It is a "blue" screen of death. It is actually black with green writing instead of the traditional blue and silver. But it is the same thing, the damn thing locks up and there is no way to avoid it.
www.xbox-scene.com talks all about the error messages you can get.
And Omega, I have looked everywhere for that hole, I can not find it, I will look again in the morning but I think I will have to take it apart to get the CD back. And I will call Microsoft in the morning just to get an estimate. Thanks all for your help, any more advice would be greatly appreciated!