360 drive

[Kalthanan]

Anyone here ever replace a 360 DVD drive?

I took it over Rams' house for New Years' and I just tried to play it for the first time since then and it won't read any discs.

I opened it up, I didn't see anything loose or any dust or scratches on the lens, etc. It's a BenQ VAD6038.

[Tavrn]

If you figure out how to do it let me know. My 360 drive does not like to open all the time.

[Kalthanan]

Apparently the method you use depends on which drive you have. The BenQ is the easiest and safest because it allows for DOS flashing, which means you can still recover from a bad flash attempt.

You can buy a replacement DVD drive on eBay for like $40 if you want to replace your drive, but then you have to open up your 360, voiding your warranty, take it apart, retrieve your key from the drive's firmware, change out the drives, flash the key to the new drive's firmware, and then close it up and hope it works.

Oh yeah, and you need a PC with SATA controller, because you have to slave the DVD drives to your computer for the flashing processes.

[Yunita]

I'll ask around a little. The guys at my old job, whom I stay in constant contact with, converted x-box's to lunch box's and were constantly trading and selling working x-box with all the games even un-released games. Saying stuff like, "you can get online, just flash the cache before you get online after you play an un-released game."

Point being these guys have nothing better to do with their time and money except buy, tear apart, and put together again any console they can find.

[Yunita]

I asked around a bit, nobody really had any info for me... sorry K2. They did say though that if it still has a warranty the drive was covered /shrug. Could call Microsoft...