More Mundane Meanderings.

So, I'm home alone for Christmas, since the wife has to work. It's OK, though, since I have my Xbox 360 to keep me company, right? Well, a couple hours into hunting down necromancers in Oblivion, the 360 makes an awful buzzing sound that doesn't stop. The game's still playable, though, so I save it and shut the Xbox off and let it cool down for a few minutes.

Turning it back on, I hear the optical drive make some unusual noises: "Uhhn, chirp, chirp. Uhhn, chirp, chirp. Uhhn, chirp, chirp. Buzzzzzz." Instead of going to the starting screens of Oblivion, it drops me off at the dashboard, where, in the disc status area, it says "Reading" and then "Unplayable Disc". Taking the disc out, it appears to be spotless, but I wipe it off anyway and get the same result upon reloading it. I then try Tiger Woods 2007 and NHL 2007, and get the same result. I then try a DVD: Charmed, Season 1. Same results.

I think my optical drive is not feeling so well. The rest of the system seems fine, in that I can connect to Xbox Live with no issues and play the Xbox Arcade games that are on the hard drive with no problem.

I guess I get to call Customer Support tomorrow morning. How fun.

Update: 12/26 9:00AM - I just got off the phone with the Xbox support folks. It was surprisingly easy. After telling the annoyingly casual-sounding robot he couldn't help me (I half expected him to call me "dude"), I was immediately transfered to a nice woman named Inez. I told her my problem, she took my contact information, and we ran through some basic troubleshooting.

I unplugged the cables and plugged them back in and still had the problem. I removed the hard drive and still had the problem. That was about it. After that, she set up a repair order and is sending me a shipping box, so it shouldn't cost me a cent. I should have it back within 14 days, though I'm not sure if that starts now or when they receive it. It's the latter, I'm sure.

By the way, in case you missed it, Microsoft extended
Xbox 360 warranty to one year, instead of the former paltry 90 days.