My Xbox has been complaining of dirty game discs with increasing frequency. I pop the tray open to find a completely clean disc. Only sometimes will just putting the disc back in clear up the problems - more often than not I have to take in’n'out three times before the xbox recognizes it. Reminds me of the old Nintendo problems.

I found this nugget of knowledge in the Ars Technica gaming forum while reading my football league thread:

The drive was slowly dieing with “Dirty Disc” errors.

I replaced it with a new Thompson drive I purchased off of ebay for under $32 shipped. Service was great, and I received the drive in about 3 days. (not bad considering it was shipped from Canada to the US) Its not that difficult to install if you have ever put your own computer together, but you do need some torx screwdrivers or bits to open the Xbox.

These are the people I bought my drive from:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=20385&item=8131907576&rd=1

http://www.llamma.com/xbox/ has some good info on opening and replacing the DVD drive on the Xbox.

I figure $33 and 30 mins of your time is cheaper than $150+tax for a new Xbox. Smile (Not to mention having problems transfering all of your saved games and data to the new Xbox)

I’ll probably end up doing this sooner or later. If it’s as easy as it sounds, I’ll let you know.