recognized when I put them in: “Hey, this isn’t a game disc!” the Xbox informs me. To which I reply “The hell it isn’t, bitch” and have to try again.
Anyone else having these problems? Because of work, at this point I can’t afford to do without it for another three weeks to send it back in. Should I try to clean a lens or something? Take it apart and blow compressed air on everything? Smack it with a hammer?
Or do I need to replace the damn thing already? And why can’t it be more like my PS2 and Gamecube, which have caused me nary a problem?
Tom – having those problems as well, always have. I haven’t bothered sending my unit in yet, as I’ve managed to get around most of the errors either through stoic patience (and some venting, I admit), but mostly, my wife’s espresso maker.
The machine’s got a nice steamer on the site that I simply turn so I can get the whole CD underneath it. I steam the disk until it shines nicely, and then buff it up. I can now watch all of my Tolkein DVDs without problem, whereas no amount of inserting and removing and praying would have solved the problem before.
Couldn’t you just clean the disk surface with hot water, a soap, and a non-scratching cloth like the ones you’d use for glasses? That’s what I do when a disk is dirty out of the box. Has always worked so far.
But is this really a dirty disc problem? I’ve had the problem with brand new games right out of the case. I’ve even had this problem with multiple copies of the same game. Sharpe brought over his copy of Crimson Skies, which hasn’t caused problems on his Xbox, and we got the disc read errors.
I guess it’s worth a try. I do have an espresso machine here, so maybe I’ll fire up the steamer as per mystery’s suggestion. If it trashes the disc, no loss. It’s not as if Top Spin is playable for me right now anyway…
I had tons of problems like this and of course I had an original release XBox (with the craptasic DVD drive). I ended up trading in my old one at EB for an entirely new XBox and have not had a problem since, performance is much better in terms of loading times, crashes (or complete lack thereof), and read errors.
Makes me wonder what else is different about later XBox’s besides just the DVD Roms if you had it replaced and it still messes up.
I ended up trading in my old one at EB for an entirely new XBox
Hey, that’s what I want to do! How does that work? And how do you transfer the contents of your HD to the new rig? A lot of stuff is too big to fit onto memory cards.
I’ve been pretty lucky in avoiding this problem but it looks like it may be rearing its ugly head. My copy of NFS Underground doesn’t like to boot. After cycling power several times it will start and I’ve been lucky so far to have no errors after initial bootup.
Well, as for trading it in, the cost of sending it in to Microsoft to replace the DVD drive was going to be 100$. At the time, the retail price for the XBox was $200 with a trade in value of $90. So I paid $110 for a brand new XBox, a new S Controller, and the Jet Set Radio/Sega GT Racing pack. Better spent than 99$ to ship my XBox via Next Day Neanderthal and have it tinkered with.
As for saving stuff. That I couldn’t say. I don’t have a lot of games so mine could have just been saved to a memory card. I found this on another forum though.
Just play around with the ip address! the following method works:
Networking xbox to pc using 2 network cards (aka Ethernet cards. NIC’s) (v0.1)
Tutorial written by : grantdawg aka b legit
According to the forums there are a lot of people having trouble doing this. So i’am going to try to write a nice tutorial to help you people out. This is my first tutorial.
What your gonna need:
1 or 2 network cards ( NIC’s ) ill being referring to them as NIC’s from now on.... you’ll need 2 if you want to be connected to the internet at the same time that your connected to your xbox.
1 crossover cable. very important you have a crossover cable. This is how you know if you have a crossover cable take the 2 male ends of the cable put them side by side. if the colored wire patterns are exactly the same it means you have the WRONG cable. You know if you have the right cable when the wires looked mixed up. or in a different pattern compared to other end. make sure of this. its a very crucial part.
an xbox running evolution x
a copy of flashfxp.
What you need to do next is configure your computers ip address’s… so go into your computer network connections and go into the properties of the nic that is connected to the internet. check off obtain a IP address automatically.
now for the nic that is connected to the xbox. going into the properties. check off use the following IP.
Next, where it says IP address, enter: 192.168.0.1. Where it says Subnet Mask, enter: 255.255.255.0. , and where it says default gateway enter 192.168.0.1
next while still in the properties of the nic. click on the configure button… then click on the advanced tab. then click on network media and set it to 10baseT full duplex.
now your computer should all be good to go.
now you want to startup evolution x and go into the system settings a get your IP address. its usually 192.168.0.3 something like that. make note of it.
now you want to fire up flashfxp
Flash FXP:
Download this program
Open it up and click on “Site Manager” then click “new site”
Name the new site whatever you want, (My Xbox, Xbox, etc.)
Go to IP and enter the IP you got from evolution x system setting menu
The port should always be 21
your username and password will both be “xbox”
Hit the “Options” tab and click off passive mode COMPLETELY.
now apply. and the connect
this is all you should have to do get it to work. check the forums for more help.
pea ce.
not sure if that helps.
edit: Not sure that’s going to help at all, but I have read in other forums about people ftp connecting to their XBox hard drive, haven’t seen specifics yet though.
Tom it varies between discs and drives. I know my copy of Top Spin causes occasional problems on our work Xbox with hangs but when someone else brings in theirs it works. My Top Spin disc causes me no problems in my home Xbox so it may be you just have an overly sensitive drive.
Yeah, but then you lose one piece from Mousetrap and you’re screwed…it doesn’t work*!
My Xbox is near brand-new (came with the riveting Tetris Worlds/Clone Wars bundle) and I’ve not had any problems yet, but I’ll mark this thread for future reference.
A friend has a PS2 and he has had DVD problems, though, so it’s definitely not an Xbox-only thing. I haven’t heard of the GC’s minidiscs causing problems but I’m sure you can find tales of woe out there if you look.
[size=2]* based on tearful childhood recollection. Well, not really tearful. I think I just went back to playing Ants in the Pants or something.[/size]
I have the same problems with my Xbox Tom. Halo plays fine until I start a new chapter, then it crashes everytime, telling me to insert the game disk. Other games I have to reinsert the disk multiple times and sometimes get crashes when it has to load something. KoToR crashed at times, but could still be played. Halo is the only game I couldn’t finish because of crashes though.
I never sent mine in, because I didn’t want to pay for it. I just avoid Xbox games unless they really look good, like KOTOR. Maybe I can finally finish Halo when the Xbox 2 comes out, if it is backward compitable that is.
I am so happy that I flashed my Xbox, and popped in an 80GB harddrive. Buy game, copy to hard drive, and enjoy. I can probably count the number of times I’ve ejected my Xbox DVD drive on my hands and feet, and I’ve had this thing since the beginning. So I can’t use Xbox Live, big fucking deal. I’m not huge on the online gaming thing, so it works for me.
Somehow, I’ve never worked in an office with an Xbox. I feel so deprived… :D[/quote]
Thanks asjunk. :) We usually game at lunchtime or after 5. It is nice because we have a group of 6 or 7 people who play regularly so getting 4 people to play usually isn’t an issue. Of late Top Spin is the game of choice.
I have an original-issue Xbox and the only game that’s guiven me any trouble is the new Morrowind release. I checked the forum and there’s a fix, but I’d have to buy a memory card to implement it, which I really don’t want to do.
The one place where I’ve had disc-read issues is when playing DVD movies on my Xbox. Some discs are just hard to read. I pop them in the DVD player upstairs, though, and they read no problem there. I’ve tried the DVD cleaner discs, and didn’t notice any difference after going through the 20-minutes cleaning cycle, so I doubt that will help you.
The really disturbing thing with your box is that it sounds like it recognizes the disc okay but then locks up during the game (or while loading). That doesn’t sound like a disc-read error as much as a processing error to me. Have you tried deleting all the saved games for Top Spin and just restarting from scratch? I’ve heard that works for some people with this problem.
Lately my Xbox seems to be getting a bit more quirky with what it does and does not want to read. I was wondering if anyone knew if that Microsoft swap-out for original machines was still going, or if that EB trade-in/buy a new one thing mentioned in a previous post was a good deal.
We just were talking about this in another thread. It seems that you might need to call a few times to get someone who knows, but they are still repairing original xboxes for no charge (replacing the drives). Mine came back with no problems at all, while someone else’s came back with a wiped hard drive.
