My xbox for the last year has decided that sometimes the disk is dirty or damaged when the disk is in perfect condition. It especially hates demo disks. As you can imagine its somewhat annoying trying to get through fable when you have to restart every hour nearly, although the other day it did stay on for 8 hours without the problem happening. I emailed the xbox techs and they suggested nothing apart from dvd cleaner which I tried but that has not really helped as far as i can see. I was just wondering if taking it apart and giving the lens a clean would help somewhat and if this is a common problem?

It was one of the first UK release xboxes with a thompson drive. Thanks in advance for any advice.

Yes, you can try cleaning the lense. If that does not help, you can buy a replacement laser and it should fix your problems.

Caster.

Thanks. Well I took it apart and gave it a gentle wipe with a cotton bud, it was quite dusty around the lens area so we will see what happens.

Ok it is still doing it! Grrrag! What do you think new lense or whole new cd drive? If whole new cd drive is this easy to fit? I'm presuming the xbox style tray is removable somehow/

I have the same problem, and I was told to replace the whole thing. Here is a new thompson one for arround 45...

http://www.divineo.com/cgi-bin/div-us/zz-xb-repdrive.html

in here there is a link to a good tutorial on how to put in and mod a new dvd drive.

http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=98909&st=0

Ok will do thanks for the advice. Just one more question does it have to be the Thompson one or can I go ahead and put a Philips in? I really don't want another thompson unless they have fixed the problem.

Ok ignore that I found out they are all interchangeable. I am having difficulty finding a supplier in the UK, all the ones on ebay are being shipped from hong kong. Anyone know anywhere?

Get a samsung or a phillips from the B/S/T forum. Or you could modify an LG GDR 8163 to read original discs.

Thanks for all the advice, I've gone and bought another Thompson out of a mates dead xbox for a tenner, its a later model and i must admit that it doesn't make as much noise so fingers crossed holds up.