It’s a Samsung drive, so it’s not the rather famous failing of the Thomson drives.
Most of the time, it recognizes the DVD in there, but sometimes it won’t. But when it does, the game runs perfectly for about 10-15 minutes. Then it seems like the DVD-reader gradually loses the ability to seek.
For example, in NFK 2K5, the play commentary will start being about a second behind when it should be. Then a few minutes later, 5 seconds. Then, a few minutes later, it’s either commentary 3 plays behind, or it’s just silent because it can’t find the commentary. Eventually I can’t snap the ball sometimes because I assume it’s unable to seek something that it needs to proceed forward.
In other games, like Worms 3d, everything works okay until it crashes. I assume the game doesn’t handle this same problem as gracefully.
Now, it’s a defective drive, but what would cause it to run fine for 10-15 minutes and then slowly degrade?
Is there anything I can do short of replacing the rather expensive xbox DVD drive? I’m willing to rip apart my case and the drive to try stuff.
Sounds like it could potentially be a thermal issue. I’m not familiar with the XBox hardware, specifically, but are there some kind of cooling fans? Check to be sure they’re running and clear of debris and dust buildup. A dirty lens is another possibility, although the symptoms you describe would be unusual for that.
Ah, right, I thought about that but forgot to post it.
I have a hard time imagining a case building up enough heat in 15 minutes to affect the operation of a DVD-ROM drive … I can’t see enough thermal generation even without ventiliation for that, unless CD mirrors are particularly heat sensitive or something.
In any case, air does blow out the back at room temperature or slightly warmer - I’m not really sure how a moderate increase in temperature would affect a DVD-ROM like that.
Some electronics are more sensitive to overheating than others. The exhaust air may not seem terribly warm, but some of the parts inside can get pretty damn hot pretty fast. A heatsink may have worked loose, or there may be dust, hair or lint inside acting like a nice blanket. If you’re not afraid to crack it open, get in there with a can of compressed dust spray and go to town.
I have found The LLama’s web site invaluable when it comes to Xbox questions. I have found answers to issues affecting both the original Xbox and the 360.
Also, sometimes you can get help on Xbox’s user forums, if someone else has had a similar problem.
The pads at the bottom of the xbox coverup the screws that mate the two halfs of the console, if nothing else open up the unit and see what kind of dust and crud may have developed over the course of its life.
Unfortunately there seems to be some kind of ban on any talk involving taking an xbox apart, even if it’s for repair instead of modding. And it was a a minor pain in the ass to sign up for that site too. Oh well. I’ll look for some sort of xbox modding/repair forum later perhaps.
I raided a used game store for ps2 games. While I was there, they didn’t have one of the games I wanted for ps2, but they did for xbox, and it was only a few bucks, so I figured what the hell. Since they use industrial-strength DVD cleaners, maybe a pristine game would work.
And it did - popped in, and I played it for a few hours without any problem at all. Huh.
So, without doing anything - kept the CD in the drive and everything - the next day, I tried to play it again. “XBox can’t recognize this disk” errors. So I open the case, reposition the CD, close it… same problem, a few times. Eventually, it worked. And I played again, without it slowing down or crashing - so it took a while to recognize the disk, but once it did, it ran fine.
So I tried it the next day. Now, when I get it to recognize it, it goes through the loading sequence and then at various points gives me a “could not read data from cd, your disk may be dirty or damaged” error. From the in-game EA screen, not the xbox settings screen.
Is it possible that my DVD drive is somehow actually damaging the CDs itself? The disk doesn’t appear to be damaged at all, but I don’t have another Xbox available to try the DVDs on. If it’s not some sort of mechanical problem leaving a big, noticible scratch - what could it be?