Halo 3: ODST Forum
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  • Subject: Disc Unreadable
Subject: Disc Unreadable
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I think there is enough info to understand the issues.

What is Bungie going to do about this?

  • 09.24.2009 4:11 AM PDT

Well it's good to see that Bungie atleast are working on it. I hope they can find a solution. It seems to be a problem with the disc and the harddrive. Mine always froze when I would quit the game and the 'Saving' would appear or when I started the Dutch mission, probably due to the fact that it saves the levels. I have heard of other people not working when loading this could be the same as when I start a level but delayed.

  • 09.24.2009 4:11 AM PDT
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Well, I sent a private message to that forum moderator over at page 9. Now I guess all I can do is wait. Here's to a speedy resolution.

  • 09.24.2009 4:20 AM PDT

It's only like 4 in the morning in Seattle isn't it?

  • 09.24.2009 4:24 AM PDT

I haven't got anything from MS on email also so that could possibly mean that they've noticed the problem and thinking about solution. Or they just pissed off about how many problems of same king is there. Btw, i forgot to say i'm from Finland so it's in Europe too the disc problem. Couple of my friends bought today the game and they have it also. Only 2 of my friends get to play from start to end without any problems. Lucky them. But it would be good if someone finds something out, that he/she shares it with others so we could know if we have to get refunds, new discs, new x360 etc. I'll keep posting updates as soon as i hear something new.

  • 09.24.2009 5:34 AM PDT

Its possible a piece of open ended coding is causing all this trouble, I've yet to encounter the disc read error on either disc, but if one of the coder staff forgot to close an event tag properly or even a simple title tag (trust me, this happens ALOT during programming for big sections of a project) which would cause it to fail.

Im thinking best case, they can soft-patch around the issue, and worst case, they put out a recall for all people who bought it to return the games for a refund, and fix the piece of code, and then re-press the copies and ship them back out.

  • 09.24.2009 5:36 AM PDT

http:///mecandes.poverellomedia.com

Someone said Microsoft told them a patch would be released this week for this problem -- however, other people are saying that Microsoft support is hanging up on them when they call about this. It seems possible the other guy was told there might be a patch just to appease him and get him off the phone.

TestNinjaAlpha has asked for more info from those of us complaining in this thread (with questions implying the problem is your disc or box, not their code) but I haven't yet seen any official acknowledgment of the problem from him, Bungie or Microsoft.

Can anyone link to an official acknowledgment of this problem?

  • 09.24.2009 6:00 AM PDT
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The video Alpha Minotaux posted a couple pages back is pretty much what I'm experiencing, which is both encouraging and frustrating at the same time. Having some sort of visual on what we're getting should help narrow down the problem, hopefully.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIcZL-LKHok

With that said, has anyone tested out the second Halo 3 disc with all the multiplayer maps to help see what's wrong? So far, the only map that caused the Disc Unreadable error was Longshore. The rest of the maps were loading fine (this was on Forge mode, solo).

  • 09.24.2009 6:08 AM PDT

I phoned microsoft support, got told to fill in a disc replacement and do that. She then hung up. I am not filling in a stupid form because I think you have to pay, I was already told I would have to pay for a problem with my Xbox even though it was apparently 'fixed' just under a year ago. I am not paying microsoft to fix a mistake that shouldn't be there.

The coding sounds plausable, it however only seems to affect first gen xbox's and maybe the problem really lies with how they read the code? Could the game be asking far to much from the console? Is there a way around this without having to get a new box? I hope their is an update soon, I have played it at a friends but I don't want to be making a 30 minute drive everyday and ruining his afternoons to play a game. Hopefully we will hear more when Seattle gets to work in 3 hours. Feel sorry for TestNinjaAlpha, going to have lots of messages. All I can see is that this hasn't been tested on all systems.

My multiplayer wouldn't work at all, it read and I tried to play but there wasn't even a cutscene it was immediate message.

[Edited on 09.24.2009 6:11 AM PDT]

  • 09.24.2009 6:10 AM PDT
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  • Exalted Legendary Member

http://www.unofficialguidetolive.co.uk/

Well I have tested my copy of ODST on my xbox ELITE that was made in 2008-03-28 and it gets the disk read error every time after the drop plus after the dutch mission. My wife said hey try it on mine. So I took my ODST copy and my 120GBHDD out and put it in her HALO3 Special Edition Xbox360. IT WORKS!!!

I played multiple missions last night with not one problem. The kicker is that my system is newer than hers.

Mine was made in 2008-03-28 and hers was made 2007-08-22.

BOTTOM LINE IS ITS THE SYSTEMS, NOT THE HDD OR THE GAME.

  • 09.24.2009 6:12 AM PDT

http:///mecandes.poverellomedia.com

A lot of folks are claiming that this only affects old Xboxes; not sure where are coming up with that -- that hasn't come from any official source.

My Xbox is having this trouble with the campaign, even installed to hard drive, and it is not old; it has a recent date of manufacture.

  • 09.24.2009 6:15 AM PDT
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Well, the earlier people from this thread were mostly first generation 360s, but now that even newer (fairly new, haven't seen any testimonies from 2009 buyers yet) 360s are being affected, I don't know what's going on now. What the hell is causing this error?

  • 09.24.2009 6:19 AM PDT

Has anyone downloaded a demo recently?

  • 09.24.2009 6:23 AM PDT

This is definitely not isolated to older 360's as many people in this thread have stated as well as people all over my dorm with new 360's FROM THIS YEAR are experiening the exact same problems as I am. And that guy that was saying older 360's cant play new games, give me a break. I bought Batman and DiRT 2 which are not even a month old and push my 360 a whole lot more than ODST does. I would really like Bungie to comment on this as all Microsoft "support" has given me is blame that I should get a new disc or get my 360 fixed when it clearly isn't the problem

  • 09.24.2009 6:23 AM PDT

im not getting disc unreadable even tho i havent completed the campaign..but is anyone else having trouble with the Firefight online mode? offline i can do it fine but online it freezes then goes smooth, freezes, then goes smooth, very frustrating, it MIGHT be my ISP since im still workin out the bugs but my friend is having the exact same problem and his internet never fails. i was just wondering if anyone else is having this problem with ODST. i played halo3 and i can play online perfectly! im so mad, i think im gonna take odst back and get MW2 lol

  • 09.24.2009 6:25 AM PDT
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  • Exalted Legendary Member

http://www.unofficialguidetolive.co.uk/

Again its not the HDD or the actual copy of the game. The problem stems from the version of the actual 360 itself. As for firefight its not your ISP. I have had the same problems with my friend when i got firefight working. Smooth 1 second freeze ups the next (also a problem with your 360 not reading the disc right).

  • 09.24.2009 6:30 AM PDT

http:///mecandes.poverellomedia.com

From this thread you'd think this was happening to a LOT of people... and yet, I haven't seen any reviews of the game where they say, "we couldn't review it because the disc wouldn't work in our Xbox," nor any coverage of this problem on the big gaming blogs that often jump on these issues when they hear about them... (they love to take shots at Microsoft, and the stories drive traffic to their site.) It must not be as widespread as we think?

If it is widespread, we need some mainstream blog/media coverage in order for Bungie/Microsoft to take it seriously and respond... they might not care about a few whiners in their forum, but they'll respond to bad press that slows sales.

[Edit] Here's a bit of discussion on Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/9no03/before_you_buy_ halo_3_odst_beware_that_the_game/

[Edited on 09.24.2009 8:47 AM PDT]

  • 09.24.2009 6:34 AM PDT

I have an update on my case.

I found that the problems I've been having with my ODST disc were that it was having problems loading cutscenes. The disc read errors only happen 2 seconds into a cutscene. I found that if I skip the cutscene just as it's starting, I can by pass the error and continue playing normally. Only problem is this is happening on every cutscene and I can't experience the story this way. I've gotten to the third Mombasa Street mission and have no idea what's going on storywise.

I've tried playing the multiplayer disc without the HDD, and Longshore worked without any problems. Found the skull location and everything. When I put the HDD back in, the lock up happened again midgame. I was able to grab the skull and get the achievement just before the game froze. Haven't tried ODST without the HDD yet but it looks like my problem with the multiplayer disc is stemming from my HDD.

I don't know the exact day my 360 was made, but I got it back at the end of 2006 around when Gears of War 1 came out. My HDD is a 120GB I bought about 2 years later.

Posted by: Swordsman Yong
Just adding in another case. Gone through 2 sets thus far, both discs on both sets had the same problem.

On ODST, Firefight works fine, at least on the maps I played thus far. I get disc read errors either at the very end of missions right before cutscenes, or during the actual mission, the former more foten than the latter.

The multiplayer disc refuses to load Longshore. Either the game tries to start the map and locks up(everything is frozen and I can't do anything without ejecting the disc first), or I'm able to play for a few seconds then the game locks up. All other maps I've tried have worked fine. The problem only arises hen I try to play Longshore.

I tried loading the games onto the HDD. Both installs were corrupted and unplayable. I could get to the main menu on both but neither could load any levels.

  • 09.24.2009 6:46 AM PDT

I dont know if my xbox is broken or my disk is...Disk 1 works fine but disk 2 only works on my brothers xbox and not mine. With mine it just states that i have no disk inserted. I thought maybe it was something to do with my xbox being older

  • 09.24.2009 6:56 AM PDT

I have heard some stuff that you mentioned Jesterr, I think it was on gamespot, said that the first disc was fine and that the second didn't read at all, mine doesn't read, just says unreadable.

  • 09.24.2009 7:06 AM PDT

http:///mecandes.poverellomedia.com

I'm not sure if it's related, but another thing that is happening to me is that the game doesn't seem to be creating a save file correctly. As I play through the beginning of first mission (it always fails for me at the helmet-in-screen cutscene), sometimes when I die it will return to last checkpoint -- sometimes an earlier checkpoint -- and sometimes right back to the beginning of the level. The saving seems to be random... sometimes when I look under Memory/Games there is a save file present, and sometimes there is not. Anyway, just thought I'd mention in case the problem is with the save file somehow.

  • 09.24.2009 7:24 AM PDT
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Posted by: Haughmill
Has anyone downloaded a demo recently?


I just played through the Batman: Arkham Asylum demo, which took an hour to download. There were no problems. So it doesn't seem like a hard drive issue. At least not for the other games.

  • 09.24.2009 7:49 AM PDT

It was just I had problems with the Fifa 10 demo, said the disk was unreadable and someone else said they had the same problem with the Wet demo. But I also downloaded PES and that was fine.

  • 09.24.2009 7:51 AM PDT

I just played through the Brutal Legend demo and it worked fine. I dont think it has to do with the HDD, in my case at least. Also, weirdest thing, I was just able to play some Firefight, which I couldn't previously do. Still cant touch campaign though

  • 09.24.2009 8:02 AM PDT
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Whatever my case is with this game, sometimes it lets me load one map. This time, it was a firefight map (which was fun, btw). After one wave, I decided to quit and see if I could load a campaign map, but after the load screen, the error popped up again.

So once in a blue moon, I was able to play for a few minutes, but any more loading after that and it's back to square one.

EDIT: what the above poster just said. Weird coincidence, huh?

[Edited on 09.24.2009 8:05 AM PDT]

  • 09.24.2009 8:04 AM PDT