I was blind, but now I see

It happened again. My beloved Xbox 360 had been functioning fine for while, but then it must have suddenly remembered how old it is, as it's recently been having issues. Now, as you should know, I'm no stranger to Xbox errors, but this was a whole new problem. No red rings; no overheating; just the simple inability to read discs. It first happened a few weeks ago, and was remedied with the application of a DVD lens cleaner. However, the other day it happened again, and this time, the lens cleaning disc was no help.

This left me in an awkward position. On the one hand, it still played downloadable games, and I was in the middle of working through Shadow Complex. On the other hand, I was kind of desperate to get my rock on, but knew that opening my system could result in problems worse than disc read errors. I also knew that in a week it wouldn't matter, as this was the start of the holiday games season, and I could think of 4 very good reasons why I might want my console to be working: John, Paul, George, and Ringo. See the problem?

I was about to fire up my computer and write a post about the difficult position I was in, but then I stopped. I just couldn't accept that my 360 was broken. I mean, we'd been through so much together; could this really be it? No, I thought; I'm not going down without a fight. I've opened it before, and I can open it again!

So that's what I did. I grabbed my torx head screwdrivers and popped the system apart (much easier the second time around). I opened up the DVD drive, and even though the lens didn't look dirty, I took out my cue tips and rubbing alcohol, and gave it a careful clean. Reassembling everything, I plugged it in, pressed the power button, and held my breath.

To make a long story short, it worked. I almost didn't believe that my 4 year old system was running once again, but there it was, right in front of my eyes. My squeals of delight were soon replaced by the heavy breathing of a man enjoying his Rock Band drumming; enjoying it with a very smug look on his face, that is. Of course, I'm not sure how long this smug look will last for. My 360 may be working fine right now, but tomorrow is a whole new day.....