After reading the sticky and various posts detailing my same problem, I'm still sort of hoping someone can help me figure out what I'm doing wrong.
First, let me be clear: My husband bought me my 360 a few years ago for christmas from Gamestop. He also bought me a Microsoft 20gig harddrive from Best Buy about a month later. I know the harddrive is a microsoft hard drive as I recall the packaging, it says it clearly on the thing, and when I select that particular HDD from the system it has the little logo underneath it. It is the only HDD I have ever had for my 360. I don't have a backup.
Today I decided it would be awesome to play Jade Empire again. Upon inserting the disc, up popped an update. I figured it was the backwards compatibility software and let it install while I made dinner. After it installed and had rebooted the system I tried to boot up the game. Didn't work. It gave me the error stating I needed to redownload the game. I noticed that where it would normally have the graphic for the game disc it said CDX. I didn't think much of that at the time. Since it wasn't working, I glanced through the forums and looked at the official sticky. I tried deleting the content, clearing the system cache, and redownloading the update. None of that worked, it still gave me the error. So I decided to try something different. I went and grabbed my Fable disc to see if maybe that would work, thinking perhaps that it might be the Jade Empire disc. This time the cd graphic read "Play Fable Presale Disc" but it still gave me the error. I searched the forums and google a bit more and saw a post somewhere that mentioned that the update for the compatibility software required 3 gigs of storage. I realized that I had less than a gig available on my HDD, so I went and deleted a bunch of games that I don't particularly play anymore and freed up 9 gigs worth. I cleared the system cache, redownloaded the update and.. it still told me I had 9 gigs free, which made me scratch my head because I thought the update would take up 3 of them. Still won't read the disc.
I don't have another system to test these games in having sold both of my old xboxes, but both discs are in pristine condition with no scratches on them and the last time I used either of them they worked fine without any glitches.
So, "in short" .. is there something I'm missing, some step I've overlooked?
Oh, P.S. Jade Empire's disc and the Fable disc are both limited editions, but I don't know if that makes a difference or not.