I had very similar experience. After reaching the second cutscene, the drive started to make unbelievable noise. I couldn't eject the disk so I had to shut down the whole console before I was able to get the disc out. After that, no game has worked (tried 2 in addition to Halo 3). The drive continues to make that awful noise. I dunno whether it was the Halo 3 limited edition that broke the drive or just bad luck, but it's interesting somebody else has had the same problem.
I had very similar experience. After reaching the second cutscene, the drive started to make unbelievable noise. I couldn't eject the disk so I had to shut down the whole console before I was able to get the disc out. After that, no game has worked (tried 2 in addition to Halo 3). The drive continues to make that awful noise. I dunno whether it was the Halo 3 limited edition that broke the drive or just bad luck, but it's interesting somebody else has had the same problem.