My original Xbox's disc drive gave up the ghost last weekend

I tried the usual trick of cleaning the laser lens with a cotton swab, but it still wouldn't read a single game. Ended up carefully adjusting the laser's potentiometer with a tiny screwdriver, just a quarter-turn, and it's working again for now. Has anyone else had luck with this fix, or is a full drive replacement the only real long-term solution?

3 comments

3 Comments

claireg811mo ago

I get why people try the pot tweak but calling it a fix feels wrong. That's just making a dying laser work a little harder for a little while. In my experience, once a drive starts having those issues, it's on borrowed time no matter what you do. A real long term fix means swapping the drive or learning to softmod and load games from the hard drive instead.

jade2712mo ago

Adjusting the potentiometer worked for me too, but mine only lasted a few more months before the drive died completely.

the_miles2mo ago

Honestly jade271 that's rough, but my experience was totally different. I tweaked the pot on my old drive and it's still running fine after like two years now. Feels like sometimes that fix can buy you a lot more time if you're lucky. Maybe it just depends on how far gone the drive already was when you adjusted it.