I have a soft modded xbox that a friend gave me to fix, he said he somehow lost the software mod (he wasnt sure what he did to remove the mod). So I fired it up and re-ran the Splinter Cell mod, when it got to the part about installing the mod, it complained that the MS folder was not backed up at E:\backups\MS, but when I tried to run the MS backup it was telling me that a software mod was already installed :S So I fired up my xbox, grabbed the MS folder from E:\backups\MS and copied it to my PC, then fired up his xbox and copied it back to the same spot on his. Ran Splinter Cell's mod and was able to install the mod fine, it then restarted and did the virtual patching. Then after it rebooted it will only load the initial Microsoft screen then reboot. The green light flashes a bunch of times, flashes yellow once, red once, then reboots and reloads the Microsoft screen - on and on and on. I have googled this to death and I dont believe this is the clock loop since I didnt use fonts to mod it. Worst part is I DON'T have an eeprom.bin backup Am I SOL? Anyone know how to fix this? Thanks
i know that it is mandatory to backup the eeprom.bin file. the sid installer checks for it, if it doesn't find a backup you cannot softmod.right? same with the ms backup as you found out right? so there must be a backup of the eeprom.bin on your harddrive, you just didn't back it up to your pc. you can do the hotswap (generate error 12) thing to unlock your harddrive and then run the hdm tutorial / xplorer360 program to put all the right files back or to put the softmodded files in it again. OR you can also unlock (hotswap, generate error 12) it and use either of the programs (xplorer360 is the easiest) to search for the backup folder where the sid installer put a copy of the backed up eeprom.bin (it is somewhere on UDATA probably, location depends on the game you used. but maybe it is backed up to the c or e folder, depends what you told it to do during the sid install). then you have the eeprom.bin and you can rebuild your harddrive. i recommend doing this first, just unlock the drive and search for the eeprom.bin. then you can mess around as much as you like (btw.! verify first if the eeprom.bin you found actually is the one that is the right one!!)
Thanks for the reply. Yeah, I do have a backup of the eeprom.bin, just not on my PC. It did dump it to the UDATA folder. I left the xbox on overnight and when I checked it this morning it was powered off. So I powered it back on and it booted to the MS Dash, and the front light was red. It prompted me to set the clock (which I did) and then I rebooted the xbox, and damn it the reboot cycle started again I'm 99% sure the eeprom.bin in the UDATA folder is the right one, but how do I verify that? Thanks again
it is in the udata folder, in a 21XXXX folder. get the harddrive in an unlocked state (hotswap), read out the drive on your computer en extract the eeprom.bin. put the hd back in your xbox, power down and disconnect the harddrive. put the harddrive in your computer,create and boot a hdm disc and try to unlock your harddrive with the eeprom.bin you just extracted. it it unlocks, then you have the right eeprom. if not, then search again for the eeprom (your drive will remain unlocked, put it back in your xbox en start the hotswap tut. again). you can also use the liveinfo tool to test the information in your eeprom.bin, just run the liveinfo tool on your computer and open the eeprom.bin. it tells you the serial number etc. of your xbox, you can verify that with the serial on the bottom. i prefer the test method of trying to unlock the drive with the hdm, then you are really sure you have the right eeprom. then you can put the eeprom.bin on
So to get the hard drive in an unlocked state, I have to hot swap the data cable to my PC? Since the xbox is constantly rebooting I assume I have to time this correctly? I've never done the hot swap thing before... Thanks for all your help
just try it. pull the ide cable out of your ide drive and see if it reboots. it shouldn't reboot, since the xbox should hold on the error 12. it shouldn't reboot. if it still keeps rebooting, also try to disconnect your harddrive (keep dvd drive connected), if your xbox still reboots, without the hdd connected, your problems are much greater.
So basically, boot the xbox, pull the IDE cable from the xbox hard drive, plug it into my PC, boot the PC and run the tools? I dont ever see an error 12 on the screen, should I? Thanks
Ok, this just got weirder. I left the xbox off for a couple days. Finally got a chance to have a look and try the IDE hot swap trick. Had everything all set and when I powered the xbox on, it booted right into the MS dash first try! I did end up trying the IDE cable swap but the PC i was using didnt pick up the drive. I tried rebooting the xbox about 5 times and it booted to the MS Dash everytime! So I reran the Splinter Cell exploit and FTP'd in and grabbed a copy of the eeprom.bin file, *phew*. Now I can play. I re-installed the softmod and it didnt complain about anything missing, installation went through fine, rebooted and did the virtual patching, rebooted after that and it went to the MS Dash again. The front light is solid red but I can't boot to anything except the MS Dash. How do I get it to boot to the EvoX dash? I know the mod is on there because I can do the 4 button reboot no problem Any help would be great. Thanks
do you have your eeprom backed up?? if so, just make yourself a hdm disk with either an already softmodded c/e drive (c-cheater files posted by c4rn1 on this forum) or download a clean ms 5960dash (download section on this forum) and rebuild your drive. if you use already softmodded c drive, your directly good to go. if you rebuild with a fresh ms dash, you can softmod it yourself again. it seems that in your case some files are messed up so that it will only boot into the ms dash. i had a similar problem, i just rebuild it with a fresh ms dash and softmodded it again myself. then it worked fine!! something to try / play around with you can run the sid installer, right? then your xbox gets an ip address by the sidinstaller, right? ftp into that ip address and ftp the files over (clean dash or softmod files).
Thanks for the reply. Yeah I FTP'd the entire C drive to my PC from my working softmodded xbox, then fired up the "broken" one and FTP'd the entire thing back to it. Didnt seem to make a difference Doesnt seem to matter how many times I re-install the softmod it wont take. The front light is solid red, and I can use the 4 button reboot, which seems like the mod is there, but it always boots into the MS Dash, and asks to set the clock. Is there a file I need to edit to point to the modded dash? Thanks again, I'm really scratching my head on this one
Since I was able to grab a copy of the eeprom.bin file, I ended up creating the xboxhdm CD and recreated the drive from scratch, all is well now. Thanks to everyone who replied, I appreciate your efforts Lesson learned - always keep a copy of the eeprom.bin on your PC
