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[crystalgeek]

The XBOX Safety Guide

I decided to write this guide in the hope that for those of us with softmods, there is always an alternative. A safety net and a way to fix various error codes in which other situations we would be well and truly buggered.

First of I’m crystalgeek and this is just a personal guide which I will hopefully update when I need to or I get over ideas, I won’t except any blame for problems you may cause by following this guide.

Ok so on with the guide. Lets take that you have just tried to softmod a friends xbox, everything went ok, you get to your evox screen or whatever and then pow you restart and there we have an error 15. You freak out and start unscrewing the box, swapping drives around and going nuts trying to work out what you have done wrong. Don’t worry is my first bit of advice I had this same problem the first time I attempted a softmod for a friend, as something went wrong during the installation and then I tried to remove the softmod and got an error 16.

This is a basic what you should always do but probally never bother with. Always keep a backup of your EEPROM seriously if something major goes wrong and you don’t have this backed up then you are up **** creek without a paddle.

So you got your EEPROM now what do you do with it. I recommend compiling something like notepad for xbmc along with xbmc into a single disk image. This means that if worst happens you are more then likely able to boot back into your machine with your safety disk, and view your EEPROM Key and write it down in case you need it, this also gives you FTP access to your machine in case of emergency. So you have your EEPROM good. And you have a way of accessing your Xbox and gaining ftp access. Even better
But what if you are on your xbox or a friends and whilst messing about with ftp, or some xbox application you delete your dashboard or remove your xbox dash, what then, what if you simply move it but have no ftp access anymore, or the pc dies. Well it could happen. I recommend getting together a collection of all your dashboards you may use, putting them in separate folders and using DVD2XBOX as a base compile a second xbox disk.
Now if you have moved something around and caused a problem you simply boot into your disk which will load DVD2XBOX and you can use the file explorer section of this app to move files back to where they came from or to recopy across those important dashboard files.

Well that’s a few good safety tips, they will get you out of most tight spots, but there are often worse situations and you cannot always figure out what has gone wrong. If it’s a case of getting dashboard error codes, such as 21, 20 and 16 you can often solve these by simply booting into one of your safety disks and repairing the problem. Or by using the LIVE DISK TRICK. What is this live disk trick

Basically if you manage to delete or corrupt your M$ dashboard files you can repair them by loading a Live enabled game and returning to dashboard. Heres an example

ex: loadup Halo 2 - slect your acount, when it says sign into xbox live choose register new account then you get the option to exit halo 2 select exit halo 2. Will update if old or currupt files found.

And that’s your problem solved, now if you used an old softmod you may not still get the clock loop problem, this can be solved by simply inserting your live disk and returning to the dashboard, and resetting the clock.

There are many errors that mean you can’t boot from your safety disks and the xbox refuses to boot. For this you must rebuild your HD to stock and re softmod your box, it’s a pain I know but by far the easiest solution is to use XBOXHDM with your eeprom and the original dashboard files to return your HD to stock.

To finish ill take a look at most error codes and show how these can be fixed using these safety nets.

1 – bootldr, unknown
2 - bootldr - , unknown
5 - kernel - HDD not locked, use your XBOXHDM to lock the drive
6 - kernel - Cannot unlock HDD, locked with wrong key? Use XBOXHDM to unlock with master password and then relock with automatically generated key
7 - kernel - , unknown
8 - kernel - No HDD found – put your HD back, easy to forget I guess
9 - kernel - , unknown
10 - kernel - , unknown
11 - kernel - No DVD Founnd – again put the DVD back, I have done this a few times
12 - kernel - , unknown
13 - kernel - Dashboard launch fail (due to missing/bad key, or anything else that would prevent it from running) and the dashboard didn't specify why it failed. – Use your LIVE CD, reinstalls dashboard should fix this error, untested
14 - dashboard - Error loading dashboard (dashboard generic error) - Use your LIVE CD, reinstalls dashboard should fix this error, untested
16 - dashboard - Other files to do with dashboard / dashboard settings (specific dashboard error) - Use your LIVE CD, reinstalls dashboard should fix this error

20 - kernel - The dashboard was attempted to load and failed; It was a cold boot, and the dashboard didn't specify why it failed, but it (for some reason) needed to be noted that the dvd passed the challenge/response authentication – use your DVD2XBOX DIsk
21 - anywhere - This error says that the machine was booted to display a error, basically someone told the machine to reboot (or launch a xbe) with this flag, and the error code just means its been rebooted by the flag - use your DVD2XBOX DIsk

and always backup your EEPROM and important files.

[krayzie]

I like the idea but this contains too much faulty and way too less usable information