I HAVE EXACTLY THE SAME PROBLEM.
Even when THERE completely clean

atm to read them i have to smack my xbox realy hard and it reads the disk

Ironic.. I'm having the same problem. But it reads after like 2-4 tries..

i've tried overheating it
ive tried opening and closing like 3875 times and still wont work
i called xbox and told them im switching to PS3 and they pretty much told me " the only option is to send it in" and i said oh well your only option is fixing it or im switchinng lmao

TTG_SPEED wrote Ironic.. I'm having the same problem. But it reads after like 2-4 tries..

thats how mine started, it gets so bad later on... now i have to smack where my disk device is on my xbox and it reads it.

take out your HDD then it should work then put ur HDD back in

Bad news, you disc reader or w/e they call it is going out. Same thing happened to me about 5 months ago. I had to pay $100 to ship it off and get it fixed as the warrnty i had did not cover it. Hope this kinda helped

m40snipes wrote take out your HDD then it should work then put ur HDD back in

i tried over heating it lol and that took out the HDD Canble so idk what the fu*king problem is but im about to call xbx and FLIP my sh*t!

Ive had this problem and ive found that the only way I could get it working was by :

1. Install the Game you want to your hardrive when you eventually do get it to show. Usually the xbox can read the part of the disc which allows you to play through harddrive.
2. AFter playing it without the disk mine started to work without playing from harddrive.

SO maybe it is something to do with like too much playing or something as mine works fine now after giving the discs a break

Hope this helped

xXDaViTo wrote Bad news, you disc reader or w/e they call it is going out. Same thing happened to me about 5 months ago. I had to pay $100 to ship it off and get it fixed as the warrnty i had did not cover it. Hope this kinda helped

mines been broke for about 4 months now, i just smack it 2 times and it works.