Video games are quite expensive these days so it is of utter importance to try to keep the game disk in immaculate condition. I have been doing a fine job of this, that is until a few days ago. This is a story of how my pesky feline friend almost ruined my Gears of War 2 disk and how the New Xbox Experience was there to save the day.
I was minding my own business, playing Gears of War 2 multiplayer online like any other weekday evening. The game was about to end, it was down to a sudden death standoff between me and some random player. My 2 year old cat Powder decided to jump up on my gaming desk like he has done in the past. He started rubbing his furry face all over my upright standing Xbox 360. I yelled at him but was unable to remove him from the desk, I was in the middle of a standoff after all. He proceeded to rub his stupid face all over the Xbox and inevitably ended up tipping the machine over while the game disk was still spinning. The machine slammed down against the desk but to my amazement the game continued to play on. The match ended with my victory and everything seemed to be fine.
Of course I wouldn’t be telling this story if the game disk was fine. Upon quitting the game I ended up getting a disk read error. At this point I didn’t know whether to scream at the animal or sob. I decided to inspect the disk and it ended up having a few deep scratches all around the edge. Being the positive person that I am I figured it was no big deal, I have used liquid scratch repair kits in the past and they have worked in my favor every time. The next day I borrowed my older sibling’s scratch repair kit and spent about an hour attempting to get the disk to work, to no avail.
Distraught, I started thinking of ways I could fix my dilemma. I didn’t get a warranty on the game disk, that would be a silly waste of money. I thought about purchasing another copy of the game with a warranty and doing some sort of retail swap out but then I would have two copies of Gears of War 2, probably costing me more time and money in the end. I ended up remembering that a hard drive install only requires the disk to be in the drive and recognizable, not having to read much at all from the disk itself. I decided to delete all sorts of old game saves and map packs from games I no longer own to free up some hard drive space as I only have a 20GB drive on my Xbox 360. I borrowed a good working copy of Gears of War 2 again from my helpful older sibling and installed it on my hard drive with about 2GB to spare.
It was time to test out the theory. I put my old disk back in, launched the game and voila, scratches be damned I have a working copy of Gears of War 2 once again! I was so elated I decided to start feeding my cat again and removed him from the dungeon I had banished him to, just kidding PETA.
Without the NXE update I would have had to purchase a new game disk. Thank you Microsoft for adding the install to drive feature to the Xbox 360. I originally had no intention of ever using this feature as my hard drive space is limited but it ended up saving my Gears gaming experience, at least until I can find a cost effective way to replace or repair my game disk.
Yep. I just had the 360 tip over due to the power cord was wrapped a chair leg and I didnt see it. Gta 4 was in the 360 spinning and when I moved the chair , bad things happened. Now, it left a perfect deep ring scratch on this disc making it totally unreadable. The real kicker? The disc was not even mine but a friends! GTA4 still goes for $60 unless bought used or on sale and I didn’t have that to spare. My friend was peeved, as this was his absolute favorite game in the world.
The solution: Signed up for free gamefly trial. Got Gta 4 in the mail couple days later and ripped to his hard drive. Put the ruined disc in and viola! I suppose it only has to read the inner most part of the disc where the encyption is. if you damage the inside of the disc I guess it would not work at all (wouldn’t verify the disc)
I was actually thinking about keeping gamefly’s disc and reporting it damage and sending the ruined disc back. But they sent an email warning me of the danger of moving the 360 while on with a disc in. I didnt wanna risk them charging me for the game.
Now if only Microsoft offered a reasonably priced way to upgrade your HD…
@Doc (E of the Dead) – Awesome idea, unethical but intelligent. I would do that but I would assume gamefly has the regular edition of the game. My disc is a collector’s edition, would that make a difference? Wouldn’t they notice?
@Bym051d – Exactly my problem. Price gouging FTL. This is only my second Xbox 360, unlike most people I only had one RRoD and it was actually just my optical drive. I was still able to play games off the hard drive. I haven’t had a reason to upgrade to a new machine with a bigger drive.
Nice fix. lol
My advise is to go rent a copy at Blockbuster (or Netflix) and then return your copy in its place. no hard drive space taken up and no worries. The two companies mentioned have insurance in place to take care of them and could really care less about a loss of 60 bucks it thats the case. Enjoy an hopefully you take the advise.
L8r
Lesson learned? Never have a console standing up vertically! Never! They were not meant for that. They are all supposed to stand horizontally, I say! Horizontally!
Then the only thing you could be worried about is the cat blocking the exhaust on the machine.
My biggest challenge with my cat is keeping her out of my christmas tree. Otherwise, she is a incredibly well-behaved insect-hunting machine. She can hunt/trap/play-with/kill spiders, centipedes, crickets, wasps.
I have decided to go the legal route here and try a new recommended method, Brasso. It is some sort of metal polish, I have heard it works wonders. I might also try just bringing it to Gamestop to see if they will do it for a small fee.
@nostars – It was because my cats get into the Christmas tree that this even happened. I lock them in the office with me so they can’t get to the tree while I am not looking which is obviously not the best decision.
@ ??? Not meant to stand vertically? Then why do they always picture it that way in commercials, adverts, the background of your friendlist on nxe, etc, etc, etc. Besides that it just looks better!
Here’s a set of pictures from xbox.com
http://www.xbox.com/NR/rdonlyres/1EA6A7A6-5DF3-44AB-A019-C074725CFAAB/0/3consolesholiday2008.jpg
And even the icon is upright-
http://www.xbox.com/NR/rdonlyres/6FED9483-2106-4A49-A6F2-DD944767F839/0/consoleIcon.png
Just tell them your catch scratched them