First of all, I don't take credit for the marriage theory. And frankly at first I thought the constant spamming of it all over the scene was annoying. First off, I know many people have probably figured out what I now know themselves, but for those still stuck I wanted to post my test results. I am going to catalog it into different sections in kind of a story.
Time: Halo 2 Launch Night
EEPROM #1
Okay this XBox was my first. It was chipped with a Cheapmod chip with a really old bios in it. In the following days it got broken by a friend when I was teaching him to mod. But in anycase, thanks to the big HD scare I put my clean stock HD back in to avoid getting banned. Registered, everything was fine...
Time: 3 days later
EEPROM #1
After reading more info and theories about the recent bannings, I decided to conduct an experiment. On the first day I put dashboard files on C: and hacked game saves on E: . I basically polluted my drive with all kinds of things XBL would search for. I was sure this wasn't the case because XBL would waste precious bandwidth and time searching for specific files. On day two I still wasn't banned. On day three...disaster struck. My friend Chris while teaching him to mod XBoxes dropped the mobo after successfully installing everything over again. So since that mobo was out of it, he gave me his XBox (I could have fixed it, but his had an X2.3 in it and I wanted it. He had no problem giving it to me, especially since I was the one that modded his box in the first place). So I unlocked my stock drive, and unlocked his drives for his eventual replacement of his XBox. Then I put the stock drive into his newer XBox. I noticed something interesting. Even though the HD had the gamertag saved to it, it had vanished and I had to recover it. This gave me an idea later.
Time: About a week since Halo 2 launch
EEPROM #2 (Chris's XBox)
Still wasn't banned even though HD would technically be married to the other EEPROM, so obviously XBL doesn't cross check it's lists for duplicate HD keys or whatever they marry with the EEPROM. So it wouldn't seem they ban the HD if the EEPROM is different (since that forces you to recover the account).
Time: About 24 hours ago
EEPROM #2 & #3
I was intrigued by the marriage theory and it seemed like the logical answer, so I concocted a plan. I could use my big 120gig HD if I got a new EEPROM thus making my XBox practically a "new one" to XBL's eyes. So I got the new EEPROM, put it in Config Magic, locked the 120gig HD to my "new" XBox. Recovered my account. It's been 24 hours, no ban yet. So it seems to have worked.
I took a few extra precautions though. JUST IN CASE XBL ever checks HD contents I put everything in the F: drive including the dashboards. Then I muddled with the Evox M7 bios (since I couldn't get XBTool to work with any Xecuter bioses) and set it to boot from /F/dashboards/evox/evoxdash.xbe . So now my C drive is clean stock, my E drive is clean (other than the emulator saves).
This doesn't mean they won't find another way to screw us, and I guess they could be waiting to ban us, but unless we give them reason, why should they care?
Also, I wish to stat that I believe a lot of the bannings were simple user error. Either people didn't realize they accessed live with the chip on, or someone else in the household did and didn't say anything. I would say about 80% of the bannings are due to this.
And lastly, I realize I am simply standing on the shoulders of giants...or maybe just on their feet. And that my discover is nothing ground breaking. I just wanted to share my experience and maybe contribute to the scene a little. Once my programming skills are top notch, then I will contribute some homebrew.
Please tell me what you guys think. I love the scene and everyone on it.
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Topic: Marriage Theory Confirmed (Read 59 times)