Unable To Play Xbox Games With Unleashx Dashboard Options

[halo3productions911]

Alright, so I installed UnleashX on my xbox. Everything went fine. Now I can't play my xbox games. The xbox games are retail(store bought) games, not copied/pirated. They DID work before I installed. Now any disc comes up as "Unknown".

What's going on? Any help would be awesome!

Thanks!

[Heimdall]

The dashboard doesn't dictate whether or not the disc is readable. It sounds as though you've been unlucky, and your DVD drive has failed at the same time as you've updated the dashboard.

You could try cleaning the lens, otherwise you're probably looking at replacing the laser, or the whole drive.

This post has been edited by Heimdall: Nov 17 2010, 12:00 AM

[halo3productions911]

Well honestly, I just don't believe that at that very moment I updated the dashboard now my DVD drive just decided to fail. I honestly could see the dashboard not allowing/interfering with a disc read because my dvd failing at the EXACT same time as the update seems unlikely.

If I use the MS dashboard, the DVD drive now seems to scan all the time for a DVD (makes some sort of scanning noise) and the dashboard locks up/slows down when that happens (scans for about 2-3 seconds every 2-3 seconds). Using UnleashX it doesn't do it but no discs can be read.

So that would mean just find a replacement DVD drive then?

[Heimdall]

It may be unlikely, but it seems to have happened.

As I said, try cleaning the lens (and generally giving the transport mechanism a clean won't hurt) first. It will only take 15 minutes. If that doesn't work then you are looking at a pot tweak to increase the laser power, or a replacement laser, or a replacement DVD drive. To be honest, I'd be tempted to buy another Xbox - you can probably pick one up cheaper than a replacement drive!

[halo3productions911]

I don't doubt you I have a friend that has an old xbox lying around. I'm gonna see if I can buy it off him and snatch the DVD drive out and replace mine.

And how would I go about cleaning the lense? I might as well try that before doing anything else.

[xboxmods2977]

Yea I just have to add that this very scenario happened to me. I modded a friends xbox and the DVD Rom drive died just after the mod was completed. The guy thought I broke his xbox.

[fallenangle]

You should look at the "DVD open and closes" thread on the General Harware forum (sorry can't post the link myself) about how a seemingly dead Samsung DVD drive in a Crystal Xbox v.1.6 was restored back to life. The laser carriage had stuck and before that happened it had similar symtoms to those described here.

If you need to clean the lens, try using a photographers negative/lens blower brush but without touching it with the brush. initially at least. Don't use aerosol air or anything similar - it probably wouldn't do any harm but it is far more powerful than necessary and comes with the risk of spraying the lens surface and the circuit boards with liqiud aersol propellant. Not a good idea.

A DIY alternative I used in my photographic darkroom days is any flexible plastic bottle with a narrow aperture cap and a length of drink straw attached. An old washing up liquid bottle is ideal, empty, thoroughly cleaned and dried of course, This will generate a controllable blast of directed air but not enough to do any damage. Unless the 'dust' is sticky due to moisture or whatever it should blow it off the laser lens or anywhere else in the machine.

I run a hand-held vacuum cleaner over (and I do mean over not touching) whenever I open up anything old and electrical to suck up any loose dust before and after whatever else I'm doing.

The point is not to touch the lens except as a last resort and certainly don't use any lens cleaning solution on it.

However, if you do need to touch the lens said photographic brush is suitable but any totally unused soft haired (badger/sable) artists brush should be OK too. For stubborn marks I'd use a brush as described but with a anti-static, lintless lens cleaning tissue wrapped around it. Be gentle.

This is an ultra cautious approach, you may well get away with a far less pedantic cleaning method but that's up to you to take the risk.

This post has been edited by fallenangle: Nov 19 2010, 12:42 AM

[steveo1978]

I have had that issue with XBMC would not read a disk and unleashX would. Are you cold booting the xbox with the disk in the tray or trying to load the disk after the xbox is booted? if you can install another dash as a app and try that it might help figure out the problem and also you can buy dvd lens cleaner disk and try one of those just stick it in and let it try to "load"it then eject and do that a few times and see if that helps.

[halo3productions911]

Actually, it was the dashboard. I decided to upgrade to a bigger HDD and after installing Unleash, the DVD drive works perfectly fine.