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Solved Xbox 360 (Non-Modded) Won't Play Some Games (Newer than 2009)

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XBoxErt

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I received a Falcon based console about a month ago, it has a 120gb hard drive. It seems to be running well and haven't experienced any issues while playing games that will play so far. After receiving this console, in hindsight, stupidly updated the console to the latest version. I might have needed the update to play the original games.

Anyways, I decided to pick up some 360 games including getting some halo games. Testing the games out, I find out a few won't play with the unrecognized/unreadable disc error. There are some light scratches on some, but nothing significant enough to make the disk unreadable. I use a cleaning disc and even open it up to clean the dust out of the drive and clean the lens. Resetting the cache, reinstalling the last console update, Nothing works.

Looking at some of the discs, I noticed that there appears to be a cutoff date of f2009, where anything newer (2010 and up) will not play with an unreadable disc error. The Games will install to the drive even, no errors, just won't play even after installation.

CDs and DVDs playback fine with no noticeable issues.

Any ideas what is wrong and where to go from here to get this to work?

Games
Title / Copyright Date on Disc
Works
Star Wars Force Unleashed (Platinum Hits) 2009
Mass Effect 2 (new) 2009
PGR 3 (Platinum Hits) 2005
Halo 3 2007
All Original Xbox Games work (example Halo 1 and 2, Burnout 3 and TD, etc.)

Doesn't Work
Battlefield 3 2011
Halo 4 2012
Assassins Creed 4 2013
Assassins Creed Revelations 2010
Assassins Creed Brotherhood 2010
Halo Reach 2010
Battlefield 4 2013
- All games have minimal surface scratches and can install to hard drive but won't play.

Attempted fixes before noticing the correlation
- Power-cycling
- Reseting system cache
- Formatting Hard Drive
- Running without drive/ or with usb drive
- Cleaning dvd drive lens and internals from dust
- I even tried adjusting the POT for the laser. It made no difference, so I adjusted it back.
 
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Newsk

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XBoxErt

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Sounds like your laser is a bit weak. You could try adjusting the potentiometer on the laser itself while monitoring the resistance aka "pot tweak ".
The newer games have more security on them that weak lasers have trouble ...
Either that or get a new laser or new drive and swap the drive board over .
Thanks for taking the time to reply.

I already tried adjusting the POT and it made no difference, even when the resistance was lowered significantly. So even when the laser power is increased I noticed no difference in behaviour.

I was thinking the security change could play a role too, but AFAIK the newer security wasn’t introduced until 2011, and 2010 games aren’t working for me either.

What’s weird is that I can install these games to the internal drive without issues, unless its copying and verifying gibberish. It’s all a bit confusing.

I am not saying the laser couldn’t be failing or at fault, it’s just difficult to see it as there isn’t issues with discs with differing conditions. It would be easier if it didn’t seem so arbitrary, like it struggling with

Hitachi drive btw.
 
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