05 February, 2007

XBOX 360 - Drive tray won't close

Broken Xbox 360
Gutted, booted up my xbox on the weekend (Gears of War in the drive) and there was this *horrendous* noise, like a mechanical grinding scream, in a panic I flew across the room and whacked the eject button and (thank goodness) the drive popped open and the disk didn't look scratched up by the incident, but just to be on the safe side I grabbed an old DVD-4 movie backup just to test the mechanism, and each time I put that, or as I became increasingly desperate, anything other than that into the drive, the drive just popped back open again, so bad was this that I couldn't even get the drive door to close without removing the power completely and manually pushing it closed...great... :(

There were a couple of articles on technet (which I tried to no avail), not very helpful either, the most useful of tips being to open the drawer and give it a wiggle, but nothing that I tried improved matters anywhere past the disk staying in, a (slightly different) nasty noise and a "Disk unreadable" message at the bottom of the dashboard...bah...

As it happened, Flyingpops was out (with the car) so there wasn't a lot I could do there and then (thank goodness for the demos I had downloaded from Xbox Live Marketplace is all I can say)...Anyway, Sunday morning I grabbed the system unit (popped the hard drive unit off, so I could hang onto all my gamer points and saved games) and took it back to GAME in Redhill where Flyingpops had bought it, and (FULL credit here), the guy went out the back, got a brand new boxed 360, opened it up and did a straight swap there and then (no fuss, no questions)...really glad it hadn't been ordered off the internet!

13 comments:

Matt Peskett said...

That happened 'in reverse' to my old xbox when I got it on Christmas day a few years back. I put a disc in and it made a grinding noise and wouldn't open. I was so annoyed and had to settle for exchanging a clear case for a standard unit (by Internet :-( ). I reckon Microsoft must use some dodgy sourcing for their drives - my 360 sounds like it's about to take off most of the time I play games.

Anonymous said...

knowing flyingpops as we do she probably researched GAME shop for such an event!!!!!!!!

Unknown said...

I'm really worried that this is the reason they made the hard disk detachable...seems too convenient to me...naughty MS... >:(

Anonymous said...

dude, consider yourself lucky. my disc tray wont even close at all. it feels like there something stuck in the but i stuck a screwdriver in there at some guy on yahoo answers suggestion, and it felt like nothing was there. BUT then i tried to fix it myself and ripped the warranty sticker! CRAP CRAP CRAP!!! an as if that wasn't enough, when i finally forced it closed, it wouldn't open again. I'm HOPING on my every wish that MS will listen to my story and give me a new one.

Unknown said...

Seriously good luck, but so many people have the same problem I think it's likely to be a non-issue, better still if you can take it back to the store where you bought it, they won't know to check the stickers...

Anonymous said...

I just solved this problem, very simple actually. Possibly can happen when the drive WILL close, but then loud noise as it tries to spin the disc up. Open the drive up (4 little screws on the bottom) and lift the lid up. If you look on the top white magnet spinner, the bottom side of the magnet system broke off of the disc motor. It will look like a little metal ring stuck to the white spinner thing whatever it's called. I popped that off and examined it, then used some krazy glue to stick it back on the motor spindle and it's away and going now. The reason the drive will not close, is because when the little magnet first breaks off it can get misaligned then when it tries to shut it gets in the way. The MAY be the cause to the problem. I fixed this issue today with mine, hitachi drive.

Anonymous said...

I just wanted to say thank you for posting something this helpful :D Fixed my system thanks man

Unknown said...

A pleasure! Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment! :)

Anonymous said...

i just did what you said and it worked thank you so much - frack xbox support they suck

Thanks Again

J.Montoya
(jmsdevils)

Erik H. said...

I followed the instructions, and it worked for me as well!

Just to clarify: to get to the magnet that breaks off, you first remove the BOTTOM tray of the DVD-ROM Drive by unscrewing, then remove the TOP of the DVD-ROM by sliding the metal housing up. You'll have access to the metal ring (which in my case was still magnetically attached to the off-white plastic spinner located on the TOP metal housing). I took the ring and super-glued to the BLACK DVD 'lifter', I also had to remove what was remaining of the 3 small black tabs in the magnetic ring housing located in the 'lifter' to get it to set flush. Seems to work fine.

diablo said...

Almost 4 years after the original post but I wanted to say THANK YOU too! The problem described here happened to me today. There was a terrible grinding/grating sound from the Xbox. I was playing Black Ops so at first I thought it was a sound effect in the game... But no such luck! It was definitely from the DVD drive of the console.

I took the whole Xbox apart, as described elsewhere online, to get to the DVD drive (voided my warranty but the thing is already 3 years old, so who cares). Basically there are two very strong washer-shaped magnets in the DVD assembly, used to hold the disc in place while it spins. One is held to the bottom of the drive via small black plastic tabs, and the other is held in place by a metal piece in the top of the drive. The tabs had totally busted, and the bottom magnet was stuck on the top one.

As other people did, I separated the two magnets and reattached the bottom magnet to the bottom part of the disc enclosure with super glue. There is a narrow circular crevice where it fits in. After that I reassembled everything, booted her up, and it's good as new! Thank you so much...

ptitty said...

I took mine apart. My 4yr old son had put the memory card cover inside the drive. Thats why it wouldnt close all the way.

Anonymous said...

Actually just taking off the faceplate and leaving it off magically worked, somewhat like Microsoft said. The page says to order a new faceplate, I don't really care how it looks, as long as it works, so I don't care about paying another $20 (or however much it is)!