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[reddragon105]

This morning I created a brand new Xbox Live profile and using a pre paid card to register for 12+1 months on Gold. Everything went smoothly and I was playing Gears of War within minutes. Very happy with it. Then I switched the console off and went for lunch.

When I came back and switched the console on again it said it couldn't sign me in. I checked the internet connection - all fine - and tried again. Same problem. Said it couldn't recover gamertag.

I cleared everything off the hard drive (haven't had it long enough for there to be anything worth keeping), formatted it and performed maintenance. Then went online to try to recover it. Everything went fine - I entered my gamertag, e-mail and password, and it said 'Signed In' just before the stage where you accept the terms. Then it says 'recovering profile' and you get a loading bar. When it reaches about half way I get a message saying 'Error recovering gamertag. Please make sure your hard drive is connected and that you are connected to the internet.' and gives the number 80150003:0.

Things I've tried:
Recovering it on 2 other housemate's 360s - no success
Using a hard drive and memory card separately, and both together - no success
Formatting hard drive and memory card - no success
Creating a new gamertag (silver membership), deleting it and recovering it - successfully.


I've googled the error number and found it's hardly an uncommon problem - and that people were speculating it had to do with the spring update. But my console was fully updated before I created this gamertag.

Any advice/help? Any possible solutions to this?

[wallacejbj]

Strange never heard of this one myself, i would personally ring M$ about it, they should be able to point you in the right direction they are normally quite good with xbox live problems, just have that error code handy and they should be able to sort it out.

Although some guys on here might know i would think they might tell you the same thing. Might be a problem when processing your payment for xbox live gold.

The only question i have did you buy it from ebay? The only thing that springs to mind is that some of them off ebay are dependant on what country you live in.

e.g i can buy a uk prepaid card from ebay and it will work fine on my uk machine, but if i bought a american one it wont work although xbox live points are apparantley region free.

But with you creating a new gamertag from scratch i cant see how this should be a problem.

Hope this kinda helps, but would recommend you ringing microsoft.

[reddragon105]

Yes, I did buy it from eBay. The seller was from the USA, and did have a disclaimer saying 'These may or may not work internationally, use at your own risk', but then the auction was advertised worldwide (otherwise I wouldn't have found it). I checked their feedback first and found people from all over the world, including the UK, have bought them from this seller and used them with success.

Also I would think that nationality shouldn't be a problem. Surely you could create an account and pay for a Gold subscription in the USA, then move or go on holiday to the UK and use your account there? The internet is global, after all. The only thing is, because 12 months of Live is $50 (£25) in the USA and £40(!) in the UK, Microsoft may be funny about paying for a US account in the UK. But apart from that I don't see why it should matter.

And, besides, I've checked the official support forum and other people are having the same problem regardless of payment method and locality. A Microsoft representative told me that the problem is not localised and that it's most likely a corrupt profile on their servers.

What I'm going to do is hold out until Monday, when they're performing some maintenance on Live, and see if that fixes it. If not, I'll phone them and complain some more!