It comes from the chip on the board. When your xbox turns on it sends the eeprom code to the hard drive to unlock the drive. If you have an xbox that will boot the green flubber screen it can easily be fixed.
heres my problem. i hottswapped my xbox and it works great. did it with the computer. now i bought another xbox to do the same with but my computer took a dump, so i cant hotswapp that way. i did some research and found that i can hotswap xbox to xbox. everything was going fine the hotswapp was successful but as i was getting ready to backup, my 20 month old daughter came in and stumbled on the contrroler, i dont know what she pushed or exactly what happened but now i get an error 21. ive read tons of stuff on this error but i cant seem to fix it. ive tried slayers disk and AID and i can get access to the xbox and even ftp into it, but no matter what i do, replace the c partition and the e partition, reinstal M$ dash, i still boot to an error 21. ive tried every feesable option on both the slayer disk and AID to no avail. ive even tried to put a live enabled game in to update the dash but i get "the disk is dirty or damaged" error. ive tried like 4 different live enabled games. it still boots regular xbox games. but i want it modded so i can ad emulators to it for my kid. and also id love to rip all her movie collection to it to, so i dont have to deal with her scratching and loosing the dvds. now here is what boggles my mind. if i can ftp into the xbox and use the backup files from slayers disk to reinstall into C and E, why am i still getting this error? i think it has something to do with the eeprom. but since im hotswapping xboxes, even if i launch evox via a file manager from the AID disk and use its backup option, its backing up the Eeprom from my modded system and not the one from the box im trying to mod. so unless anyone here has some better advice, i am prob gonna have to wait till i can hook it up to a pc and hotswapp or i need to get it chiped.
Alright here's your problem....taking shortcuts trying to mod an xbox without a computer. It makes absolutely no sense. There are 7 different xbox versions 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 1.5, 1.6 and 1.6b. Now let's say you have a version 1.1 and a version 1.5 well the file structures may look the same but when your xbox is looking for dash files in the same place as the xbox that modded it and they aren't there, the box will throw a error 21. So to fix this you should check out craigslist buy a cheap computer and fix your problems the right way. Using xplorer 360 with a hotswap should fix your problems, but if you say you can ftp to your xbox then you don't even need to go this route. You can also go the other route and figure out what version xbox you're having problems with and try my cheater files. Let me know the version and i can link or upload files for you. I hope you learned something about taking shortcuts. I've done the same type of thing before but was always able to fix the xbox the same day.
alright here's what you do. In my signature there is a link to my cheater C. Download that file and unrar it. You will see a folder named "C", drag it to the desktop then delete the contents of your C via ftp and replace them with the contents of my C. It should boot as these files are for 1.0-1.3 xbox's. the 1.4 xbox's have dash files stored in E so all you need is C for this version. Let me know how it goes
still getting an error 21. i ftped into the xbox, deleted the files in C and replaced with the ones you gave me. thanks for the try though bud. any other suggestions? at this point im down to try anything. if it helps any i still get the flubber screen, then the X with M$ logo then error 21.
I'm going to ask what will sound like a really strange question.. had this xbox been opened when you got it?
Okies.. just checking it has the right board .. How about returning it to stock and starting over? the files are on slayers.. somewhere.. M$ dash or something.. extractXiso will pull the disk image apart.
ive already tried that. i tried it from the slayer interface and unpacked the image and ftped it in. doesnt work. i think at this point im just going to have to use a computer and xboxhdm. im going to a friends house to mod his xbox tomarrow, via hotswapping and xboxhdm. i guess ill just do a full rebuild on mine while im there. ill let you guys know how it goes.