ok so:
this one game you 'hired' (im assuming u meant rented or bought used) isnt working cuz its scratched. this could be because:
A. its scratched bad enough for it not to be read by the xbox.
B. theres a prob with ur dvd drive
C. u got rid of the normal ms dash and just have linux
D. theres an actual problem with the software on the disk
options B and C are out, B. because you can play audio cds and C. because you can play backups. so its either A or D. D sounds ridiculous, but i bought a game from blockbuster (unreal championship) and it had no scratches at all. it wouldnt play in my xbox though. i took it back and the guy said it had prob been exposed to a magnet or something.(i thought that magnets deleting disks was a rumor, but whatever
) what you can try doing is loading up a file manager (if you use avalaunch or unleashx use the built in one, if not i highly recommend boXplorer) and going to the D drive. if there really arent that many scratches, you should see the files on the disk. if the data was somehow destroyed, you will not see the files (or at most some of the files. if it was hanging on the black screen, assuming the data was somehow destroyed,it was missing AT LEAST the default.xbe file)
once youve looked at D:\ post back here and tell us what u found.