I have been experiencing the same problem that everyone else has been having and it is very frustrating! I am getting an error message of 03-80-00 from both disks of BF4. I would like to share the solutions I have attempted for reference and see if anyone else has any other ideas or input they would like to share.
After a frustrating hour of trying to get my xbox 360 to read either disk of BF4 I decided to take matters into my own hands. My xbox is an older model, xbox 360 core 20G edition from 2006. My Xbox was having trouble reading other games like BF3 and COD Black Ops 2. It would read these games about every 3rd time I opened and closed the disk tray but none the less they would read. Once I got BF4, I was able to get it to read once after an hour. Other games that I have, played the first time I close the tray, like Gears of War, Skyrim, or AC 2. Now the similarity these have in common is that they are all older games. There may be something in the writing of new game disks which causes a read problem in older consoles, but that is just my speculation. Now I decided, "Heck, my xbox is way out of warranty, and if I send it in to get it fixed which costs $99, I might as well buy a refurbished console for the same price." Or I could attempt to fix it myself, which is what I did.
I figured, since my xbox is old, there is probably a lot of dust inside (which was true) and there could possibly be some dust on the disk reading lens. So I went on YouTube and found some great vids on how to open your xbox http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EukpAHKi_-A, and also how to clean a lens http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P88NtUuPxd8. This does void the warranty on your xbox. So after following those instructions and cleaning the lens, the results were still the same, I couldnt play BF4, or COD BO2, but i could play gears and skyrim. I could just get a new disk drive but, the disk drive and mother board are paired and have an identical code. If you change out the disk drive the codes will not match and you will be unable to play on xbox live. So I dug deeper into what may cause the problem and found another possible solution, POT.
Now I know what your thinking and no I did not smoke anything, the POT Im referring to is an adjustment on the laser itself called a POT adjustment. This will adjusts the intensity of the laser enabling a supposed "better read" on the disk. I found another amazing video on youtube on how to adjust this setting and went to work. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eKp_y6tSFw. I also found a good link to learn a little bit more about what kind of threshold your allowed to adjust this setting, "anywhere between 4.0KΩ to 6.4KΩ" http://www.infobarrel.com/Xbox_360_DVD_Pot_Tweak. So I broke out my trusty multimeter and got to work. the original reading I got on my xbox was 6.82. From the research I did that reading was too high so I lowered it down to 6.22. I tried reading the disks with no success. I adjusted the laser to 5.45 and this time I got disk 2 of BF4 to read but not disk 1. I tried COD BO2 which didnt read and also gears, which read easily. I lowered it down to 4.72 then to 4.26 with the same results at the 5.45 level.
So this is where I am, stuck just like the rest of you guys, unable to play the game Ive been waiting for a year. To finally have the game and not be able to play it is the most frustrating thing in the world! If anyone has any suggestions or things for me to try on my xbox, id like to hear from you. I may possibly attempt to get a new laser, but I dont know if that will help, but worth a shot. Good luck with your own fixes and hope this problem gets addressed.
