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Pot Tweak for Xbox 360 Lite-on Drive

Posted by on November 6, 2009 in xbox 360, z · 22 Comments

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I had this Liteon DVD Drive that wouldn’t read disks, no matter what. ‘Disc Unreadable’ or ‘Open Tray’ or ‘Dirty disc’ is all that I could see. These errors mean, it could be a bad write or a bad DVD drive. I have made a check list that would take you out of this dilemma.

If it isn’t the DVDs, then you can try a pot tweak. By doing this, you actually give the DVD Drive’s laser a little more juice (I mean power).

Some Theory:

Basically, pot means potentiometer (variable resistance). This resistance is connected parallel to the laser. So, when you decrease the resistance of your potentiometer, you can give the laser a little more current. Therefore, the laser will have more power.

So, from now on, your DVD laser will work a little more harder to read your disks.

What you need:

1) Multimeter
2) Philips #1-1 Precision Screwdriver.
Get this kit, this would be handy for opening the xbox etc.
Procedure:
1) Open up your Xbox 360 (1 quick google search would help)
2) Open up your DVD Drive (Philips screwdriver would do)
3) Now slowly open the 2 parts of the metal shell.
4) When you are done opening, you’ll find this.
(Sorry for the crappy pic, was in a hurry)
5) Set your multimeter to 20k Ω and place the probes on the points mentioned in the pic.
6) You’ll get a reading ranging from 5-6k Ω (Mine was 6.1)
7) Very carefully turn the pot anticlockwise (Clockwise if you have drives other than Lite-on) using your Philips #1-1 Precision Screwdriver.
8) Again check the reading. You should have decreased around 0.1k Ω.
9) Check if your discs work. (Install it into the hard drive for best results)
10) If the discs do not work, repeat steps 6 to 9 until your discs work. But DO NOT GO BELOW 3K Ω, If you do you’ll have a good chance of burning up your laser.
Questions? Comments are welcome.

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Suhas Tech is a blog, created by Suhas Sharma, a 17-yr old boy from Bangalore, India. This blog (or website) is an attempt to share the first- hand knowledge obtained by him so that it would be useful to the general public, so that they can do stuff on their computer or other gadgets without breaking their heads too much. Suhas has already done that. You needn’t.

  • Suhas

    went too low? try reverting the settings..

  • fobexmouth

    Nice one it works a treat! I don't have an AVO meter so I went through the pain staking task of trial and error; I turned it very slightly, re-assembled the console(partialy)and tried it first with a dvd then a game until it worked.
    I think these idiots on youtube need correcting too, before people end up completely breaking their consoles with weird and wonderful voodoo magic paper cleaning tricks and stuff.

  • Anonymous

    I apologize for the forthcoming lengthy post, but I didn't want to leave anything to ambiguity…

    I have the Benq drive and i've done alot of tinkering with the pot, started at 3.7 and rarely reads discs. I only have room for 1 game on the hard drive so that's the ONLY game i can play right now. Sometimes it reads first try and i can get the start i need to play from hard drive and sometimes it takes 30 minutes. I've slowly changed the pot value at increments of .2 (3.7 -> 3.5 -> 3.3, etc) until i reached 2.7 and that's when i gave up. At EVERY VALUE DvD's play perfectly fine, drive doesn't make crazy noises but for 360 games it goes apes**t then. ANY possible fixes would be appreciated. (on a side note, what is the OTHER pot for? music cd's only?)

  • Suhas

    ok, this sounds a little harsh but, some discs aren't really made for your drive.

    Once, I had verbatim discs with different batch numbers. My liteon drive read discs from the 1st batch with perfect ease but it refused to play the other batch no matter what! I still can't figure out the reason.

    Also, make sure its not ur DVD causing problems.
    http://www.suhastech.com/2009/07/check-if-dvd-for-write-errors.html

    music cd – i guess so..

  • madferret

    Good Tut @Suhas Glad I read it else I would have been turnig the pots anticlockwise as all the other drives, stay sweet

  • Anonymous

    ive been at this for weeks working on every red ring i can fix them all but every time i fix one it wont read disks so read up on it and tweaks but i still cant get ne of them to work i got six in my room all work but wont read games who want to buy a 360 that wont read games!

  • Anonymous

    Hey my bro decided to try this fix using a youtube video and unscrewed the pot right out. Is it possible to screw them back in or is the dvd drive totally trashed now?

  • Nick

    Great tut dude took me all of 15 min of trial and error to get my drive back up and running, thanks!

  • spudgun

    great work mate,has sovlved the problem with my lite-on drive from elite xbox,which has never been able install games to hardive before.

  • Jayger

    I just Recently flash a stock Lite-on 78450c to Lt+.. After I would play some of my back ups but not all mostly new AP 2.5 games ( all back ups are properly patched)… eater it would give open disk or dirty disk, original games seemed to play fine… I did the POT reading and it was 6.12 just like Sahus… I found out very quickly that the adjustment is very sensitive… I think I did a quarter turn on the DVD POT and the new reading was like 3.47…lol so I carefully set back to 5.45 which is like 600ohm adjustment but to be honest taking the drive apart over and over is a pain in the ass… never mind the fact my SATA connector is very lose and have already had to soldering in a new pin…lol… Anyway with my first test NFS Hot Pursuit started right up fast too.. this is AP 2.5 game and no problems so far… i will test and update later if anyone is interested…thx for the info Sahus great post…

  • Jugernaut

    Unbelieveable! Worked first try. Thank you SO much!

  • Jayger

    NFS Hot Pursuit froze a few mins in…. new setting is 4..05 seems to be solid… any scratches on the disk and freezes… lite-on seems much more picky then the benq… benq is by far the best for flashing if you ask me..

  • amissss

    Hi I would like to find out whether it is possible to somehow repair the laser eyes, because I burned it. or it may only be replaced by a new one.
    thanks

  • http://www.suhastech.com/ Suhas

    @amissss…. its almost impossible, unless you have professional equipments in hand…. you are better off buying a new one..

  • amissss

    Thanks for the answer

  • blake

    i am having fuckin trouble with the actual pot reading with multimeter,i place the two wires on the silver things and nothing happens,help anyone? just get the same reading of 1.

  • andy

    OMFG Thankyou sooo much

  • John

    Woohoo, fixed my console first pop. no multimeter, just tried out an xbox 1 game and then bam,………….. read the disc then tried to play but needed the update for the xbox 1 emulator. now gotta look for my control and score a couple cheap 360 games from eb games. good score for 60 bucks – 360 hdmi console, hdtv leads and power pack and 20 gig hdd.

  • Billytheman12345

    i cant find my multimeter how can i do this without it

  • http://www.facebook.com/TheDayster Ashleigh James Day

    I’ve done this and it still doesn’t work. I’ve tried practically everything that has been on YouTube.

  • http://www.facebook.com/TheDayster Ashleigh James Day

    I’ve done this and it still doesn’t work. I’ve done practically everything thats on YouTube aswell. Can anyone help?

  • Jeromie23

    hey guys i need some help please please if u have a lite on drive rite and u didn’t save the bin key and all its saying is play dvd for games is there any way i can get back my key

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