[SaitanMar]

Hello,

In need of some Xbox 360 related assistance, well for the fourth time this year I had been fixing my RROD issue with a new set of X-Clamps and heating the motherboard. This as worked perfectly on my European launch system the past few times and it technically as worked fine here to. But there's a new issue to do with my DVD Drive and my SATA Cable.

Upon start up it seems to operate fine, but gets stuck on the splashed Xbox 360 logo start up screen. Eventually the red light of hardware failure appears and tells me that I have the E64 error which according to the web means:

E64: DVD Drive Error - Dvd drive timed out during reset :Wrong firmware, dvd is without f/w chip, etc. This can also be caused by the tray not being fully closed on boot. also it could mean that the Kernel can't be launched/signature in NAND Flash chip is broken It could be possible after bad update. http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.p...;#entry4156375 This might also be caused by a bad SATA cable.

Now I should note that I have NEVER flashed or messed with my Xbox 360's DVD Drive, I'm not that stupid. So there can only be two reasons why this as started to fail, it can't be due to any interference with the drive as I have not touched that.

1. The SATA cable is broke, the power up cable works fine it seems but the absolute terrible design of the Xbox 360 does mean that the short and poorly placed SATA drive gets damanged. Plus two of the pins from the motherboard connection broke off a few months back, though it's worked since. DVD DRIVE IS THE HITACHI-LG.

2. Something as gone a little odd on the motherboard, now I say this because I tested the motherboard after heating both front and back (with 45+ minutes of cool down) and noticed that upon perfect launch it stated the DVD Drive was 'OPENING' so this might have been the same in the past but I don't recall it saying that.

I also have another issue, SATA cable replacements. The SATA Cable that comes with the Hitachi-LG is rather poor, but finding a replacement could be tough. Especially when you read on the web that they sell 'SATA cable replacements' but don't state which drive it is for. Are there different types of SATA Cables for the different DVD drives Microsoft use? I have another system which as a different DVD Drive and that uses a slightly different SATA Cable to the one in my troubled system so I can't use that sadly.

As you can see I'm in a bit of a pickle, any useful advice would be great.

Appreciated.

[shagaboopon]

All SATA cables are the same in the 360 so don't worry too much about getting a replacement. The opening message on the drive is just letting you know the motherboard isn't detecting the DVD drive, if you unplug the drive then you'll get the same thing happen.

E64 if you haven't flashed the drive then could be a number of issues, swapping the power eject cable and SATA cable is your first port of call. Which pins broke exactly on the motherboard?

[SaitanMar]

Originally Posted by shagaboopon

All SATA cables are the same in the 360 so don't worry too much about getting a replacement. The opening message on the drive is just letting you know the motherboard isn't detecting the DVD drive, if you unplug the drive then you'll get the same thing happen.

E64 if you haven't flashed the drive then could be a number of issues, swapping the power eject cable and SATA cable is your first port of call. Which pins broke exactly on the motherboard?

Are you sure about that? As I said in the opening post, I have a second Xbox 360 which I planned to repair, somewhat newer then my original 360 (the 360 in question) and the SATA cable as a different connection to the motherboard. Rather then pins it as a plastic slot which seems much better then the original pins on my launch 360. (The slot is very much like the connection that goes into the back of the DVD Drive).

There are seven pins and two on the left and side have broke, but that happened sometime back and it's worked perfectly fine since... well until now. I suspect the power cable is fine as it's starting up, opening and closing. But I'll check that out to.

Like I said though, the connection is different to the newer systems, I'm guessing Microsoft saw the light and realised the pin connector easily broke and changed it to a slot connection which seems more stable. I'd love to get my second system working but I think that's got a few more serious issues that can't be solved with the X-Clamp process.

Thanks for the help by the way!

[SaitanMar]

UPDATE!

Seems you might have been right, having checked deeply into the connection it seems it did have a slot next to the pins. Which on closer sight seems to have been torn off somehow and got stuck in the one SATA Cable that came with the system. So you were right.

Trouble is now that the connection slot as come off none of the other SATA cables will work, thy would match but don't fit correctly. I'm continuing to have a mess around to see if I can figure something out.

[shagaboopon]

As you have found out, I was absolutely certain thats the case as I've worked on every revision 360 and they're indeed all the same regardless of drive .

Have you opened up the DVD drive yet and made sure you don't have any signs of damage to your drive board. If you plugged the power eject cable in the wrong way round for some reason by accident it would burn it out more than likely. Assuming you've tried different cables and they're all plugged in correctly then your next port of call is checking the drive board inside the DVD drive is actually ok.

Depending on how technical you want to get you can look at reading the firmware off the drive using a PC, I cannot go into much detail on the process though as it's the same procedure you would go down to flash a drive into a non stock state too. You really need to get the key off that drive anyway so you can flash it to a replacement drive if it is indeed knackered.

Keep updating and I'll offer what help I can.