Need a bit of help with changing the laser on a 360...

[ZaO]

Someone I know is getting hold of a 360 with a broken laser. I will have no problem following a guide and swapping the parts out so that's cool. However, I remember reading something a while back about how you can't just put a new laser in there. Apparently each laser is linked to the motherboard via a chip or something? I tried looking up a few guides just now but none of them mentioned this. Can anyone enlighten me on this? I don't want to waste money on parts if they wont work :/ Thanks!

[Zerox]

I have actually replaced a laser in my own xbox, and can confirm that as long as you are just changing the laser and putting the same drive back in then you shouldn't experience any problems.

However you need to make sure that you identify the manufacturer of the drive, the laser required will differ from manufacturer to manufacturer.

http://www.360drives.com/howto

From this link you can figure out the xbox specs without even opening it up, but this is only for 'phat Xbox 360', not the new silm one.

I hope that this goes well.

Oh and before you open anything/ purchase anything, up try booting the xbox and try to make it play a music CD (easy difficulty to read), and then a DVD (normal difficulty), and then an Xbox game (hard).

If nothing works then go ahead and purchase a new laser.

If the CD and DVD work but not the game then either sell the console or try and return. If this happens (plays CD/DVD but no games) it means that some moron has tried to swap the whole dvd drive without flashing the encryption key (the thing that ties the drive, specifically the board inside the drive) to the new DVD drive.

Sorry to frighten you with that, however this happened to me once upon a time, and I feel that it is my duty to warn you of the possibility of this situation occurring.

Enjoy!

[Agent]

The unique drive number is part of the drive PCB and is separate to the laser. It's when the actual drive died you start having 'fun' playing around with that

[ZaO]

Cheers mate well i don't think anything has been done to this xbox yet. it's from a friend and they say it takes about 10 minutes to read a game disc and then plays. after a short while of playing it'll crash. could just be as simple as cleaning the laser but i'm guessing they tried that. if it can't be sorted that way then i'll just try swapping out the laser and not the whole drive at first. i imagine it's pretty simple to swap the laser? just a couple screws and flat packed wires to plug in and out?

[ZaO]

The unique drive number is part of the drive PCB and is separate to the laser. It's when the actual drive died you start having 'fun' playing around with that

yeh i don't know much about that process but i'm guessing it's a pain in the ass...

[Ryuwarrior]

Hi Zerox,
I was reading your reply, and it's more or less the problem I'm having. The only difference is it will let me play for maybe half hour to an hour first. No problems with cds or dvds. The console is second hand but I've had it at least 2 years so it can't be the same cause, can it? I'm wondering if it can be caused by heat?
Thanks
Ryu

I have actually replaced a laser in my own xbox, and can confirm that as long as you are just changing the laser and putting the same drive back in then you shouldn't experience any problems.

However you need to make sure that you identify the manufacturer of the drive, the laser required will differ from manufacturer to manufacturer.

From this link you can figure out the xbox specs without even opening it up, but this is only for 'phat Xbox 360', not the new silm one.

I hope that this goes well.

Oh and before you open anything/ purchase anything, up try booting the xbox and try to make it play a music CD (easy difficulty to read), and then a DVD (normal difficulty), and then an Xbox game (hard).

If nothing works then go ahead and purchase a new laser.

If the CD and DVD work but not the game then either sell the console or try and return. If this happens (plays CD/DVD but no games) it means that some moron has tried to swap the whole dvd drive without flashing the encryption key (the thing that ties the drive, specifically the board inside the drive) to the new DVD drive.

Sorry to frighten you with that, however this happened to me once upon a time, and I feel that it is my duty to warn you of the possibility of this situation occurring.

Enjoy!

[Ngt]

Hi Zerox,
I was reading your reply, and it's more or less the problem I'm having. The only difference is it will let me play for maybe half hour to an hour first. No problems with cds or dvds. The console is second hand but I've had it at least 2 years so it can't be the same cause, can it? I'm wondering if it can be caused by heat?
Thanks
Ryu

If it plays games at all then it's not because someone's swapped a whole drive. But it does certainly sound like the laser in yours is on its way out. Easy enough to swap it out with enough patience and research.