My XBox worked perfectly for the first few weeks and then had a 'disc read' or 'unrecognized disc' type of error a couple of times which I did not think was serious enough to cause me to do anything. But of late these errors are becoming more and more frequent and also some times it freezes while playing a game. As it is more than three months old, I presume I cannot get the extended warranty now and may have to shell out the $129 Microsoft wants to 'fix the problem'. I have read some other posts and tried cleaning the discs, putting the console in a more ventilated space, etc. but nothing seems to help and the errors just seem to happen randomly. Does anyone have any 'do it yourself' type of advice for this? Thanks.

I think there was a buggered batch from Mexico or Taiwan or someplace... there's a thread about it somewhere. No- it wasn't the ones from Mexico... I remember that much.

I think some of the stores scan the serial numbers (hence the opening in the different console boxes displaying the serial number of the console). I assume Xbox has this, same as the others.

I thought that Microsoft's extended warranty could be purchased after the 90 day mark ... that might be the best way to go, if not call them & tell them you heard that there was a bad batch, and you suspect yours to be one of those. They might offer to correct the issue without charge if you are polite & persistent.

Note that this is felony fraud and if you're caught, you could be in a mess of legal trouble that would have you wishing you'd just paid Microsoft the $129.

By the way, it was a batch from Hungary. You can tell if yours is part of that batch because the UPC is covered by sticker with a UPC code on it.

Who's Hungry? Bill Gates? Doesn't surprise me.

If you mean Hungary, the article was a bunch of baloney IIRC.

I've seen this switchero done with PS2s and Dreamcasts. You will have to switch the serial number though because all stores scan the number.

As far as it being fraud. I guess that's true, but so is selling defective Xbox units. Microsoft (Sony and Nintendo as well) should stand behind their consoles for at least a year instead of 90 days.

Sorry, my brain is fried from finals. It would be interesting to see if the article holds true in this problem though.

Darkside - I have heard stories of Sony replacing defective consoles after a year (way past the covered period). I don't know about Nintendo.