sounds like a bad motor? so you reflashed this when you swapped it brom xbox to xbox? because your cant just swap them out, I assume the opening function may work, but it wont play the disk, without being flashed to match the new console.
strange??
lets be clear,
1) drive wont OPEN when you press eject
2) you put in a new drive (did you flash the new drive to match your xbox?) and it wont open either.
3) you put the origional drive in a new xbox and it opens the trey??
4) what is this about manually opening? never heard that term used in this context.
there is a sesor that tells the drive to close when pressure is applied to the trey, if you have a working xbox, place something in front of the trey and open it. when the trey opens and hits this obstruction it should close and start reading, this is the same action as closing the trey by hand and not pressing the button. I have never heard of this issue, but if it was me I would start there, seems like the drive is picking up some kind of restriction and it thinks you are pushing it closed. therfore reading the disk, but your drive key dont match so it cant read the disk..
I am curious to know what you mean by opening it manually