Well, as I posted several months ago, I successfully repaired the graphics overheating problem on my green Halo3 special edition Xbox360 (and several others since then). I’m happy to report that it is still going strong. Some have asked for a list of parts I used and a writeup on the procedure. As I never found time, it is now months later, and the NEW Xbox has been released, I may not get around to it. I do have the pictures but I’m just short on time. I will try to come up with a list of parts though. Believe me, after fixing several Xbox RROD overheating problems it is clear that the right parts are very important.

Anyway, as I stated in the previous Xbox post, the DVD drive started giving problems soon after the overheating (extremely frustrating to make it recognize a disc). Well, these problems soon escalated to the point of ridiculous Disc Read Errors. Most of the time the drive would not even recognize that any media existed when placed in the drive. Keep in mind you COULD get it to recognize a disc (game and movie) but it was a real pain. For instance, to get a disc to play this was my normal procedure:

  • I’d place a DVD (again game or movie) in the drive. Either the disc would be recognized and attempt to start then give an error or nothing would happen at all.
  • Power cycle the Xbox 3 or 4 times and eject the disc player multiple times until the combination made the disc start playing.
  • I later discovered that turning the Xbox to a vertical orientation (standing on it’s end) worked for a little while (a few days).

Since I now have a new Xbox (Halo Reach Bundle) I decided to put this one away (or in another room); however, a broken DVD drive does me little good so I decided to try a few fix attempts. I’ve seen several posts on how to fix disc read errors including fixing the magnet, cleaning the lenses, replacing the drive, etc. Since the drive in my Xbox was a Philips/BenQ drive it didn’t have the same magnet problem of some of the earlier drives so I skipped that one and replacing the drive wasn’t high on the options list due to cost. So after finding a repair dealing with adjusting the potentiometer for the laser, it sounded within reason and easy to try.

My drive was slightly different than the one pictured, however, it was easy to find the pots on mine since they looked similar and were attached to the laser (no brown ribbon so the pots were directly attached to a pcb). I wasn’t really worried about damaging the drive since it wasn’t functional as it was so I jumped right in. I grabbed my Fluke multimeter and touched the top leg of the left potentiometer and the front of the screw as shown at the link (sorry I didn’t make any pictures). Originally the Fluke read 3.96 kohms. I turned the screw slightly to the left (VERY SLIGHTLY as in barely moved it). I adjusted to a few different values placing media in the drive at each one to check. My last check put the value at about 2.7 kohms.

Well, the drive now immediately recognizes and starts playing every movie DVD and Game that I place in it. I’m not sure if this will cause problems in the future but as for now, it works so all is well.

Again, sorry for the lack of pictures but this wasn’t really meant as a tutorial. I was just bored and wanted to try a quick fix. In other words, you may want to experiment to find the “sweet spot” for you. If you have problems, feel free to ask.