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[fallenangle]

Found the answer to the question myself, it was actually hidden away on the web site concerned.

You just use 7Zip on the first/main file and you don't even need to highlight the second part. As long as the second part is in the same folder it will extract the contents of that at the same time to create one decompressed folder. Simple.

BTW I had a problem with the DVD-R I burned with the AID v4.53 ISO. The usual recommendation is to burn at the slowest speed but what I didn't realise is that the (Philips) DVD-R media I've been using has a stated minimum speed support of x3 (also supports x4, x6, x8).

This time I was a using a new burner that I'd found recommended for Linux boot loaders: CDBurnerXP. It has worked fine for CD-Rs for use on my laptop so without much thought I just left it at the x1 setting for the AID DVD-R. It verified perfectly and booted fine on my v1.6 test-bed crystal Xbox but I found I was getting some strange error messages and failed application installs.

Thankfully I didn't try updating my softmod with it or who knows what might have happened.

Anyway I did a bit of research and found out about the minimum supported write speed of the media I was using and claims from apparently knowledgeable people who said writing at a speed slower than that may lead to errors.

That does appear to be the case here as on this evidence I created a new AID disc from the same ISO file and on the same media/burner but this time with Imgburn at x3, my usual choice. Unlike the first disc I found it worked perfectly, at least with everything I've been able to test so far.

So the advice for using the slowest burning speed for Xbox DVD-Rs should perhaps be modified to: use the slowest speed supported by the media. Whether other brands of DVD-R support different write speeds I don't know as I've always used Philips. But if you're having trouble using a disc on the Xbox it would be worthwhile checking out that factor.

One thing I'm concerned about is that I burned a HeXEn disc at the same time at the x1 speed. It boots fine but as there is no way to tell if it will present similar issues to the AID disc I think it will be safest if I bin it and redo the job with Imgburn at x3.

Two wasted DVD-Rs but this sort of unexpected thing is exactly the reason why I use an expendable Xbox as a test-bed prior to doing anything to my main gaming and other regularly used Xboxes.






 

[fallenangle]

Sorry to post again but this may prove of interest to someone, sometime.

I've been doing some more testing of the the apparently OK AID v4.53 burned disc(s) andwas annoyed to find that they too are unreliable with certain applications refusing to install and on disc tools not launching.

This happens with two different version Xboxes with different make disc drives.

I decided to compare it to my AID v4.4 disc which works flawlessly. It was burned on the same laptop, on the same media and using the same burner: Imgburn (ISO) at x3 write speed.

The only obvious difference is the size of the ISO file. The AIDv4.4 ISO is under 700MB, the AID v4.53 ISO is 1.1GB and that's before I updated it to include all the Addon packs inflating it with the 1GB dummy file to around 3GB.

So I pared that down to the basic Addons packs: 100MB dummy file, BIOS, DHCP patch and XBMC Scripts. Total size reduced to 1.3GB. Burned that exactly as before and, hey presto, everything I've tested works perfectly. Whereas before you could hear the laser struggling to read the disc there's none of that now.

Question is: why?

Just because there are large Addons packs I don't see why that should affect the ability to read the information. The positioning on the disc might be different due to the 1GB dummy file but the layout of the main AID ISO file is surely the same. Access time might be slowed but why any other effect?

The only thing that I could think of is maybe the three Soundtrack Addon packs were the issue. The music they're supposed to play whilst using AID often stopped when clicking between menus never to restart. They're music files are running from the AID disc so they must be using the DVD drive's resources. That must slow it down but would it explain the read problem?

[SPPV]

I can help you via PM, considering the site you most likely got AID from Im pretty sure you know who I am and Im sure XS would rather that it be kept off their boards.

[SPPV]

Its a combination of two factors.
1)The file setup causes it to scan through to many directories, and the dummy file just make it worse
2)It caches a vast amount of info at boot which can take forever

Those are the main reasons behind AID's notorious timeout issues. In many cases it will still boot if you leave it but you can end up with that black screen for up to 4 minutes

When done properly large boot/install discs have no issue. The replacement I made for AID weighs in at 4.35GB and has no issue booting virtualy instantly (and is not 3 years obsolete, released May31 2013). Along with the 5 or 6 I made for EmuXtras.

Oh and be happy its just a 2 part, originaly it was like 30 parts and I thought that was insanely annoying so I changed it to a 2 part download lol.

[SPPV]

Sorry dont see an EDIT tab.

If you are gonna go HQ Installer FalenAngel I got one word for you.....BABYLON. I doubt any XS dev or longtimer would bad-mouth my work. Look to the future, not the past.

[SPPV]

Yeah alot of whats with AID dont work. Hell I dont even recomend it to users at HQ. I took no part in making it, if I did it would be current, the softmods would be locked down, shadow c unmount would work etc.

If you are looking to update 4.4/SID XBOXs use Babylon. Way more reliable than AID, plus the softmods were setup a far sight better (DJB is a chipper not a softmodder so missed serious issues in how he compiled the xbe)

[fallenangle]

I think I've found the likely source of the problem I had with the AID v4.53 full Addon Pack burns. Quite how it affected it I don't know but because my laptop only has a 40GB HDD with about 11GB of space free I moved all the files over to a new 32GB flash drive I'd bought.

I did all the 7Zip extractions and ISO updater stuff there EXCEPT when I did the pared down ISO. As that was only just over 1GB I did all of it on the HDD.

What I've found is that the flash drive is faulty and it's thanks to the SID BABYLON download I did yesterday that I discovered the problem. The 7Zip extraction kept on failing saying the destination drive was full even though the drive has and is showing as having 18GB of free space.

I've tried reformatting and bleaching the flash drive with CCleaner and now it won't let me copy any more than 99MB to it before I get the error message about it being full.

It's what happens when you buy a cheap flash drive I guess but it is damned annoying with all the time and wasted DVD media it has probably caused. Doubt I'll be able to get my money back for the flash drive either but I'm going to try.

[fallenangle]

**********!!!!!!!!

Doh! I should know this stuff by now; ignore the post above. The reason I had the problem with the USB stick is because I forgot it was formatted to FAT32 and FAT32 won't support file sizes above about 4GB. The apparent USB flash drive problem only occurred after I tried to unzip the huge >4GB SID BABYLON three part .rar.

So that theory blow out of the water it's back to square one with the cause of the AID v4.53 + all Addon packs disc problems.

[fallenangle]

This is maddening.

After testing the flash drive again, even though now NTFS formatted, it IS throwing up randomly odd  behaviour.  At one point it refused to be 'ejected' saying something was using it and indeed its LED was flashing away as through something was being written to/from it when there wasn't.

So it does look as if it is faulty, I've certainly never had a flash drive act like this. So maybe it was culprit of the full addon AID IS0 burn problems after all.