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[Gumba]

QUOTE (MicroChip @ Jul 23 2004, 03:19 PM)

Question: Could we, instead, backup everything on C: E: and F: by FTP, boot to Evox already installed as dash, use their built in format tool to format the 3 partitions, reboot the xbox to OS2 and use it's ftp to restore C:, then boot back in to Evox and use it's ftp to restore E: and F: ? Thanks! MC

YOU DO NOT NEED TO FORMAT F:!!!
You don't need to backup f, you don't need to restore it, and you don't need to open your xbox, nor burn CDs.



Complete Guide to Fixing the Xenium OS2 Beta and Pre-release Formatting/Xbox Live Bug V2 (5-10mins)

Introduction

The Xenium OS 2 Beta (and the Pre-Release on the ICE chips), has a bug in its drive formatting Tools. If you use XOS2 to prepare your HD, then you won't be able to run many Xbox Live games, instead they will freeze after the studio titles, or before them, or while loading the main game (depends on the game), even off the retail discs while booted with the retail bios (TSOP)!

To fix it you need to reformat your E partition with the EvolutionX dashboard's built in formatter, which is accessed via FTP, but you will not need to format your C, F or G drives. Not having to format C is a lot safer as you do not have to wipe your Xboxes operating system, not formatting F or G (if it exists) will save you LOTS of time (days) and frustration if you actually have anything on F or G .


Guide

*) Note: you should try just deleting the files in the e:\cache directory and see if that fixes your problem. If it does, please post details in this thread. Thankyou.

1) ftp the contents of your E drive to a separate folder on your PC, If you have HUGE folders on your E drive (e/apps and e/roms perhaps?) then you may just want to move them to F first? might be faster than FTPing them.
1.5) if you have avalaunch, install evox (remember to configure the IP address) on your c drive and rename avalaunch.xbe (avalaunch-.xbe will do) (assuming X2 bios)
2) reboot xbox, connect via ftp to evox
3) Format partition 1 (E drive) using raw FTP commands via your FTP client ie

QUOTE (from the evox tutorial - modified)

1. "Formatpath \Device\Harddisk0\Partition1" You will receive a [key] reply from the Xbox that will appear in your FTP client 2. "Formatdrive [key]" (obviously you’d enter the actual key that you received, not [key])

4) disconnect and reconnect to the evox ftp server
5) upload the contents of the E drive back to the xbox
5.5) if you were using avalaunch before, then rename the avalaunch xbe back to what it was before ("avalaunch.xbe" for my bios)

NOTE: If you have UnleashX there is an easier way to format E rather than using EvoX http://forums.xbox-s...dpost&p=1725421

My Testing Methodology

I formatted Y, then X, then Z, then C, then E in the process of fixing this, I tested after each drive was formatted by trying to boot my PGR2 retail disc, and the problem (ie PGR2, Amped2 and other Live games would not fully run, even from the retail discs) was only fixed after E... So, the only things I could say were that

1) E must be formatted, and
2) formatting C, E, X,Y,Z does fix the problem.
3) F does not need to be formatted (and thus neither backed up, nor restored!)

I then posted v1 of this guide, in which I asked others to try formatting E first to see if you only need to format E. A number of people who used my guide reported they only had to format E, so I'm updating the guide to v2

In retrospect I think this makes sense, E drive is the first partition, and thus the most likely to have a critical problem I suppose.

FYI: Xbox partition map: 1=E 2=C 3=X 4=Y 5=Z 6=F 7=G

Appleguru and myself worked this out in a chat.

Thanks to all

[EDIT]Updated to V2[/EDIT]
[EDIT]Added UnleashX note[/EDIT]
[EDIT]Added e:\cache note[/EDIT]

[appleguru]

Righto; gumba==100% correct (I didi this this morning ) Not having to do F saves tons of time

[Outrager]

Thanks for the info. Too bad I had to transfer around 35GB of data from my F to my PC back to F, because I did it before this. I'll tell you right now, that takes a hell of a long time. While transferring from my PC back to the XBox, I went to sleep and when I woke up it still had a few minutes to go.

Maybe we should make this a pinned thread or start a new thread with just the important information and make it pinned.

[Gumba]

QUOTE (Outrager @ Jul 27 2004, 04:42 AM)

Thanks for the info. Too bad I had to transfer around 35GB of data from my F to my PC back to F, because I did it before this. I'll tell you right now, that takes a hell of a long time. While transferring from my PC back to the XBox, I went to sleep and when I woke up it still had a few minutes to go. Maybe we should make this a pinned thread or start a new thread with just the important information and make it pinned.

Yes, I was about 30% of the way through backing up 100GB to 8 different HDs over 4 PCs after 1.5 days of ftping (long story short), hence my desperation to find a better way

[screamingFit]

Just to add some speculation, I upgraded my HD and used the OS2 "Copy Disk" option (this was before I knew of this thread).  I, of course, had the same problems with the locking up of Live enabled games.  Still not finding this thread, I went through everything to make sure everything was configured right, tried FTP'ing Live games from different computers, etc.  Found that when I locked my hard drive, all of the Live games started working!  So, in actuality, I fixed the problem without reformatting but by locking the drive.

Weird - I know.

[psm]

A noob here

SO reading Gumba post, I have a couple of questions --

Does this mean that you should use the OS2 hdd format tool first, or do you use evox after using the OS2 tool?  

I am following the old tut and putting a CDRW into the xbox.  Please help

This post has been edited by psm: Jul 28 2004, 06:44 PM

[xboxjohn33]

Thanks Gumba and Chocula for the info and anyone else who added to this post. I don't have to buy a new xbox now. I only formatted E: drive and PGR2 works now. This post should be pinned for all the people that have the OS2. I have searched forums for three days untill I finally found this post.

Thanks Again

[Outrager]

BTW, does anyone know why there's an X, Y, and Z drive? They seem to each take up 700MB.

[Gumba]

QUOTE (Outrager @ Jul 29 2004, 01:15 AM)

BTW, does anyone know why there's an X, Y, and Z drive? They seem to each take up 700MB.

[offtopic]The XYZ drives are HD caches, any game can use any of those drives as a cache. So for example, when you are playing halo and it loads a level map it will write it to whichever cache drive its decided to use, until you have 700MB of levels loaded, and it starts bumping out the earlier levels, you will get much faster loading time.

3 drives means the most recent 3 games you played can be cached

One reason why XBox loading times are so much better than PS2 [/offtopic]

[Gumba]

QUOTE (xboxjohn33 @ Jul 29 2004, 12:53 AM)

Thanks Gumba and Chocula for the info and anyone else who added to this post. I don't have to buy a new xbox now. I only formatted E: drive and PGR2 works now. This post should be pinned for all the people that have the OS2. I have searched forums for three days untill I finally found this post. Thanks Again

So, you didn't format C or XYZ?

Cool.

Can anyone else double confirm that you *only* need to format E:?

[Gumba]

QUOTE (psm @ Jul 28 2004, 07:21 PM)

A noob here SO reading Gumba post, I have a couple of questions -- Does this mean that you should use the OS2 hdd format tool first, or do you use evox after using the OS2 tool?   I am following the old tut and putting a CDRW into the xbox.  Please help

If you can use CDRWs with your xbox then you could use the old method and I'm sure it'd be fine.

The problem is a lot of xboxes don't have very good dvd drives and have trouble reading CDRWs, and this is one of the major features of the xenium, being able to format without using any media.

So, you can do it either way.

Personally, I would recommend setting up with the xenium os as normal, and then fixing the problem (according xboxjohn33 you only need to repartition e:, which makes it very easy). This will give you a 100% media free installation, which I am all for.

But feel free to do a media based installation if you are more comfortable with that

[SmokedSober]

I had the same problem everyone else had until I followed this little guide, but now a new problem has arose.  I don't know if it's something I missed to cause this or what, but now when I enter my TSOP, I no longer have any of my saved games or soundtracks.  I know they were there before I did this guide, and I know I put everything back into the E: drive that I backed up. Any suggestions as to what I did?

[xboxjohn33]

QUOTE (Gumba @ Jul 29 2004, 04:01 AM)

Personally, I would recommend setting up with the xenium os as normal, and then fixing the problem (according xboxjohn33 you only need to repartition e:, which makes it very easy). This will give you a 100% media free installation, which I am all for.

To clarify things, it was a virgin Xbox harddrive which I screwed up the E partition with BoxExplorer. Everything was fine until I decided to reformat the E drive (only)with OS2. I then restored it from a backup. Xbox Live enabled games then would hang. Then formatted with EvolutionX (Thanks to this post), now it all works again. Hope they get this bug worked out for the final release of OS2.

[Outrager]

QUOTE (xboxjohn33 @ Jul 30 2004, 03:48 AM)

To clarify things, it was a virgin Xbox harddrive which I screwed up the E partition with BoxExplorer. Everything was fine until I decided to reformat the E drive (only)with OS2. I then restored it from a backup. Xbox Live enabled games then would hang. Then formatted with EvolutionX (Thanks to this post), now it all works again. Hope they get this bug worked out for the final release of OS2.

Considering it seems like a simple reformatting of the drives I don't think it should be too hard to work out. If only they released a fixed OS right away instead of letting this carry on. Or at least have something official on their website stating there's a problem and how to fix it.

[Neo_313]

So it sounds like the people having problems is the people who had hard drives put in right?