Xbox 360s scratching up discs....

Lartrak · Post by **Lartrak** » Tue Jul 25, 2006 2:25 am

I was curious how big of a problem this is. A friend of mine had an Xbox 360 which had a number of loading and crashing problems, and VERY VERY badly scratched up discs at times. I'll have to get a picture of Burnout Revenge to show here sometime.. It's ludicrous. They're mostly light surface scratches, but it is still completely unacceptable. One game he has, Prey, got rendered essentially unplayable by the system.. Some part got scratched enough it couldn't load a new area, despite repeated attempts it would always hang.

Anyway, he eventually called Microsoft. It turned out his warranty was 1 day expired, so they wouldn't help him out except by offering a $140 repair job. He eventually got a new core (kept his old HDD) and traded in his old one for partial credit, which cost him less money and guaranteed him a new console instead of a refurbished one. The new one has less loading and other problems (it has a March 2006 manufacture date), but has locked up once so far and is definetly scratching up discs quite badly - to the point where he is going to go back to the store and get another one. He says if it weren't for Dead Rising (he's a huge zombie fan) he'd just screw it and wait for the Wii instead.

Anyways, anyone else experience this or hear of it? A console scratching discs is just totally unacceptable to me, above just about any other problem short of starting a fire. It is also yet another reason why I prefer top loading consoles ala the original PSX and the GameCube, as the simpler solid mechanism makes scratches almost impossible.

Edit to add: BTW, he does not move the unit around when it is on or switch from vertical to horizontal when it is on. The thing doesn't get touched and it still scratches up discs.

Nick · Post by **Nick** » Tue Jul 25, 2006 2:47 am

The only time mine has scratched a disc in when my friend moved it during gameplay. That put a nasty scratch on my Live 06 disc (which I later sold for that very reason). I think that my friend's console may scratch up discs, but that could also be because he keeps crap care of his games. I noticed similar scratches on a game I borrowed from him and two games I lent to him. They all had small nicks around the perimeter, around 1/3 of an inch from the outer edge. Strange.

JuddWack · Post by **JuddWack** » Tue Jul 25, 2006 2:48 am

One time my DVD player scratched my DVD unlike anything I have every scene. The line was about 5mm thick, very deep and dark. The DVD player made a horrible noise and wouldn't stop until it unplugged it. It wasn't a 360 but does the description resemble your disc?

Skynet · Post by **Skynet** » Tue Jul 25, 2006 2:53 am

Nothing on mine yet. But mine does not move from where it resides at the moment. I even bought the USB wifi adapter so I would make sure it wouldnt be moved from the position it's in. I have been cautious with all of my 360 discs and DVDs that I play on it for this very reason.

Disheveled DrFreeze · Post by **Disheveled DrFreeze** » Tue Jul 25, 2006 5:42 am

from what ive heard the problem with disc scratching mostly started because of people demonstrating the cool shifitng in the green light circle when you move the console when its on, or in general people moving a running console

Gmc · Post by **Gmc** » Tue Jul 25, 2006 6:02 am

Mines not scratched anything....yet. Hey, mabye you should just flash your drive, and backup your games and play from the backups...that way if they managed to get scratched, you can just re-rip from your originals. Problem solved

Nico0020 · Post by **Nico0020** » Tue Jul 25, 2006 12:21 pm

Everyone I have talked to that has gotten scratched disks moved their console when it was on (thats really dumb) or they had it in the upright position rather than just on the ground.

Lartrak · Post by **Lartrak** » Tue Jul 25, 2006 2:10 pm

For starters, as I said, this isn't MY 360...

I just did some searching on it. Quite a few people have experienced the same problem as my friend. They don't touch the console, the console is put horizontally, and the thing scratches discs. There is an article I saw about it, which has some pictures of the internals of the drive and a fix for the problem, which voids the warranty as it requires opening the thing up and sticking in rubber buffers.

Basically, due to the very high speeds the discs are spun at, the 360 is more prone to scratching when the console is moved (ya know, rules of physics when an object is spinning it doesn't want to turn, that sort of thing). The theory is on the 360 is that even the fan or ROM motor changing speed or just being on can cause enough vibration for the discs to tilt into scratch land. I can personally assure you all that the system, untouched, scratches discs - two different 360s in a row, in fact. While we played Prey over about an hour, it got many noticeable scratches, and it wasn't moved or touched and was on hard ground horizontally.

Time will tell if the third he eventually plans to get via the warranty will do that as well.

DCFreak07 · Post by **DCFreak07** » Thu Jul 27, 2006 3:58 pm

My friends burned his NFS Most Wanted Disk. Made a ring all the way around it. Lucky there was a warranty on it still And he called them and they sent him another game.