Dvd Drive Problem - Disc Does Not Detect, fixable by buying new lens from ebay? Options

[Daedalus]

Hi,

My modded xbox has a problem. When I put a disc in nothing happens, the dashboard detects the tray opening and closing but does not detect any disc at all. It is as if I simply open and closed the tray without inserting a disc. Will this be fixed by replacing the laser lens? Or is the whole drive unit faulty?

Also, is there a tutorial on how to replace the lens?

i am thinking of buying the lens from http://cgi.ebay.com.au/NEW-Xbox-Samsung-La...1QQcmdZViewItem

Thanks

[obcd]

Hi,

are you talking about a original game disk or about a backup disk? As you might know, xbox dvd stations are rather picky about which media they will read. If you have several disks that are not detected, and several that give a dirty disk errror, than a replacement laser is a option. If your dvd station is reading nothing at all, something else might be wrong with the dvd station.

I suppose you have tried cleaning the laser lens and a pot tweak already.

regards.

[Daedalus]

thanks for your reply. everything used to work - originals, backup-games, udf dvd movies, dvd movies.

now nothing works tried everything, including originals, backups etc

how would i clean the laser lens? the only thing i can think of are those cds with a brush on it, but atm it wont even read audio cds so that method wont work? would i really need to tweak the pot? i thought that was for drives that couldnt read certain media?

btw i have the samsung drive

[obcd]

Hi,

I clean my laser lens with a soft tissue and product that is mentioned to clean a pair of glasses. I had good results with this product when I used it to clean the lens of cdplayers that had trouble recognising their disks. You simply have to remove the dvddrive cover, and you can see the laser lens. It is not extremely complicated. You just have to watch out a bit for the mechanical construction which is rather fragile. The lens for instance can move up and down to focus the laser to the disk.

The power of the laser diode decreases after a amount of hours. You can boost that up again with that famous potmeter tweak. It is only usefull if you have a occasionally issue of a dirty disk error. If it really doesn't read anything at all, don't touch it.

When the dvd drive is open, you could check if the laser optics are still moving smoothly forwards and backwards. You could also check if the flexcables are all properly inserted in their connectors, but it pretty much ends there.

regards.

[Daedalus]

ok i opened everything up. cleaned the laser and the spinning motor with alcohol using a lint free cloth.
still teh same problem.

then i observed its operation with the cover off. it seems like the laser lens cannot move up and down properly. it only oscillates abt 0.5cm up and 0.5cm down. if i manually move the laser lens by hand it will simply oscillate the same 1cm around the position i left it at.

the motor will not spin properly. when the cd inserts it spins for <1sec then stops. sometimes it wont spin. if i give it a spin by hand as the cd inserts, then the drive starts to automatiicaly spin it, and the laser activates (i can see a red dot through the cd) although oscillating 1cm. final result is the same problem.

all this is done using an original xbox game that is in perfect condition.

i now have 3 options

1. borrow someone's xbox dvd drive and use it in mine to copy all my games to hdd and just play them. this may b ok since i dun plan on adding new xbox games anyway.

2. buy a replacement laser (although it looks like a mechanical problem and prob wont fix).

3. buy a new xbox dvd drive or replace it with the modded pc samsung drive.

can i just get someone's xbox dvd drive and use it on mine?