Carol’s Vault

I had the same exact problem, so heres what i did. I opened up my old (rrod) Xbox 360 extracted the disk drive player, put it in my Xbox with the problem, and it gives me another error… after tinkering for many minutes, I took out the ATA cable, replaced it with the one from my dead Xbox….. IT WORKED! It was beautiful. such a big thing could have such easy stupid, shoot-yourself-fix. Stupid M$

MY XBOX360 STIIL DONT WORK

So, I’ve had my 360 elite for a year and half, receiving it as a xmas present on 07′s xmas, I recently had the 3 red rings a couple weeks ago, but I managed to take it apart and fix it, replacing the paste under the heat sink, tonight, I have the same problem, so I undergo the same solution. I turn the console on, it works, I go to the kitchen to grab a drink, and it reads “please insert game disc into an xbox 360″ … well where the hell did I just insert the disc? a $300 DVD player!? I am not going to call Microsoft to send me another refurbished corpse, instead I’d rather buy some dynamite, shove it down the disc player and blow it to hell! Now, if anyone can direct me to an Microsoft Xbox 360 – Complain here! site, I would be very appreciated. Because this crap is pissing me off.

After reading much of all of this, and experiencing my roomate deal with the EXACT same problem. Some things about Microsoft and the Xbox become OBVIOUS.

-The unit was pushed without sufficient testing.
-Microsoft would like to keep this as quiet as possible.
-Microsoft assumes innocence in their neglegent and purposeful denial of systemic, reoccurring problems with the said unit.
-Microsoft itself will not stand by its product under its expected lifespan.

The following are POSSIBLE, and NEED to be investigated.

-To minimize monetary damage in repairing xbox’s, they are using they use ‘rebuilt’ drives from the very damaged xbox’s they recieve. (check and log your drives serial numbers, I don’t know if you can get it without opening the system..)

-Customer service representatives under Microsoft have been explicitly instructed to lie to customers in attempts to mitigate damage. A form of service known as fraud.(Anyone have that job? Let your closest lawyer and us know.)

I personally feel that it’s really about time the tech world has has a real good class action lawsuit. There are plenty of people. Xbox itself is a offshoot of microsoft. The company itself needs to determine whether to stand by its customers or destroy this blacksheep child. Customers expect of the largest and most powerful information processing company to be able to provide a product that is equal to whats paid; 300, 400, 500? Of course its difficult to assess worth and lifespan of the product. But, then again, in situations like these, a Judge is very useful. Any lawyers out there? We should all try to figure something out. If we dont slap them back for slapping us, they’ll just come out with another shitty product. Playing the people like idiots.

-j

I have also got this same problem of to play this disk put it in a xbox 360 i just sent my xbox of yesterday and missing it already

To play this disk, put it in a Xbox 360 console

i was reading all the forums look like nobody is sending ne thing. so im here to post the last one : ) plus my xbox wont read my games hahaha.

i was reading all the forums look like nobody is sending ne thing. so im here to post the last one : ) plus my xbox wont read my games hahaha.

Well the edge trick will work if its an issue.. but what most people are seeing is recognizes it as DVD but then sees a game after it goes into its DVD program.
That trick also will not work if the game is brand new… no dust or film… so if it works it works but usually and more often then not.. it will not

The reason is the laser is weak and can not get through the multiple layers of code to descipher. Thats why i recommend the laser pot adjustment. All these other little tricks will only work someitmes and for a short time… Read the how to and try it out… if you dont feel compfortbale then look only for people who do it for small prices. There are plenty of adds in EBAY as well… people fixing DVD drive errors for 30 bucks or less and others.

mine was acting up the the said way and i found a solution that worked everytime and on my firends – if you have tried everything else just try this – hopefully it will work for some!

on the outer edge of your disc a build up of grease etc can occur – the spinny cd cleaners add to this. is white and very feint. try cleaning that with water and a soft cloth – done be shy to really rub it off. make sure there is no dust left and pop the disc back in. i read somewhere that the outer edge identifies the disc as a GAME and not a DVD – id this is blocked off then the xbox assumes it is a DVD.

sounds stupid but just try it!

I have this same problem, what works for me EVERY time, is when i put in my game and the infamous white screen with the message apears., i just leave it alone like it is for around 10 minutes….turn it off, turn it back on and there u go.,… i kow this doesn’t work for every one cuz my buddy had the same problem and my technique didnt work for him so idk

James, that’s a good point.
I just looked the pot up and it brought me to the http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=517961 – where they have also uploaded a walkthru.
The comments on the forum are also very useful.

If anyone dares to open their consoles by themselves, they should read the thread on the link above.

DO NOT DO THAT !!! ^^^^ Sorry Paul Glad it worked for you, but wow bad idea

You have to readjust the Laser Pot. Do a search on google.com and seach adjust Xbox 360 laser pot or something similair. You will find forums and walkthrough on how to do this. its a time consuming process becuase of the minor adjustments you must make and try and repeat till it works. This is the much more effective way to do it with out damage to your laser. Follow the walkthroughs and you will be fine. GOOD luck

Also if you have the Samsung model DVD-drive like I do…my instructions will be easier….

I also forgot to mention the once you remove the sticker…you should replace it with something else….debris can easily come back into the little “chamber” there even with the sticker on….so make sure that you have a firm sticker around….cut it roughly the size of the old sticker and stick it back on…reassemble the xbox and give it another shot!!!!

I had this problem and I repaired it myself…The problem is related to the lens not getting enough power to dual-layer DVDs…which most, if not all xbox 360 games use.

If you haven’t opened up your Xbox yet and your system is out of warranty…open up your system, open up the dvd-rom drive…and look under the cd lens…you will notice there is a sticker covering underneath the lens…if you expose what is underneath the sticker you will see a tiny little mirror. Behind the mirror you will be looking on the other side of the lens itself. the CAREFULLY REMOVE any debris you find…and do not remove or even touch the mirror unless you are cleaning it with alcohol and a q-tip (cotton swab). Reassemble the system…and test out a few games and the problem should be repaired. You may receive a few more of the same messages but after day, the problem will stop. Good Luck!!!!

Screw Microsoft..I bought an Xbox 360 with a DVD drive that couldn’t read anything at all. I tried cleaning the laser lens, tried a bunch of different games, and it still didn’t work.
So, I bought a new DVD drive. I took apart my Xbox (one hell of a miracle it didn’t break), took out the old DVD drive, and put the new one in. And now, it gives me the same damned message you guys are getting. It’s such a royal pain in the ass, considering all the trouble I went through.

i have had a few 360′s and bought my friends old one for cheap ($10) because he had this problem, i figured pop it open throw in a know good disk drive from one of my old 360s and boom new 360… but no so quick, i turn it on and the same error pops up? wtf?!? xbox cant get it right the first time i dont trust them to do it a 2en but maybe it isnt as simple as just changing out the disk drive???

Hunter, i have to agree with Chris.
If you think they won’t fix it, then try opening it or ask someone else to do it for you.

hunter, give Dave McLs method a go (post 176), it’s given a new lease of life to my xbox, two months on and everything still working perfectly, it only takes a couple of hours to fix!. let me know how it goes! I just realised i gave credit to mushypeas in my above post, where in fact it deserved to go to Dave! Belated thanks!

I am also having the disk drive error of having to put the disk in an xbox 360 console.
but i got my xbox from an online company called 360 pros and i dont think they will fix it.

@ XxxboxHead – no one is breaking anything. They just happen to be very faulty.
There are people who are close to have their 10th xbox replaced.

@Chris – if you get that “can’t play the disc” can you try copying the game to the hard drive, leave the disc in and try playing?
See what happens…

mushy man, thanks for the advice, that was pissing me off for over a year, now it’s working perfectly!!

just sounds like you break your own xbox’s but i feel your pain

James, i thought replacing the drive is much easier and it doesn’t affect the bios and anything else..
Was i misinformed?
By the way, if you want to play sometimes, add me to your Live friends list as SweetCarol and mention that you’re one of the contributors in here.

Same applies for anyone else who wants to add me.

Robbie, you are one lucky dude. I really wish at least one of my 360′s lasted that long.
If you can afford to pay the repairs, assuming that you are an American, and if you can wait around 10 business days, then send it in.

Hey, ive had my 360 for about 3 years ( i know right??) and now im getting the disk read put in xbox error

Ill clarify my earlier statments….. I have three… each one i bought and withing a month of warranty expireing they would die.

Now some advice:

Most issues with the *insert disc in xbox 360″ can be fixed with a new laser…. which is a easy repair to do… just pull your drive apart, find the engraved seriel number on the bottom of the lens (both mine are SF-HD63) and order new ones online… and replace them…. now.. if it is the whole drive… keep your old board and put the old board in the new drive you buy…. this by-passes the need to flash the drive with the correct key. (lens you can get from 3 to 10 dollars depending on your serial number) I recomend Ebay. Drive will run from 29.99 to 40 plus shipping

Side note… if you have the drive model from toshiba 943 (or something like that) after this year is over (2008)… that drive line will be discontinued… which will mean… your drive will be harder to fix. Chances are you will be buying used ones in the future and having to do repairs or have some one do them for you. I think you can chalk this up to KARMA… now microsoft is going to be having to do more work for warranied xbox 360′s if the drive fails… because they cant just put in the new one and flash it.. they will have to flash the whole xbox to put a different drive in….

Anyway i hope this helped and if anybody needs help with repairs let me know and ill try to walk you through them… or if needed.. ill do the repairs (for a small fee of course) but not close to what MS will charge. Good luck guys and gals

I bought the three all from shops but yeah after warranties expired they died… im repairing them now and reselling them… one is already fixed and ready to go… the other two will be a little bit longer due to tray issues.

James, out of curiosity…why did you kept the first 2 broken ones?
Did you buy those 360′s from a shop or from friends?

If you can’t boot your games anymore and you only see the screen asking you to insert the disk, then you either have to send it in or you have to ask someone to repair them for you.

Marcus, if you live in the United Stares, you probably have to pay if you don’t have an extended warranty.
If you live in Europe however, you will have a 2 year warranty coverage.
Every time you send one in that cannot be fixed, they will replaced it with another one, therefore extending your warranty a little longer.

BTW sorry for the typos

Ok, so i have three xbox 360s in my possesion….. YES 3!! All three have issues that they have developed. One RROD, One RROD and White Screen” insert in xbox 360″ One white screen of “insert in xbox 360″

Both trays that do the white screen stick…..
Is it just me or does every xbox seem to run into one of two issues anymore. Either its RROD or the laser goes out and says put in xbox 360 to play or something along these lines?

Im very frusterated with this and the wrost part of it is…. MS will not cover the issues except the RROD.

Why is it that if you are notciing a trend in your tech support calls (which are monitored btw) that you would be saying “Hey, we have an issue with our product, RROD and bad CD drives are causing our customers some major grief…. better fix it or our stocks will contiune to nose dive!!”

So i read through probably 150 of the post on here to have an idea what i need to do for the White screen fixes as well as knowledge for the RROD.

I just wanted to point out i have three on me that have broken (all with in a month of eachother) COME ON MS get your head out of your ars and get things straight! Also drop your contract with your CD drive manufacters and get something better. CHRIST!

sorry i feel better now for venting

I no how every1 feels Iv had it with Xbox 360 this my second Xbox since may n this 1 now f**kin up. Both had the ‘please insert this disc into an Xbox 360 console’ thats 2 Xboxs in half a year. Does it cost 2 send it in 2 microsoft 4 repair?

Hi Mushy,

You can get the xbox repaired, but make sure you mention to the support that you are sending it for repairs and not replacement.

If your 360 is still in warranty, then send it in
If not, if you know someone who can replace players on 360, then ask them to do it for you.

Good luck!

I have had my Xbox 360 for nearly 3 years now and it’s finally starting to crap out on me. I think i have been lucky in all fairness that mine has lasted so long as a lot of you guys have said you have had problems in a shorter period of time than that. I actually avoided the red ring of death about 6 months ago too. I just quickly turned the Xbox off and turned it back on and it worked fine. BUT it’s going down the pan now…All i ever get is the friggin’ “To play disc, put it in an Xbox 360 console.” which may i add i AM…..I’m assuming i need a new one, or can i get it repaired?

my xbox has been doing the old “to play this disk etc etc” for a while. i decided enough was enough, so i grabbed the tool kit and stripped it down. when you get it open, you will see that its a simple system. unplug the drive and the fans and take them out, theres a little plastic “tunnel” thing at the fans too. get a make up brush and the vacum cleaner and suck the dust out as you brush. finaly open up the drive (4 small screws) and do the same, maybe clean the lense with some aftershave. put it all back together again, and it will work perfectly. ive tested mine with every game and its all running smoothly. mind you, my xbox was out of warranty and it was a last ditch attempt, so dont go opening it up if you still have it covered. hope this helps everyone that has a console with a multi personality disorder!

hi my xbox 360 will not read the disks this is the second console that goes bad the first got the ring of death and then the hd fried and noe this one will not read the disks i mean when is enough enough there are millions of people going throug the same problems now microsoft says its out of warrante and you have to pay them $99.00
intead of paying the what we all should be doing is suing the crap all of them for puttting toguether what now is the worst gaming console ever built in history

Jonathan, you have to wait for a letter or an e-mail from xBox support, and use that paper when UPS comes to pick up your drive.
If is a letter, then split that i half and stick it on the box.
If is an e-mail, print that paper out and do the same.

Once they’ve picked the pack up, you can use the tracking number to track the position of your box….But, once it has been fixed and sent back, they will use another tracking number, so you need to call UPS and ask for the new code.

Is not necessary though…

Hope this helps you.

I have an error with my hard drive. So I called the Support line and
the lady had a very strong accent and I couldn’t under stand her that
much. So I need to know how to send my hard drive in to the the repair
center? And she also gave me like a tracking number or something what
do I do with that?

I’m having the same problem. It looks like I’m gonna have to send it in soon. This was my first one and it lasted about 2 years even, so I guess I had a pretty good run. When did companies stop putting hard work and effort into their systems and stop standing behind their products? Seriously, did anyone here ever have a messed up N64?

This happens with me.. I put my call of duty 4 game in and it comes up with that, the thing is that all of my other games work, therefore it must be the cod4 cd that is bust. What should i do? do i need to buy it again?

Hi Thomas,

It’s a bit of a hard accusation to say that companies are doing this on purpose.

If you remember all the advertising that was done for the 360 and the success that it had, maybe you’ll also recall that they had to hurry this product on the market because people were so excited about it.

A part of the the whole product processing is to prevent faulty products entering the market, called prevention, the best strategy and the best move if you hunt success and customer satisfaction, and probably they had to skip that phase in order to bring the product on the market to meet their deadlines.

So they hurried up. That resulted in a huge percentage of the total 360s made being faulty and not meeting the market requirements.
They are taking damage big time.

While in US you have to buy the extended warranty if you want to be safe, the law here is forcing them to give us a 2 year warranty, so whatever they might be gaining there, they are losing here.

No profit can be made in this case, even if their intention was to make easy money.

I had every fault possible with my 360s and it is very easy to choose to think that they are doing this on purpose. The reality is that they made a bad move and they had a bad management.

As i said before, i am not taking sides here, being one of the hurt ones, and i have no perfect working alternative for this fault.

We can try helping each other and be nice to the people handling the Support for 360 when we run into issues that like this one. It’s not their fault at all, though sometimes they ask the most idiotic questions.

Yea I’ve got the same problems and so do about half of my friends list on xbox live but you know what seems to work for me… I open and close the disk tray about 10 times and the games play. I just bought Guitar Hero3 two days ago and it wont even play unless I open and close my tray. And also I didn’t even move the xbox during gameplay! I was suprised one day when i turned my box on and some wierd noises started squeeling out of it when I had call of duty in it, so I took it out and unplugged it really fast cause I thought something horrible had gone wrong and a circle of wide deep scratches around the outside edge and in the middle of my COD4 where there. So I call 18004myxbox and they tell me that it costs 99 bucks and they said it would be a permanent fix THIS time, unlike the last time. I was speaking to the manager and he assured me that it would be fine if I gave him my credit card # over the phone on top of all things! So I call my buddy up and hes supposed to be a wizard at problems to do in this category and he tells me that my disk laser is actually touching and scraping my games. And I asked him why it would be doing that, he says its all a scam and the companies are trying to make easy money because they know this happens to everybody but they haven’t done anything about it yet.

My Xbox360 is haveing the same problem. To play this disk, put it in a xbox360 console. For some reason when i tilt the xbox360 to the right side and put back. It plays it. But i think i am just going to try and replace it if i can. besides i manged to get my ps2 replaced when i put a warrenty on it from a shop. They asked me to send to Sony to get it fixed. but why would i want to send it to sony if i got a warrenty on it. so they was a big line behind took about nearly half a hour just to get a replacement from them. And when i went to get my xbox360 replaced. they said to send to microsoft to get it fixed… What is the point of getting a warrenty for that product from a shop when they say u have to send it microsoft.

Something like this happend a few years ago. When i had my frist xbox (the orignal xbox) it was working fine till about 1 year later the Same THING HAPPEND. it would only play music disks. And when i put a xbox game in or DVD it says it is ethier dirty or not a xbox game And i checked it, no dirt,scratches,nothing.

Microsoft has to fix these problems or the Xbox360 might go down as the 10 worst consoles.

I was tasked with changing out a bad XBOX 360 Toshiba/Samsung DVD drive. I ordered the identical drive and upon installing the new drive I received the message “To play this disc insert it into an XBOX 360 console”. I realized that I needed to replace the circuit board from the old drive to the new drive.
Once I did this the new DVD drive began to work.

Now I see a similarity as with most of the comments listed above. Microsoft seems to be embedding a code in the 360 with the hardware id’s of it’s devices. Without modifying the code in the 360 it seems the solution here is to use the same board from the original device assuming your not upgrading the drive altogether.

I understand that if you did not replace your drive and you’re getting this message then it could be a bad drive and you can simply replace it with anther identical one and keeping the circuit board from your old drive.

I don’t know it’s simply a suggestion as it worked for me. I hope this helps someone.

my xbox was the same i tried everything i finaly got it to play by putting it face down and leaning it on a wall then turned it on now it works fine just a ball ake changing disks worth tryin if you have no warranty

same as me i luckly got halo 3 to work so now its not going to be shut off till I play the new maps

Hi, i also had the same problem for ages it started off with 1 disc then all of them until it took about 20 mins of ejecting the disc in and out until it loaded(also a scraping noise from the drive when it tryed to read discs).
I had no idea what i was doing but i opened it up as i was going to buy another one this afternoon.I found out as the laser moved forward and back it was catching on the circuit board underneath(I WAS UNABLE TO FIX).
Got my jacket on ready to go and buy another one.When i went back over to it and got some toilet roll and scraped the laser with my finger nail through the toilet roll whilst pressing down far too hard.It was a choice of doing that or stamping on it.Put the disc back on and it loaded first time.Tryed all my discs about 20 of them and they loaded first time.Ejected them then,loaded again.I have being doing this all afternoon and the message has not come up again loads everytime.
The dvd drive is a toshiba samsung ts-h943 ver.A october 2005.I KNOW THIS SOUND NUTS IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN A FREAK MIRACLE.
I am only posting this incase anyone can work out what the problem was.I just have to now try and put it back together.
(I DO NOT ADVISE ANYONE TO TRY THIS I AM JUST TELLING YOU WHAT HAPPENED)

llamma.comhi again. im back.
its obvious that this probelm isnt stopping any time soon and i wasnt able to play my 360 for even 6 months before i got grounded and havent used it since january to see if i got lucky with the 1-in-3 chance of getting a good dvd drive. there is a forum or website dedicated to the various hardware that MS uses in the 360, you can check it out here ( http://www.llamma.com/xbox360/Xbox_360_DVD_Drive_Comparison.htm )

you can look around this site as it is a grat modding site that has all kinds of guides if you feel like some DIY. i started out with the BENQ (which quickly died) and recived a samsung (im pretty sure, i havent seen it for awhile) which has run better than the other drive ever did.
in this case the only real hardware issue is the drive so you may want to look around that site specifically to get an idea of what is going on
the only other thing i can say is good luck, even though were dealing the the anti-luck charm that is MS

Hi Dazzla,

What you can do is pay when you sent in the console or see someone that can replace your dvd drive.

Microsoft won’t ban your account if you do that. Is only when you flush the firmware or play around modifying the BIOS to copy games.

If you can find someone to replace the drive, do it.

Travus- You get your achievements when you play the games … from any console by using your Live account.

do you still get ur achievements if u turn it in

do you still get ur achievements if u turn it in to microsoft

This really pisses me off about microsoft because i called about this stupid problem and they said that they could fix it so i thought ok cool but then they said that i have to pay 100 freakin dollars to get that crap fixed and why the hell should i have to pay when its their faults they should just fix it for free since they have enough money anyways!!! SO SCREW MICROSOFT AND THEIR CHEAP XBOX 360 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!>=(

Hi Carol,
I fear I will soon have one dead Xbox 360.
The insert disc into an Xbox console message is popping up far too frequently for my liking.
I have no warranty as I bought it from overseas – at least I think I have no warranty – might have to enquire locally about that.
The most annoying thing; (at the moment while it is working – yes I know, sorry to those people whose 360′s have broken totally) is that when it does spin up the disc it will play perfectly for as long as I choose to play.
It’s just – how do we get that darn DVD drive to start spinning up every time ???
Spare Parts anyone – Replacement DVD from eBay or is the DVD drive matched to a console. Will Xbox live detect a new DVD drive in my console and ban my account ???
I was very pro-360 in the lead up to the PS3 launch with my friends and persuaded some to get 360′s because of the game selection and well I had had no problems.
Now we are all wondering how long our 360′s will last.
Dazz.

Disk unreadable – had it, no warranty, bought a new laser.
works like a charm now. the laser sucks in the xbox360.

i really dont know what this error is about after getting it, ive looked in to other occurences and nobody has any idea. most people (as in my case) had to have a completely new (refurb) sent to me because my xbox is “unrepairable” and we got a free xbox live month as compensation, whats 7$ to those guys?

anyway, i have two theories which pretty much tie into each other; #1. the xbox 360 DvD/Xbox drive is getting corrupted and/or is losing its format controls which tell it how to read things (xbox/dvd discs). #2 is that there is something severely wrong with the laser scanner head which even after being cleaned is still malfunctioning and only a tech expert will replace it themselves though this invalidates the warranty which i do not recommend to anyone as i had extreme trouble rebuilding my original xbox drive which was infinitely simpler to rebuild as opposed to the crap you go through with the 360. nice little rant i just had there.
soooo, unless M$ decides to consider this error worthy of their time like the RLoD then we will have to hope that “A”, MS extends warranty in case of this error or “B”, pray they do that before our own 1-years wear off. which is all a very sad thing. oh right, and i forgot that since the xbox 360 is manufactured with 3 different types of DvD drives then one (or more) of them is simply a piece of crap.

hope this helped and good luck to you all with the steaming pile of BS that MS has bestowed upon us.

well finally i meet people with the same problem, im still on my first xbox and ive had it for almost a year now and it does to play this put it in a 360 console crap and yet when i put that same exact game in my friends eliete it plays perfect no problems loading nothing and when i finally get to play the game theres spots in the game where it didnt load and the quality of the game becomes poor and what not.it does that for every game. it doesnt do any of that stuff for my halo 3 but im just waiting for it sometimes my game freezes for like 2 secs but that happens rarely but over time itll crash so im just waiting because when it does o boy MS here i come with fury from hell it’s self.

I sent off my 360 a few days ago. Hopefully it won’t take long before it gets back. What is really funny is that it stopped loading games the day before I packaged it.

Hey guys,

Is been a while since i answered to any of your comments.
Work and the long way to it, has been keeping me busy.

Indeed something needs to be done about it.
Taking the incoming searches to my blog about this issue, more and more people are falling into the same situation as us.

Any of you managed to get an answer…or something from MS so far?

my story begins on 15 12 2005 managed to get a core pack during the drought just after launch paid £360 with 3 games was over the moon my joy lasted 10 days on boxing day my power supply blew up rang MS because it is was boxing day got through to MS USA where i was told a new power supply would be dispatched the following day and if i would ring back the following day i could get a tracker number for my new power supply. Next day rang back to be put through to MS EUROPE to be told they knew nothing about this and if i wanted it sorting i would have to post it to them at my expense they would have a look at it and then send it back to me to say i went mad would be an understatement. I called them back to complain and “shock horror” got through to somebody who was A, helpfull B, spoke english who thought that my situation was out of order and although he could do nothing he gave me MSHQUK telephone number. rang the number,next day power supply arrived special delivery. happy gaming until 29 may 06 “to play this disk please put in a 360 console” this time as the drought was over i went on the warpath to my retailer demanded and was given 360 no2.Happy gaming until 12 dec 06 again no longer playing games other than XBLA and still telling me to put the disk in a 360 (of course why didnt i think of that- oh the irony). short march to my retailer = xbox no3. Happy gaming until 13 may 07 again put this disk in a 360. my local retailer did not have one 36 miles later at another branch xbox no4 happy gaming until now, nov 07. have gone to exchange at my retailer to be told that all warranty issues have to be dealt with through MS. the problem i have with this is that if MS repair it then your warranty is not renewed unlike retailer exchanges. i love my xbox but experiance shows that 6 months hardcore use is all they are good for. i play between 7 to 10 hours a day (and work full time)and i have never had red lights except for a early incident with a loose cable. Something needs to be done as it is going to cost us all in extended warranty fees or out of warranty repairs all because MS have a faulty product i have spent so much money on peripherals and games i have 60+ games,3 pads,wheel+pedals,2x wireless headsets,9 yes 9 wired headset due to 20pence build quality,camera, wireless adapter, memory card and hard drive,media kit,plug+play kitx2,guitar,i could go on. the treatment MS give us is wrong and not fair. VIVA LA MS REVOLUTION!!!!

Well, I called Microsoft again and told them that the problem had to be the 360 because last Friday, I went over to a friends house all excited to play four player co-op on Halo 3 with system link, and it still didn’t see any cords. We tried another game and it still didn’t work. Of course, I tried hooking up to his internet and nothing worked, but his 360 connected fine. So sometime soon, I will have to send it back once the box gets here.
Dakeith, it’s amazing you had yours work that long. It still sucks that it quit working. Cheap a$$holes. Good thing it broke before the warrenty was over(I hope).

Well, last night I was watching an episode of my favorite tv show on dvd. I went to switch discs and all it did was give me a blank screen. at first, I thought it was my disc. “no big deal,” i’m thinking. So I just turn my console off and forget about it. My roommate asked me if i would go to the store and pick up a few things. I go to wal-mart and get what i need. I stopped to look and see what games they have and decided to get Tomb Raider: Anniversary. (hope it’s not as disappointing as legends)I get home all excited to play it and get the damn “to play this disc, put it in an xbox 360 console” message. I was pissed. I’ve known all about people having this problem, but i didn’t think i would get it since i’ve had mine 11 months with no problems. GRRRR!! I guess i’m going to have to call those assholes……

Okay, now Im ticked off. I just called the xbox live support and talked to a Hindu that should be working at a 7/11, and the only thing he told me to do(that I could understand) was to do the same things I’ve done at least sixteen times. I have done everything that I could think of and everything I was told to do and nothing even brought me a step closer to connecting. I was told that I need to call back which I really don’t want to do, so they can give me some more useless tips that I’ve tried over and over. it would be really nice to see it fixed before Friday when I’m gonna be playing with some of my friends. I’ll try to connect it at his house to see if it’s just my connection, I hope it is not my 360. Again, sorry for putting this on this page, but this is where I got all the help with my other problem. Thanks.

Hi been having the same problems as everyone…
Wont play discs “please enter ect…..”
But now its finally stoped reading themall together…
can some one tell me how i go on about sending it to microsoft?
and does it cost me anything?
beacuse this is my 3rd xbox and the warrenty is now out
Help…

Thanks, I’m still deciding if I should send it in or not.

If you’ve had it under a year everything with the box is covered. The 3 year warranty only covers the box if you get the 3 red lights.

Hey, the past few times I’ve tried to connect directly through the modem, I was able to get up to whatever is after the ip address, but that failed. And after that it just fails in the ip address part. This sucks, I really was looking forward to the Halo 3 multiplayer. Does anyone know if they cover this in the warrenty over at Microshi…Microsoft?

hi carol,
i just received my xbox back from those lovely people at microsoft, see it had developed those lovely three red lights known as the three rings of eath! after they picked it up and ‘repaired’ it it was returned to me and it arrived today (almost three weeks later).The problem i have is that as soon as i connected it all up and put my game on-guess wot? yep ‘To play this disk, put it in an xbox 360 console’.
to say the least i was not happy, i got straight on the phone with them and after 20 mins of reiterating the problem, doing a ludicrous procedure of ‘fault finding’ (which included such pearls of wisdom as switchng the console off for 10 secs, trying more than one game and the piece de resistence was to check the family restriction settings).so finally they said ‘sir im afraid u have a faulty console’ (no sh*t sherlock!), so they have decided i need to send it to them for repair(again) but the handler i spoke to assured me he had escalated my complaint due to me getting a faulty console returned and that someone would contact me concerning some compensation (wont hold my breath!)
although i love my 360 i am beginning to loose the faith and am thinking of moving to the ps3 (never thought i’d say that, i feel dirty now!)
anyway thanks for letting me share my feelings, it makes it all easier to bear this burden knowing i am not alone

I just got mine this morning. Got on the net looking for what was the problem, and came to this.

“To play this disk put it in to an Xbox 360 console.” Did that with every 360 game I have. Tried Fable: The Lost Chapters, and it just kept looping the intro cinematic. I was pissed. Microsoft is pretty much on the bottom of my favorite company list.

Returning it for a refund in a bit, going to see if they have any more in stock today (yesterday they didn’t), and if not, I’ll take my cash to Walmart and see if they’re not sold out still.

i hope you get that internet problem fixed Popee, Halo 3 online is a great filler when you finish the campaign. and 4-player co-op, doesnt get much better. neway this happened to me once and i cant remember how to fix it ill ask my dad though, he changed somthing. maybe you should reset your IP settings from a main server for i-net at your house. might work. or try editing router settings from the comp. that mightve been wat fixed mine. hope it gets better

i guess im just gonna have to call microsoft again and have my 360 repaired. i dont know how many hours ive tried to get this to work. i went onto google and searched, EVERYONE i saw that had my connection problem had said they just followed some steps(that i did countless times).ive tried 2 different ways of power cycling the modem and router and went onto the support sites and nothing worked. i just wish i could figure out why it says its not connected in the router, but it does in the modem, even though the DHCP test never passed. at least it still plays games though.

360′s on it’s way back…finally. I’ve got Halo 3 on pre-order so, hopefully this console will at least last me long enough to see the damn ending.

You can play games on the HD-DVD player?

It will only fix the issue about playing the games, but not the lights of death or the connection problems.

i dont think it will…

How would that solve all our problems?

yeah or yall can just buy a new hd dvd drive for your 360 and that’ll solve all of your problem’s just like it did mine.

NP, sorry it didn’t work out for you. I had the DHCP error once, but simply power cycling the modem worked for me. Nothing is ever easy, I guess…

i just looked at something during the test(after it failed again) and it said that it wasn’t able to do something with the DHCP and that i needed to make sure that there were addresses still available on my computer. i tried hooking up my original xbox and it still connects fine.
and drew, thanks for the directions, i followed them all the way through, but it still didn’t work. i’ll look into the DHCP a little more, but i still dont see why it said the cable was disconnected when i had it plugged into a router. this sucks. i wass only half way through my live subscription, and it ends on Sunday. still, i guess i can play halo 3 offline when it comes out.

No, still waiting. UPS took forever to get the coffin here, and to MS. It didn’t actually get there until the 30th of Aug. Still have like another week+ at the repair center, and a couple days for shipping. *sigh* lol.

Pope, if you don’t have a static IP address, you should leave everything as automatic, when using a direct modem connection. Try leaving the modem off for 3 minutes, and make sure everything in your 360′s network settings are set to automatic. Plug everything in, turn your modem on, and then your 360. A couple people in the Xbox forums have said that they can’t connect to live with their 360, and it had to be sent off to repair. Not trying to scare you, but I do know some people have issues.

Or, you can always try the connectivity wizard.

Pope,if you are not using a wireless router, then try setting back the Network settings to Automatic and see what happens.

If that doesn’t work, i hope you are not one of the people who got banned from Live.

You should contact MS and ask if your console has been blacklisted.
I am not sure if they release this information, but you could try.

Drew, did you got back your 360?

Noa, this post has been indeed transformed into a MS bitching and that wasn’t the intention of it….oh well, maybe it was

Anyway, if you guys wan to bitch about MS, bitch at will, but if you have any tip that can help, to any LIVE or 360 related issue, don’t forget to add that too.

POPEE-
this is a forum more suited toward the disc error but feel free to post your problem and well be happy to try and help. This is a general MS bitching site after 120-some relpies neway.

Anthony-
you seem to have a good understanding of the situtation at hand but understand that both my xbox and 360 got them same problem (i must have rly bad luck ) and eventually they couldnt run ANYTHING. 1000 tries wouldnt have helped with it. just expect the worse even now. hope it gets fixed.

General forum contributors-
understand that MS has the talent of rushing everyrthing it releases. from windows 93 to the vista and 360. they ALWAYS screw up and they ALWAYS need to work it out. it usually takes multiple years to get the show-stopping bugs out which would normally be fixed if they delayed release even a couple months. sadly though the 360 reaches a more…. proactive, area of people. as you can see from just this forum people will get PISSED with the gaming consoles which have very little history of these problems and people have come to enjoy bug-free hardware entertainment. MS currently lives and breathes halo and a few other select titles for 360-only. remove those and MS is back in OS’s only. its a sad but true thing

well, I know signing into xbl is a lost cause. i know it’s something wrong with the 360. i put in my ip address, subnet mask, and gateway over and over again. at first, i had it plugged into the router, and it didn’t even know a cord was plugged in. once i plugged it directly into the modem, it connected, but it still wouldn’t recognize anything i put in for the ip address or any of those.
sorry about putting this on here. i’m still looking for a forum or support site about this.

Yeah, I know, I figured that out a few days after I wrote about that. They were supposed to introduce the new chips with the new HDMI Premiums, but there was a problem with the 65nm CPUs. And TBH, I don’t even care about it if it’s going to be CPU only, since it’s always my GPU, and DVD drive that bite the dust.

Carol, Drew and Noah – I came across your blog after doing a google boolean search for “To play this disc” error. All I can say is probably like yourselves I was an early adopter of the 360 (waited 11 hours out in the freezing cold to buy one in November 2005) only to have it give me the 3RLOD eight months later. I returned it to M$, paid shipping, then 3 weeks thereafter received my craptacular refurb. This is the machine I presently own and consistently gives me the message “To play this disc” or that the disc inserted can only be played in a 360 game console (the animated green ring display). DUH? Brilliant error message. Keep in mind that I typically re-insert the game disc (most notably Bioshock) about 30 – 40 times before I see a successful read and the game boots. I’ve tried everything from cache clearing, removing the Hard Drive (which also failed by way of giving me an “E68″ error), cleaning the discs (i worked eight years at a CD replication plant so I know a few “trade secrets”) and so forth.

I can faithfully say that it is most definitely the DVD drive, specifically the laser giving out. It can read Audio CD’s just fine. It has problems when reading DVD-ROM’s and movies though because the laser runs at a different frequency then audio discs.

Is there a solution? Not necessarily. Yeah I can send it back to M$, wait a few weeks and be given another refurb that masks the problems until it crops up again. I can buy a core system, use my 512MB VMU and be happy for a few months then wait till the 65nm CPU comes out (by the way Drew, not a single 360 unit in the US market has a smaller chip set then the 90nm CPU/GPU yet. Both Intel and M$ has been dragging their feet since they have a huge overstock of consoles that need to be sold before they introduce the modified versions. Rumor has it that we’ll see 65nm 360′s – CPU only – by the end of 2007). Or I can bitch about it and do nothing. The latter seems like a bad option as does sending it back. I cannot handle the anxiety from Bioshock withdrawl, it’s that freaking good!

So I’ll buy a core system, be a dumbass for wasting over $300 and not holding out another few months for something “presumably” more reliable. But at least I’ll be a dumbass who can play his favorite games if only for a few months. I’m sure there will be a party class-action suit against Microshaft in the near future over this.

Bill Gates better spend his philanthropy money quick.

Pope, did you do the test on the Xbox Live connection? If you did, did you had any error and where?
If you tell us, i am sure we can help somehow.

Jimbob, welcome to the Xbox 360 Victims Unit.
Most of us have had so many problems with our machines and for troubles like you have, you can only send it in.

Noa, this is a terrible situation for all of us, including MS.
They are as frustrated as we are.
Someone over there doesn’t deserve the chair he has and did a bad job so far handling all this.

And no worry… you are not repeating yourself. Even if you did, is all fine with me.
I feel your anger and frustration.

i think MS is beggining to reach the end of its rope. theyve been under so much presure especially in the last few months that im amazed the techies arent just saying “screw this. im going home”, they must be damned well paid. they try to fix it yet it goes all bad, they try to appease you yet you continue to be mad when the next return craps out. they give you a “new” xbox to hope that youll be happy even though hardly ne1 ever is.
to put it simply: MS is losing their control over the failing 360s. they are stil trying to pull out of the major profit losses from initial launch and wont submit to just returning new consoles that havent had a shaky refurb job done to them. people are turning to the cheap and highly reliable wii, the powerful PS3 and they are making their 360s into the new door-stop.
MS has to pull it together and take major losses which can be compensated for in the coming months or basically drop out of the console market entirely and let us make calls to the Nintendo tech support to tell them “great job building this thing, tell MS they’re finished”. if ne1 from MS is reading this then i just gotta say. please, PLEASE, please fix this.
i like to think i not just saying the same thing over again in each of my posts here only with different lengths and words but i guess that i am.

I have my 360′s die the same way as the orginal poster. First two to major freezing and the 3rd to the white screen of unplayable.

i tried everything you said and i still cant get it to work. nothing that i know of has changed on the computer. thanks for the suggestions, though.

Maybe they are confused too, Drew.
Maybe they don’t know what to say anymore.

So sorry you had so many problems with it.
I don’t even know what to say anymore.

So many people with broken 360′s and yet, all they get back are still broken and even more sensitive than before.

Eh, I just think I’m so mad at this point, that I’m not anymore. If that makes any sense whatsoever. Like I was furious when I saw it freeze up the first time. I knew exactly what was happening because it was weird the day before. And having to deal with support, asking me stupid questions that had nothing to do with anything, and telling me to do stuff that I told him I did before I called, was the icing on the cake.
“Did you do all the troubleshooting on the website?”
“Ummm…yeah”
“Did you try removing the HDD, and trying the games then?”
“Isn’t that part of the troubleshooting on the website?”
“And it still didn’t work?”
“Would I be calling if it did?”
“Can you get to the dashboard?”
“Yes, for 5 minutes.”
“I want you to go to the system blade, so I can run you through how to clear the HDD cache”
“OMFG dude, didn’t I just say I tried it with the HDD NOT ATTACHED?”
“OK, I want you to create a new gamer profile.”
“LOL!”
Then, the next day, it was almost funny. When the guy called, I really didn’t even care about it. I’ve since called back, and got my regular warranty extended to 2 years (the non 3 red light warranty). But, honestly, I don’t really care what happens to this thing anymore. It’s worn me out. If it works, yay, if not, oh well…you know?

Pope, you won’t have to send your 360 back.
This is a different problem you have (nothing to do with MS) and you can fix it yourself.

First, make sure the ethernet cable is plugged in good.
Also, go to your Dashboard, to the Network settings and then to Test Live Connection.
See where you get the error after the test and please, post another message here about it.
Then one of us can advice.
Make sure that there are no IP conflicts your Xbox and you computer.

Erik, if every other game is working fine, then you should take the game back to the shop where you bought it from and replace it.
Tell them the problem and they will understand.
Did you tried cleaning the disk before inserting it?

I have somewhat the same problem. I got my new Xbox 360 today from Microsoft, after my first one got the RROD. I hooked it up, play Guitar Hero 2 and everything was fine. Then I put Gears of War in, and it gave me the put the disc in a 360 console error. I tried Lost Plant, and it worked perfectly. I even played Call of Duty 2. Then I tried Gears again, and it still doesn’t work. It only gives me the error for Gears somehow! What is going on?!

Hey, my 360 has been working fine so far, but recently it hasn’t been connecting to Xbox LIVE. I tried two different ethernet cables and nothing worked. I even tried on my original Xbox and that connected to LIVE just perfectly. The only thing I have been doing on it is playing on xbox live! Just yesterday it was working fine but this morning it started saying no cables were connected. Someone help, and please dont say I’ll have to send mine in again. I can’t tell you how many times I would turn on my controller, and looking up to see nothing but dust and cords where the 360 should be.

Drew, of course the guy was nice and cool. They are trained to calm down a pissed off customer.
No one likes receiving a complain, and the guy of course he’s twisting everything around to his advantage.

Next time, don’t fall for it.

I hate when they do that.

Anyway, i will wish you once again good luck, lots of it!

Keep in touch and let me know how it all goes.

So, they refused to give me a new one, so I filed a complaint with the BBB. Some guy who actually spoke clear English called me. He was actually pretty cool, and helpful. He said since the repair order was already in, he would have to cancel it, and send a request for a new console at Corporate. So, it wouldn’t even be guaranteed that I would get a new one, and I would have to wait additional time for them to decide if I am worthy (?) of getting a new one. Then if I wasn’t I’d have to set up a completely different repair order. UGH! He said there are no guarantees that you will ever actually get a new console anymore. I opted to try another refurb…possibly stupid. The case is still open though, so if I have any problems with the repair, or whatever, I can just call that guy.

Hehe. No worries. Maybe my next one will last over a week. I swear, if this next one fails I’m selling it, and buying a PS3. Which I really don’t wanna do.

Drew, I do hope, that they will give you an Elite one for all the trouble.
Make sure that when you make the call, you ask for the manager and say that you won’t be talking to any of the support people.

I should have logged on and play a bit, while you had it.

When I get the next one, it will be #5, in less than 9 months. 6 whole days, or 52 GoW matches, this “new and improved” 360 with the heat sink lasted. I’m getting tired of this. I didn’t even have it long enough to see you online…lol.

Holy crap, Drew!!!

Call them back and be very specific about your errors, about how many xbox’s you had broken and tell them you are very disappointed.

This is so ridiculous!
How many did you had broken so far?

Well, it’s dead. Freezing every 5 minutes. This is the most ridiculous thing, ever.

yo yOu are sO right mines the same way

A lot of people in the Xbox forums have been getting the ones with the 65 nanometer chips on their 1st repair…that’s why I was kind of pissed when I saw they were sending me an 05, when I’m on my third. Those chips run a lot cooler, and don’t eat up nearly as much energy as the 90nm chips. Those consoles also have the quiet DVD drive, and the additional heat sink. I had the quiet DVD drive once. It was soooooooooooooooooo nice. It died in like 2 weeks tho.

I heard something about it a while back, something new on the 2007 360 series that makes them more stable, but i didn’t read the specifics.

When i asked MS if it was possible sending me a 2007 one, they told me, they couldn’t.

NP.
JM, I probably would have sent it to MS, just to keep the 3 year 3RL warranty. Every time I do something like that, it seems I need the warranty the next month or something…hehe. But, grats on fixing it anyway.
Carol, did you hear all 360s are now being made with the 65nm chips, and they all have the HDMI port if made after Aug? I wish I waited like a year to get mine now. Hehe. If this one they sent me breaks, I’ll probably try to get MS to give me one, for all my troubles.

Thanks for the link, Drew.
As for feeling like a kid waiting for it..I believe anyone who loves their 360′s feel like that.
I was like a silly girl and could have kissed the UPS guy. lol!

Jim, is a chance one takes to fix it like that, but then again, if one can do it, why not?
Is like fixing a computer.
Happy it worked for you.

We’ve got two happy kids here. Ehhehe!

Yo!
I also had the problem with xbox telling me to put the disc in a 360. It’s definitely the dvd-drive. More specifically, the laser is done.
For some reason, I wasn’t too thrilled about contacting Microsoft and going through that warranty stuff and sending the box around the world, so I decided to fix it myself. Of course now there is no warranty anymore, but at least I can be sure that the working parts, which were everything but the laser, still work.
Replacement lasers can be purchased, what kind you need depends on how old your box is. An old one like mine requires an SF-HD63 (for Samsung and hitachi). All you need to do is build it in. It worked for me, and I need to point out that I’m not an electronics freak or anything, this was pretty much the first time I did sth like this, and I’m a little emotional that it really worked. A great tutorial on disassembling the box and the drive can be found at http://www.llamma.com/xbox360/repair/ .
Damn, my xbox works again, I love everybody on the face of the friggin earth!!!

http://www.weplayxbox.com/2007/06/20/feeling-cool-how-to-tell-if-your-repaired-xbox-360-has-the-new-additional-heatsink/
That’s the info on where it is…so maybe you know what you’re looking for. No, as I said, it’s supposed to get here on Fri. I’m still really excited though. I feel like I’m 10 yrs old, waiting for it. LOL.
Definitely would not open the 360. Not until the warranty is up anyway.

Is ok, no worry about the posts.
I thought you’ll be opening the 360.
Lemme get my flash light and check it out.

So, did you get it yet?

As in, repair box. Man, now I’ve triple posted, and I think I’m done. Sorry, hehe.

Oh, no, I’m not opening it up. You can see it, if you get a flashlight. I thought u were asking if I was opening the box. Haha.

They are supposed to send it today, so I should have it by Friday.

Are you opening it?

I’ll be sure to let you know if it has the heat sink…if it doesn’t I give it 2 months, max.

Grrr!
They are firing back with 2005 ones.
Good luck to you both with your oldies!

Let’s see how long they last.

LOL! Carol. My repair is done! They’re sending me a damn 05. Wtf? Although it was made the 50th week of 05, so it might as well be an 06. I’m pretty psyched about getting it back!

Alright! i finally got my 360 back today. i guess it didn’t take as long as i thought it would have. so far its done everything it should have. i also didn”t know that they would have gave me a free one month subscription to Xbl. i just hope it lasts, the internal clock said it was from 2005. as long as i get to chainsaw some guys in half and curbstomp others skulls off im happy!

Yeah, i know.
They just like screwing pissed off gamer girls.Lmao!

But…If this one gets broken, they won’t get away that cheap again.

LOL! You told me it was an 05, dirty and scratched, which I thought was really lame, but I didn’t know why MS screwed you out of a new one, when you clearly were supposed to get one. Seems like they just did…cause they felt like it. Jerks.

Oh, I tell you what happened.

They sent me back a repaired 2005 one, dirty and scratched.
I was so mad.

When i called them back, they said that they couldn’t send a new one…and that’s after one of the managers promised me they’ll send a new working one.

Pffff! Talk about trust in those guys….

Ya, I remember you telling me you were supposed to get a new one. Wonder what happened.
Hopefully yours will at least last you until the repairs die down, so you don’t have to wait so long.

Drew, they were supposed to give me one, but they were sneaky and didn’t registered all my consoles for repairs. They registered also as exchanging them and that doesn’t count at the end.

My current one is doing fine so far, but it blocked few times already.

Like you say…we’ll wait and see what happens.

You are actually supposed to get a new console, if it is your 4th time sending it out. At least, i know in the US you are. MS just won’t always do it, if you seem fine with another refurb. Also, they started sending out a lot of new consoles now anyway, just because they don’t have enough refurbs to go around, with the flood of consoles they have at the service center, and the already ridiculous 4-6 week wait. I actually want a refurb this time though, because of the additional GPU heat sink they are putting in them, and the epoxy they are using to keep the GPU held on. It’s supposed to stop the RLOD problem. They used to just put new/used parts in there, and send them off, hoping they would work, which they didn’t. They are actually doing something about it now, we just have to wait and see if it works.

Noa, I’ve stumbled through the forums lots of times, mostly looking for answers about two specific errors i had.
No one could give an answer and haven’t seen either a MS employee rushing to help.
Of course, i have to agree with you about the refurbs and everything else.
It is a kind of a normal process done not only by MS but other companies as well.
Taking the damage % they have, they couldn’t afford sending in new ones, because they’ll lose the profit.

Pope, why don’t you call MS and ask them to give you a two month Gold? After all, is only their fault.
Don’t be shy to ask them.

Jamie, situations like that are very rare, getting a brand new console that is.
The free month…well, you’ll be surprised to hear how many got that from MS.

All it takes is for one to complain about the subscription he’s paying and losing while the 360′s in repairs, and he will get a free month.
These free month cards, are like cookies to them.

one of my friends went through 4 xbox 360s and sent a letter to microsoft in his last coffin which was what i heard was pretty nasty and they called him up and MS is sending him a new xbox 360 elite. i mean that is the least that they can do. when i called 2 days ago i was told i would recieve a free month of xbox 360 live i laughed because they give that to you when you sign up in the first place.

A few days ago i got an email saying that i should get my box back within nine days. What really sucks is that i still had about a week and a half of Xbox Live left…and i have to wait a few more days for my 360.

well Carol. thats where refurbs come in. MS repair centers take damaged or malfunctioning ones that may (or may not be) in the correct condition to be a permanent fix. so, they do what they can do make it “seem” like it is in perfect condition, when in reality they might as well have covered the submarines leak with a stick of gum. it wont last, and they will once again receive the box, throw on another piece of gum, and send it out to the next unlucky person.

its really a very sad thing but as it is MS has realized that sending new 360s (which they did for all the send-ins initially) is not cost effective. so they came up with the MS Repair Centers. if you scan through the forum you will see us talking about this in previous posts (probably around the time i came in).

and just an answer to possible question in the future: unrepairable boxes get stripped down for the parts that still work and are used to repair other defective 360s. This may be part of the reason as to why so many 360s dont work on their return. this is all in the name of the fact that MS has production costs barely being covered by the Pro Console selling itself (which will exponentially increase in popularity this September… Halo fans know what i mean).

still, this doesn’t mean that they will send new boxes but maybe… juuuuuuust maybe. they wont have to strip down defective boxes to replace bad components with only slightly better ones. and that is my lecture on MS crappy policies.

Thanks for helping out here, Noah.
I really appreciate that.

Jamie, chances are you’ll get back a different one, that has been fixed.
When i was on the phone with a guy from Microsoft and asked him to send me a new one, he said that this is impossible.

And it is. What would they do with the ones they fixed?

well Jamie that depends simply on your luck. for instance, me and my friend each sent in our 360s and different time (about 4 months apart) and we each received refurb ones that have lasted the entire period of time since receiving them. yet som people (like Carol here) have sent in numerous 360s and have continuously had to repackage and send their 360s away.
as it is i have heard of 1 case of all my net surfing in which a person has received a new box and only slightly better odds that you will receive yours after it has been fixed. still not good odds. anyway my box has been a joyous thing for me since i have exchanged it and i hope it is the same for all of you.

Wow I i really really mad I am 15 years old and worked for 2 monthes to get $500 to get my xbox 360 and 6 weeks into playing it has this, To play this disk, put it into a Xbox 360, I play the thing like 1-3 hours a day. I would think that if you pay that kind of money you would get a system of quality. if i was microsoft i would send elites out in place forgiving the buyers. Will i get my xbox 360 back or a different shitty refurbished one???

Hope so. Playing the old Xbox just isn’t the same. I definitely want it back in time for Bioshock! I’ve been waiting for that game forever.

Oh! You poor thing!
Now i feel bad.
I remember the feeling i had when mine were gone, just staring at the cables as well.
You’ll have it back in no time.

It’s been alright. It hasn’t even gotten there yet, and I don’t think I’ve fully grasped that it’s actually going to be at the service center for 4-6 weeks. I do miss it though, and sometimes find myself actually going into the room to play it, but finding only bare wires.

Haven’t been yet on a live match, that’s why i didn’t hear him using…naughty language.

And yes, i do get a box back…a perfect one made for the 360′s.

How are you feeling without the xbox?

He only says it if you’re using him in a versus match, and only when you blow someone’s head off…sometimes, lol. He’s not alive long enough in the campaign, to say much of anything. hehe.

Yeah, I guess you do get a box back. I’m a tool.

Oh! So Carmine is the trashy one?
I never heard him saying that.

About MS …It’s not a problem using my boxes.Anyway, once they deliver one back to me, i will be using their boxes.
I usually keep most of the boxes, so no problem for me.
And no, i don’t pay for shipping or anything else…..YET!

LOL. I usually use Carmine “Suck it, SUCK IT!”

Kinda sucks that you have to use your own box, no? It’s not like I have boxes the size of the 360 just lying around. You don’t have to pay for shipping, do you?

I never have to wait for a box, as you.

Things are done a bit different here. I have to use my own because MS doesn’t send any. Is just the posting paper with the tracking code i got every time.

We have a deal, Drew. Gears when you have your 360 back.
I look good as Markus. Lmao!! You’d like my scar.

I think he’s just asking how long it takes for the coffin to arrive. It does take 3 days after MS ships it. Sometimes, they take a while to ship it though. Like, once I called on a Thursday, and they didn’t end up actually giving it to UPS until the next Tuesday. So it actually ended up being over a week. You can use the reference # MS gave you at the UPS website to track your package. Then you will know exactly when it’s going to be there. Just do a track by reference.

Gears sounds good

Aron, are you asking me about that paper you need to get so UPS can pick it up?

If that’s what you ask, then you should know that you can have it delivered immediately by e-mail after talking to the tech support from 360.
Then you find a box, pack your 360 in it, apply the up half of that paper in top of the box and then call UPS to come and pick it up.

If you wait for the paper though, it can take up to 5 business day to have it.
As an example : I got mine after 2 days on my second 360 and on my last one, the next day.

Hope that’s what you asked for.

Thank you Carol another question approximately how long does it take for that box to show up so i can send my system to microsoft? it’s been like four days the guy i talked to said it would take about 3

Well, Gears will be fine with me, as i see you love playing it. How about this one for a start?

Lol, I know, I was saying what should we play when it comes back.

Ummm…Drew, i only play on 360 since is out. All the other consoles i have are dusty.

Pope, good luck with your 360. Let us know when you have it back, and please, keep posting if you wish.

Aron, go to the following link – Xbox 360 cache clear code , but be aware that this code will wipe off all you 360′s cache, that includes all the updates as well.

So any games that you’ve been updated, you’ll have to re-update them when you start them up…Well, they will update themselves.

Is nothing dangerous though, but it won’t fix this specific problem either.

how do you clear the cache tried everytrhing but that

Like pretty much everyone here my 360 started the whole to play this disk put it in a 360 thing. I got my system back in october of 06 so its fairly new so mad right now but anyway how do clear the cache i have tried everything else but that.

i just shipped my 360 down to Mcallen, Texas. i hope it wont take long for it to get back here in Iowa….
…Gears is Great

Yeah, good call. What should we play? I’ll rent whatever, so I can have it when my 360 comes back.

Oh! You poor thing!
Don’t know what to say. Let’s just hope they’ll send it back quick, so you won’t lose your shooting skill.

You and I still didn’t play yet. We should though when you get your xbox back…That’s for a good Karma .

I know you can buy one, on a credit card or something, use it, and just return it before 30 days is up. I’m not crazy about doing something like that though.

I have an original XBOX and a PS2, and a gamefly account, so that’s enough to keep me busy while it’s away…it’s just that, man, I have 8500 kills now in Gears, almost got seriously. I probably would have had it 4 months ago, if my 360 wasn’t always gone, and I wasn’t so rusty all the time due to not being able to play!

They stopped renting game systems around me after the N64…I think my dad rented it for me once.

I knew about the warranty, Drew. Is a good thing they are doing. So many people paid already so much for having them fixed, and the money should be refund to them, because that’s the fair thing to do.

Gears of War crashed my xbox many times and with the last 360 i sent in, the errors started from Gears and then Vegas.
I am not very certain about the impact that Gears has on the system, but it does crash lots of 360′s.

Probably this time they’ll send you a good and working one, because the 1 billion bill they have to pay will motivate them.

I am sorry you’ll have to wait that long.
Is there a way to rent one for a while?

Here we can rent 360′s but it cost a lot to have one even for a week. Of course, is not only the rent you pay, but the warranty too.

Have a look around and see what you can find.

I mean, I have to send it in, it’s still in warranty. I kinda can’t afford to keep blowing $300 for a 360 that I don’t really know will work. They upped the 3 RLOD warranty to 3 years, don’t know if you knew that. I assume you do.

I heard a while back that a new Gears patch was causing people’s 360s to crash. I don’t really think that was the problem though since I was playing it without issue for a while. There might be some new thing about Gears that causes peoples 360s to crash…I dunno, I can’t keep up with all the 360 issues! LOL.

I just really hope that them keeping the 360 for so long actually fixes it. However, I can’t really see the point, if they are just going to be sending me a refurb. If they actually fix it, and it works for longer than a month, I guess I’ll be happy…it just sucks that the thing keeps breaking.

OMG!! I am so sorry Drew.

I saw how much you enjoyed playing Gears and really hoped you wouldn’t have to go through that crap again.
So sorry! I suppose you’re really pissed right now.

Did you know that Gears killed few 360′s?

I was reading a while back in some forums and some people start having issues right after playing Gears.

Sorry i didn’t answer to your messages on live. BTW, the unlock is done already….about 3 hours later after i messaged you.

It is true what they say that they will keep the 360′s longer. They really need to make sure that when they fixed them, they are really fixed and you won’t have to pay anything….but you’ll have to wait.

Will you send this one in or you’ll get another one?

Hey Carol…just sent you a message on XBL but I figured I’d come in here, and whine, as well. LOL, my XBOX is dead…again. I was playing some Gears, turned it off, messed around with the computer a bit, went back to play some more Gears. It got to the 360 logo, and it of course froze up and beeped at me. Turned it off, and turned it back on for the 3 red lights. Did the code, and found out it’s the GPU…again. 3 360s, same problem. You’d think they’d do something about that. You should just prey yours doesn’t break again, because they say that now, it could possibly sit at the repair center for up to 4-6 weeks, for “tests”. Ridiculousness.

i just learned about microsoft taking in broken boxes for free today. they said i should get a package to mail it back for repairs(or hopefully a new one).
i dont know why the 360 is so sensitive, unlike the original.it is still working fine today(miss the 360). hope yours works good, noah.

Popeearswaffels, your problem is the disk player. You should call Microsoft and send it in.
According to Microsoft, they will fix the broken 360′s for free. Just give them a call and tell them about your problem.

There is nothing you can do to fix it by yourself.

I had the same problem with my last one. All i did was clean my disks and then push the button on and off till it played the game.
Of course, after a while it wouldn’t work at all.

Noa, glad to know you’ve got yourself a new good one. Take good care of it, as we know the 360′s are very sensitive.
Avoid letting it run if you don’t play and let us know how it all goes.

so sry about the TRIPLE!!!! post but i just wanna clear up the fact that the first post was a mistake. thnx again every1!!!

well i think that they sent me a new xbox as it shows no signs of use. an theyve tried all my games multiple times and its like i have a brand new box (other than the HD info of course) so hopefully it’s a newer, FIXED, model that will last me as long as my original xbox which strangley suffered from the same error after about 3 years of use.
im gonna stick with the forum though i currently have no personal use for it and will just continue give my 2 cents to those who need a little advice as i did. thnx for makin such a friendly and supportive forum Carol.

the first time this started, everything loaded fine for about thirty secs, then it said “unable to read disk”. i tried again, and it didnt load at all, just the message. after that, it started saying “please put game into your xbox 360 console” in about ten languages. i checked on it half an hour ago, and now i put a disk in, it just says “unreadable disk” on the bottom where you can open/close the tray, or start a game. it does this to any 360 or old xbox game i put in. DVDs and music CDs dont work, either.

To Noah – It sure took long to get your machine back. All you can do now, is pray that they sent you back a good one. Enjoy it and keep it in a place where it has enough ventilation.

Popeeatswaffles, what exactly is that your xbox is doing? Is the same error when playing a game or is it something else?

this is my first 360. im not made of money, so i didnt get the warranty. i cant afford another one. i cant beleive how crappy this is. my original xbox lasted through my house burning down, a week of snow, and me trying to take it apart(in that order). i decided to try to see if it works, AND IT WORKS LIKE ITS BRAND NEW! i didnt do a thing to the 360, and this happens. i dont know what i will do. i hope i dont get the god-awful 3RLOD. that would suck worse than this.

well i just got lucky. 2 months of waiting and i missed my first return day for my xbox. lol. they’ll be sending it again in 2 days and this time i’ll be ready. but it’s nice to know its back in town. i also just realized im getting 2 days of nonstop reaquanting myself with my xbox so yay.

well, its nice to know that im not going to be the only person waiting forever for his xbox.

Noa, i had my xbox back in 10 days. That was almost every time i sent it in.
Yesterday evening i was talking you a friend and he told me that Xbox Center has to take lots of broken 360′s in…Way too many and so, the centers can’t handle the repairs like before.

Ethan, if you do go and manage to exchange it, try getting one from 2006 or newer if possible.

Sean, call Microsoft again. I know that this isn’t what you want, but getting pissed won’t help you. Make sure if you send this one in, to be sent for repairs and not exchange, other wise they won’t register it. It is in your benefit if they register it for repairs.

Good luck to you all and hope you’ll get your 360′s back soon.

sorry. lol. i just did the math on the time it took since i sent it and it has actually been over 2(!!!!!!) months since i sent my box.

well Carol when i initially joined this forum I had said that I didnt want to wait 3 months to get my xbox back. you then told me that it wouldnt be three months more like a few weeks. well, today is the 30th of June. which is just over 1 month since i packaged my box and sent it off. im not sure how much longer this will take but i had hoped to recieve it last week some time.
how long have you other guys on this forum waited for your xbox? just wondering if its taking longer than it should.

OK, i just bought my xbox 360 yesterday and it is saying the same thing, “to play this dics. put it in an xbox 360 console and im in the middle of nowhere and i dont want to drive into the city to have to exchange it!!! WTF

Hey guys
jus sent off my second xbox console. it arrived this morning and wouldn’t run any off my games just got the stupid ‘insert this game into an xbox….’ message. this takes the piss am so fed up with box and the first one ruined two of my games before the RINGS OF DOOM!! took hold

i hate microsoft………. bill am comin for you!

I have heard of the defect line and it was when they first put it out. That’s why people shouldn’t buy the 2005 series of the 360.

well, it’s not necessarily short. but a 1 year warranty plus the amount of defective boxes they put back out makes it a very difficult and annoying situation if you dont get lucky with a permanent fix in the first or second box.

and just out of curiosity, has anyone else heard of a line of xbox 360s they put out last december that were somehow defective? just curios seeing how i bought mine last x-mas and just recvently heard something about those boxes being defective

See Noa, i don’t mind them sending me a repaired one, as long as it stays repaired.
As you say, they are just temporarily repaired and it makes you think they do this on purpose.

In Belgium, we get a 2 year warranty for the Xbox, so for as long as you have the warranty, you don’t pay anything.
But in the US, as i know from few of my friends, the warranty is very short and you guys have to pay a lot to get your machines fixed.

Wish you all the luck in getting a good working one.

Very right Carol. Thing is that they arent doing much to acknowledge it besides redistribute temporarily repaired boxes instead of fully repaired and permanent replacements. I just hope I get lucky with a permanently fixed ne or a new one.

Jeff, Microsoft knows all about this. They have do deal with this issue ever since they put the 360 on the market.

What can we do? I really have no idea.

Hi,
I’m on my 2nd xbox 360. The first one never got the “Put the disc in a 360 console” but did get the ring of death. The one they shipped me gets the “Put the disc in a 360 console” almost all the time. The only exception is Guitar Hero 2 which boots properly everytime. What is going on?

It really burns me that they are not acknowledging any of this at Microsoft. What can we do to escalate this as a community?
Jeff

ED, hope you got your Xbox working now. No one can understand why they didn’t take the bad ones off the market.

Noah, good luck with your Xbox and hope you won’t have to wait too long. In the mean time, try to take an online class or something else. There’s always something to do.

Let me know how things are going.

well, i caved. i just recieved my box and will be mailing it to MS Texas Repair Center today. Sadly this leaves me with little to pass the time. Oh, and by the way, my xbox stopped reading everything. Even my brand new copy of Red vs. Blue season 4.

I got my brand new xbox 360 on march 2006 everything was perfect I was able to play on Xbox live all the games were running nice and smooth until a month ago when i started noticing that the F@Ck1ng xbox scratched every damn game that i put and then everytime i tried to play a game it just showed me the damn screen message:
To play this disc, put it into a Xbox 360 console.
I have to try at least 10 to 15 times to get a game running the only good thing about it is that it doesnt freeze at all once you get it running but WTF why should ill be doing these everytime i want to play a game.
I really dont understand why is MS still selling a piece of SH!T console and they act as if nothing happens. I hope someday they get it fixed and i can play my 360 again like i used to.

Then what are you going to do with it?
They won’t let you wait 3 months though.

I’m having the smae problem with the DVD drive. I can’t play games. I can play movies, music and anyhting else it will run, but not games. It’s so f’d up. I’m not going to send in for a new Xbox. I just won’t. I don’t wanna wait for 3 months till I have my 360 back!!!

Hi Mark,

They will probably refuse to take you 360 in and tell you to ship it to Microsoft yourself.

If you try that though, good luck and hope they’ll take it in.

I am now having the same issue after a few months. When I put in an XBOX 360 disc into the unit, SOMETIMES it works and most of the time I get the message to put in an XBOX 360 disc.

So, my solution is, I go buy a NEW XBOX 360 at the store and put the OLD one back in the new box and returnit back to the place where I just purchased it and say it doesn’t work, I don’t want it. Now they can SHIP the piece of junk back to the distribor and and THEY all can deal with the faulty units.

Enjoy my old unit!!

When you realize how many people had they consoles broken already, you start wondering if this maybe is something done on purpose.

My paranoia kicks in now.

Sorry about your Xbox, Brian. Hope they’ll fixed it fast.
Just wait a bit till the big update is applied. Maybe that will change something.

Well, it seems I am not alone in wondering why MS would put such messed up consoles out. I bought mine back in March. Less than 2 months later, it has already destroyed my Call of Duty 2 disc, and most of the time when I put in a game I get the “Please put in an Xbox 360 console” error. Now, I know that my 360 hadn’t been sitting on the Wal-Mart shelf for 2 years. I can’t believe they haven’t gotten all this ironed out yet. Good luck with your “new” consoles, looks like I’ll be sending in mine soon.

Alright. I’ll send you a message sometime today
P.S. The XBOX they sent me is f’d up! LOL. Sometimes tells me to put the game in an XBOX 360, sometimes gives me a disc read error. HAHA. Talk to you soon.

Drew, i sent you an e-mail with my gamertag. Hope you have it.

N1CE, you aren’t the only one mad about it. Trust me….when you get to send 4 of them back to Microsoft, then you’ll be furious as hell.

Just send it back to Microsoft and tell them to fix your console.
Good luck to you.

Estoy tan cabreado que hasta paso de hablar ingles, hasta los cojones de la xbox360, todo iba bien hasta que de repente sin ningun motivo me da esa mierda de error, ni la piratete, ni la abri, ni nada de nada, pon el juego en una consola xbox 360! pero que consola te crees que eres!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! FUCKING MICRO$OFT $HIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ok, I will. What’s your e-mail? If it’s on this page, sorry. I can’t find. I could just be an idiot right now.

Drew, you should e-mail me your gamertag so we can play sometimes, when you get your xbox back.

Yeah, I had that, it went away, and I got the 3 RLOD. LOL. My new box is supposed to be here Wed. I hope I can get through a month this time…

I am afraid that Corey will have to send his Xbox to MS. I had the same thing and after a while, no game will be played.

Welcome to the club. Hopefully you don’t get the 3 RLOD, and it ruins one of your discs.

Mine does the same thing it says to play this disk put it in a 360 console turn it on and off a bunch of times it finaly reads the disk its bs

I got the game from Amazon.com for free with the console, they’re not going to replace it. I’ve had it 4 months.
I can’t even get that far. Nothing displays on the screen at all. I think it’s the GPU once again.
I can’t believe they sent you a 05 360. Technically, they’re not even supposed to be doing that anymore, especially if they’re dirty, and scratched. They were the worst out of all of them.
I just want one with the new chips, that don’t melt the heat sync. I mean, it’s ridiculous that these things only last a month.
I am sending it for repair, I just hate being without my 360 for a month.

I am so sorry about that.
You should take the game and bring it back to the shop where you bought it from. They will give you another one.

As for the Xbox, send it back and ask them to register it for being sent to repair. Make sure you mention that with every Xbox you send them.
Explain them the problem and just ask them to come and pick it up.

BTW, did you tried to clean up the cache? i know it’s a hardware problem, but give it a try.

As for my xbox…They gave me back a 2005 one, dirty and scratched…after they promised me a good one…but so far is working.

Wish you lots of luck and keep me posted.

Sorry again and have yourself a happy Easter.

Well Carol, I decided to give my 360 a chance, actually. It turned out to be a big waste of time and money. I was playing Madden 07 this morning, Easter, and my 360 froze up while making a beep/crunch noise. I opened the tray, and my game was destroyed, with a giant ring around it. I now have the 3 red lights of death, no matter what I do. It’s really funny that MS won’t even send me a new copy of Madden 07. They act like I broke it. I don’t see how I broke it when I was sitting 10 feet away from it using a wireless controller, and nothing even touched the 360. GRRRR!

Well, the guy from MS said they’ll send me a new working one…so i am still waiting. Maybe Monday…and maybe i am lucky to actually get a working one as they said.

Good luck to you Drew and keep in touch.

I have my fingers and toes crossed! My first one they said it would take 10 days too. Wasn’t 10 days, or business days. In fact, it took a week just for the “coffin” to get here. They do normally send you other people’s broken/”fixed” 360s, but sometimes, you get lucky and get a brand new one. Anyway, good luck with yours, and good luck to me with mine .

Hey Drew,

I think they always send the ones that they receive…get them fixed and send them to another one.

It usually take 10 days here to get the Xbox back, but this time it takes longer than expected.

I am sorry you have the same troubles. Wish i could say that it will be ok…but i am not in the position to say that.

Thank you for your comment and hopefully, we’ll get a better one.

Hey Carol,
My story to a tee. Except, I’ve only had 2, and I live in the US. My first one kept freezing after 5 minutes of being on. I had it for less than a month. Sent it back in, and I think they sent me a brand new one, or someone else’s that broke a month after having it. December 06 mfr date. Works great, when I can get it to recognize a game. Treats it like it’s a DVD. It goes into 480p, and if I go to the dashboard it says “Play DVD” where it’s supossed to say “Play game”. I sometimes have to fiddle with it for 20-30 minutes to get it to work. The thing that frustrates me is, #1 – It takes a month to ship the box to me, so I can send them my 360, so they can “fix it” so they can send it back. And #2 – Why in the world do they not test these refurbished 360′s before they send them to people? I know they say they do, but I got this screen on the second game i put in there. My friend got a 360 refurb, and when he opened the DVD ROM drive, stuff that was supposed to be inside the 360 fell out of it.
Anyway, just wanted to let you know, I know how you feel.

I am sorry for that, but you see… the warranty is not the fault of Microsoft.

They put a hardware on the market and the shops who choose to make a profit out of this hardware are the ones who are issuing a warranty.

So instead of giving it away, let’s say to keep you covered 1 or 2 years, they just want you to buy it.

What bout people lives in Saudi Arabia we are facing this problem!! The problem is when anyone buy it guess what, there is not warranty!! , so what am I supposed to do?! I spent 450$+ for that buggy xbox 360 console… I am waiting PS3 price goes down, so I’ll buy one… hopefully Sony will teach microsoft a lesson not fool gamers with junk box360.

It really doesn’t make sense. This can only be the fault of the dvd player and nothing else.

My first call for this xbox was a horrible one. The support, a newbie girl probably, wrote the name and address very wrong, and i also had to insist that i tried everything and the only thing i want was for them to come and pick it up.

Of course i had to call back when i got that paper with the errors.

Hi, unfortunaitely I had the same problem. I called tech support and they want me to send my hard drive in? That makes no f**kin sense. I refuse to send in my hard drive and I am going to bug them until they fix my console like they should. The help line is terrible, I always end up talking to someone who can’t speak clear english.

Carol,
Amazing that everyone across the web has the same issue and MicroShaft is doing nothing to correct it other than replace defective merchandise with defective merchandise and an insult to boot. I’ve browsed the firmware tweaks and most of the posters who front that garbage clearly have no credible knowledge in what they are doing. Some of them should attempt to compile their morals first. Ebay that doorstop (xbox360), grab the Linux os for xbox games if you wish and walk away. Bill GatesBEGAT ILLS.

“The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them.”

Oh dear,you’ll have to play PC games now for two weeks

Of course they know.

In a hurry, they put bad hardware on the market and they got them sent back since the beginning.

That says to me that Microsoft knows there’s a problem with them.

What disturbs me the most is the fact that i can’t deal with that shop only. Till MS brings back your xbox, it can take up to 10 days.

Well said Carol,i had problems when i had a PS2,and got through three before i got a good one.
It’s a pity you don’t live in the UK,you could have gone on one of our consumer advice programmes like Watchdog and kicked up a right stink..