Why is my Xbox not reading game disks?

"Two suggestions, clean the disks and clean the optical lens on the disk drive.

Eliminate as many scratches and smudges on the disk itself, the little disk cleaning kits at BestBuy and RadioShack and what not actually do some decent work (at least in my experience) but obviously won't clean severe scratches.

Cleaning the optical lens is a little trickier. I would start with the first easy option, open up the CD tray w/o a cd in it and give the insides a good blast with compressed air. Have the Xbox upside down or the CD tray pointing down...anything to make sure the dust doesn't just resettle on your lens.

If that doesnt work, you may want to try digging deeper into the CD drive itself, but let's see if this works first! Let us know."

"My xbox was the first version, with the thompson drive in it. Every game works fine except for dead or alive. I tried the game in someone elses xbox and it works, so I know the cd itself is fine (looks brand new too).

I'm wondering if gamemakers who are developing on one of the newer version of original xbox used samsung/etc drives, but never the thompson drive. That's the only thing I can think of that would cause a problem."

My original xbox wont recognise the hobbit game but its in perfect condition!

My original first Xbox only reads DVD or cd does not read my games like phantom crash , or fifa soccer or 2003 baseball I have used cleaning cd and still get the doesn't recognize disc,any suggestions thank you......??

"My Xbox door will open only if disc inside, if no disc it will fail to open unless I bang my finger against it as it nudges open after many tries (so I keep a disc in there all times). Phillip Takahashi my Xbox doing same thing. Will freeze in game very quickly. I sprayed compressed air before was good. Maybe I need new bottle or (you mentioned going deeper into the drive) explain. Should I open up my Xbox and take a look? When I sprayed last time bottle was new so more air power. I finished off same bottle so maybe not as much air power. Game starts usually but will freeze within 3 minutes or less, the odd time more but will freeze within 2 min. No red ring (had red ring before I bought the first bottle). Sometimes message shows up about ""reading the disc"", other times just frozen or won't proceed. When turning off you hear light rumbling or spinning in the system. Like old motor. Or freezes stops during screen changes or movement.

I may just look for another original Xbox or sthg if around still"

Cannot get the old school xbox, the original Xbox, to read any discs, no games, audio, or DVD. Wtf can I do apart from smashing this mofo??!!!!