[AngryCola]

So, I was one of the foolish people who bought their Xboxes the first day they came out. I sat in line for several hours and paid the full $300 + games.

[sarcasm]It's good to know I went to all that trouble.[/sarc]

See, I got one of the boxes with a Thomson drive.
For those of you who know the problems with these drives, all I can say is, "Yeah..."

Brand new games are put in the system and all it spits out is, "The disc is dirty or damaged..etc"

I hear there was a lawsuit filed against microsoft which deals with all the defective Xboxes that were sold around the initial launch. That's nice, but I doubt it will ever help me.

So, I've done some searching and found out that I can take the damn thing apart (the DVD drive too), and replace the faulty laser. These cost about 20 bucks on Ebay ($30 at major online retailers).

It's going to be kind of a pain installing this thing, but I suppose it's worth it. It's either that or buy a whole new drive. The new drives (Samsung..best quality for Xbox) are $100!!!!

That's more than half the cost of the current Xboxes. Screw that. I would just buy a whole new system with all the improvements that have been made in the last few years before I did that.

So, what was the point to this post? I'm not really sure.
Maybe this will inform somebody out there who is having the same problems with their box. This problem is widespread with the Thomson drives, so I wouldn't be surprised if other people on here have the same issues.

Also, this post is to inform those of you who I have been playing Halo 2 with. The reasons listed in my post are why I've been having such difficulty staying in consecutive games. Luckily, Halo 2 seems to run better than almost any other game I own. EA Sports titles are almost worthless.

I bought a new controller to take care of my malfunctioning control issue.
Next up -
The laser.