I have an original 'fat' 360 elite, and for a few months now I've had this problem that if I close the tray without there being a disk in the tray then it has a real bad time trying to open the tray again. I press the button and it goes 'clunk-clunk' and doesn't open, and trying to open it from the dashboard doesn't work either. Standing it up or laying it down seemed to help before, but doesn't any more - now I have to jam a knife in there and pry the tray open, and I'm real worried I might damage some gears or something permanently.

If there's a disk in there, then there's no problem. My 'solution' has just been to remember to always leave a disk in the tray at all times, but whenever I have friends over I usually forget to warn them and they try to be super helpful and put 360 games back into correct case when they're done and all I can do is run forwards in slow motion saying "NOOOOOoooooo" as the empty tray closes.

Does anyone else have this problem? Any way to fix this? I've had this machine a while now and it's way out of warranty.

I have the exact same problem with my machine, though I don't know of a fix. Unfortunately. I usually can get it to open after a few attempts, but it's such a hassle, so like you I just keep a disc in the tray. It baffles me as to why this happens... I'm not a tech geek enough to really understand it, I guess.

Try blowing on it. O.o

That is quite odd. I have a similar machine but that's never happened to me.

My old 360 did this, I would poke the disk drive hard for it to open. Very weird.

Mine's the same, I have to just leave a disc in at all times. I've googled it before, seems like a common problem.

You can open the drive with a paperclip instead of prying it open (not my video). If it happens a lot you could trill a hole in the faceplate pretty easy with a dremel or a small drill bit so you don't have to take the faceplate off all the time. You could get another xbox too but if you've held out this long I'd just wait for the next gen of consoles.

My old xbox did this before I got a new one. If you give it a good smack on the top just above the tray at the same time you hit the button, it should come open. But the problem's just going to get worse over time if it's anything like my experience.