"The toothpaste trick"

[GeneralSnake]

So, I bumped my 360 today, while playing MW2.
It stopped working when the next map was loading. Disc was unreadable, dirty or damaged thing.

There are two huge axial scratches. I guess this is a common problem, that microsoft has lawsuits against them for, that their system damages games if it is moved while in play. blah blah blah.

Does the toothpaste trick work? I have been reading about it a lot, it seems like it would work. A lot of people claim it does if done properly. The proper way seems easy.
I am going to try it anyways, I have nothing to lose, the disc doesnt work anyways, so either it still doesnt work or it does.

[Skud]

No clue, man...I wouldn't bet on it.

[GeneralSnake]

It is going away, slowly...
my father actually told me about this when I was much younger, for my playstation discs. I have heard about it since then also, from other people.

[Zantheus]

Yes it does work and I know this first hand

[lady-MGS]

Details, detail please. We also have a game that the kids would play on the 360 that has that problem. I've never even heard of what you guys are talking about. As long as it wouldn't hurt the 360, I'd like to try it.

[DougBob]

For CD/DVDs I usually use furniture polish for minor scratches. If the scratch is too bad I use the old Disk Dr.

It works pretty good and I like the one that uses the pad in straight motions from the inside of the disk to the out side. I don't like the ones with the little discs that use circular motions to get it out. It does pretty much what the tooth paste trick does but a lot quicker.

[Skud]

What kind of toothpaste? Whitening? Gel? Paste? Baking soda? Crest? Colgate?....

Seriously, for those who've used it, I'm wondering if there's a tried and true brand.

[jaspurr]

I think it acts as a mild abrasive removing the scratch just as you would T-cut your car.

[Sirex]

yeah it does, it just smooths out the scratches, making them a bit more, well less interfering.

it has to be a normal paste paste, bog standard white paste will do it.
Dont asume the more abrasive it is the better, you need it to finely 'buff' away the scratches.

If you do this then use a light furniture polish, it will do a better job

[K PhaNTOM]

It does work but like Bob said, Alcohol solves everything. I once super glued my fingers and BAM a bit of alcohol worked. It works wonders on DVDs, however, I wouldn't usually use Furniture Polish but 100% alcohol nail polish remover (Same, but gives me a reason to have a nail polish remover in my house )

[Apache Warrior]

Be careful. Most nail polish remover has acetone as the main ingredient. If you use it on DVDs you will dissolve the plastic.
Apache

[GeneralSnake]

lol wtf guys? you tryin to get me to dissolve my dvds?
My scratches are deep, so this was taking a lot of time and toothpaste.
And toothpaste is not the only thing one can use like others have been saying, it just needs to be lightly abrasive. many toothpastes actually wont work, gel ones. if it feels slightly gritty then you are good.

DO NOT APPLY IN A CIRCULAR MOTION!

Only apply the paste or whatever from the inside(center) of the disc outwards.

So what I did, borrowed a friends clean cd, burned it to my 360 HDD, and I just run MW2 off my HDD now, my scratched disk can boot the game, just wouldnt load MP maps. But it all loads off of the HDD except the boot file or whatever.

I was seeing results with the toothpaste though. some colgate whitening. the scratches were getting less deep, and the smaller, radial scratches were appearing.

For lady or anyone else who has not heard of this, this site expands on it further.
XBox 360 disc scratching - jdrgaming.com

[K PhaNTOM]

Hay, it works. Try it. And if it does dissolve then it's already scratched beyond repair.

[juneau]

The toothpaste trick does work but from my past experience it's only really effective on minor surface scratches. If you have grooves or anything then it's going to be a tough fix.

PS. Serves you right for buying a game that screwed over PC players!!! I kid, i kid.

[Trooper110]

The reason it works is that when they "burn" a disk off a master disk in the factory, they are literally burning the pits and lands in to the disk itself, then a protective clear plastic surface is put down over it.

When you look at the bottom of the CD, you're looking at the clear plastic protective layer, the burned surface is actually closest to the label. That's why using toothpaste or another substance that "smooths" the surface can make a disk readable again, or the disk doctor that buffs the surface, especially if it's a minor scratch.

If you scratch too deeply, or scratch through the label side of a disk you physically damage the surface where the pits and lands exist, which in most cases will cause the disk to be completely destroyed/unreadable and nothing is going to fix it.