Replacement Disc Drive won't play games but will play movies

Did you buy the console used? If it was doing that when you bought it, than it may have a "Lost DVD Key." Xbox 360 DVD drives are "Married" to the motherboard of the console that they came with. If you simply replace a faulty drive with a working one, the console will not read game discs, only DVDs and CDs. You need to either repair the original drive, or swap it's controller board with a drive of the same model. (There are a few different drive variants, so you need a drive of the same model) If repairing the drive / putting it's controler board into an identicle drive doesn't solve your problem, there is really no possibility of regaining game functionality (unless the console is on a very old version of the dashboard, but I'll go into that more, if it's nessicary)

Unfortunately, you can't just swap dvd drives in an xbox 360 and have them work. You have to replace with the same type of drive and retrieve the dvd key from the original drive and spoof it to the new drive. It sounds harder than it is, but it does require hooking your xbox drive to a desktop computer with a via sata pci card.

I had the same problem, where my DVD drive wouldn't play anything at all. I swapped drives and movies would play but not games. So I swapped the Printed Circuit board from the old drive to the new and it worked just as new and no need to flash. Just make sure your replacement DVD Drive is the same model as your old. There's tons of you tutorials on how to swap PCB on youtube. Keep in mind that some models involve soldering but thats easy as well. NOTE: My Xbox in the old FAT one NOT the slim. No sure if this would work on a slim.

"The problem is not only that the drive and motherboard are cryptographically married.

There seem to be a lot of checks being made between drive and motherboard, that will cause your console to not being able to update if you have a replaced drive.

The last update in spring 2011 was specifically made to detect modified drives, and in turn a lot of consoles with swapped out drives would not be able to finish the update, as the altered firmware on the replaced drive was not properly flashable by the update.

So essentially, if you want to continue to play the latest games, that require an updated firmware, do NOT attempt a self repair."

"You can't swap the drive without extracting the key from the old drive and flashing it onto the new one. This is a service I repair (UK based) as a mail in service. If you want any more information you can email me at GizmoWishlist@gmail.com.

Swapping the PCB is possible but it's easier to just replaced the laser."

You can just swap the drive, you just have to make sure you swap the old drive pcb into the new drive (requires a bit of soldering). As everyone has said, the pcb is married to the motherboard so it needs to stay with that console. Yes it's easier to just swap the laser over. Gotta make sure it's the same kind of drive though.