Halo 2 Issue With Softmodded Xbox, Newbie to xbox with a pre-softmodded Xbox 1 (v1.0) Options

[thea1ien]

I just obtained recently a v1.0 model Xbox unit, which had been previously been softmodded. I have not been able to get any response from the seller since obtaining this unit, so I've had to learn what I could and figure out what had been done to the unit. I've replaced the stock 8gb drive with a 500gb I had laying around. Figured out how to get the eeprom file so I could build the new 500gb and lock the drive. Everything seems to be working great on that end.

The problem I really seem to be having is, getting Halo 2 to play. I get it to load to the title screen (after the MS/Bungie logo). When I press Start, it just locks up. I have tried both playing it from the harddrive as well as an xISO dvd with the same issue. Halo 1 plays great however. I have tried 2 different sources for Halo 2 in case the first copy I had was bad and still get the same issue. So I assume it's not a problem with the copy of the game, but rather something not setup right on the xbox itself.

I will note that whomever previously modded the unit didn't appear to know much at all about xboxes, as they had several emulators on the unit when I got it, but these were just ones made to run in windows (such as Zsnes) and not Xbox ones (which would have a .xbe file to run). The default dash that loaded up was an older version of UnleashX (I forget now what version, but I replaced that with the newest copy I found on xbins). I'm still not yet able to figure out what kind of bios/kernal replacement was/is used for the softmod. I do know that the default dash file I believe is loaded from the E drive root. I noticed on the C drive a \SID folder, and I have seen SID5 mentioned in my research on the web, so I suspect at least some version of SID is/was used in case this helps.

Any ideas/suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks

[Heimdall]

Unknown softmods are bad news. You should sort that before you do anything else. How did you upgrade the drive? That has an impact on which softmod you are currently running, and on whether you need to upgrade the softmod.

How do you have the extended partitions set up? Have you checked the cluster size on the extended partitions?

As for Halo 2, try clearing the cache and the X, Y and Z partitions.

This post has been edited by Heimdall: Apr 27 2012, 12:19 AM

[thea1ien]

Yes, I've been trying to figure what had been put on the unit, in order to see what is missing or needs to be fixed. I'm not even sure how to figure out what bios loader/kernal patcher is being used. There are some issues, such as if I choose MS Dashboard from either UnleashX or Evolution-X it will not work (I have not been able to get the MS Dash to work in any way). UnleashX will just give a black screen, and Evolution-X just shows a green "Evolution-X" logo and stays there.

As for the HD upgrade, I did searching to see if the 500gb drive I had would support locking (which it appeared to). I copied the C and D drives from the original drive unit via ftp. I also used Evolution-X in order to backup the eeprom files. I put all of those into an xboxhdm disc. I then just put the 500gb into an older IDE system, used the cd to create a new xbox filesystem (said yes to all prompts). after it finished I rebooted, selected to load the lock/unlock tools and locked the drive using the eeprom files.

After that I opened the xbox (I believe whomever softmodded the unit did so using a method other than hotswap, as the unit appeared to never have been opened until I did so), swapped the drive and booted up. I then went used Unleash-X to format the F and G drives. I did notice that F drive appeared to only be 128gig, so I turned on G and formatted that for the remaining space.

(also the Halo 2 issue happens even with loading from the xISO disc, so while I can't rule out the 500gb not being setup right, I suspect it to be something else with a bad part of the softmod)

Hope this helps some. Any suggestions/ideas on how to figure out the bios patcher would be great. Thanks.

This post has been edited by thea1ien: Apr 27 2012, 12:47 AM

[thea1ien]

Cleared X, Y, Z and cache folder on E. Halo 2 now happily plays

I still would like to figure out more on why the standard MS Dash does not load, and of course what other modding had already been done (such as the bios)

Thanks so far with the help

[Heimdall]

Your softmod isn't complete (or is old), and your new hard drive isn't formatted properly, but nothing to worry about, it's all fixable quite easily.

Download HeXEn (Google Heimdall's Xbox Engineering Disc, burn the iso to DVD-R at 4x or slower). Use it to reinstall the softmod and to rebuild the hard drive (Option 2.4.3a. or 2.4.3b, depending on where you are in the world).

[thea1ien]

Thanks for the helpful advice. I have been trying to get the latest version of HeXen, and it looks like it should be 0.99B11-22. However I have only been able to find 0.99B11-21. I'm not sure what the difference is (if anything important). If I need 22, I'm not sure there to find it.

Hope 21 will do. If not, let me know.

Ed: From what I think I gather now, someone (shambles1980) took your v21 and made (supposedly a v22 with I'm not sure what changes), but I believe it either didn't work or had issues and didn't last...I hope this is correct. :/

This post has been edited by thea1ien: Apr 27 2012, 04:26 AM

[xboxmods2977]

Sounds to me like you've got one of the first ("single folder") softmods. With this softmod, the M$ dash will not work. Hexen should be able to update that tho, I think.

This post has been edited by xboxmods2977: Apr 27 2012, 07:15 AM

[thea1ien]

Many thanks. I ran HeXen 0.99B11-21 and applied both softmod and the harddrive setup. Surprisingly the harddrive still had both Halo and Halo 2 on the G drive.
I did notice that for some reason the Unleash-X which was installed, no longer has D drive available when I go into ftp while it is running. I'm not sure if there is a good reason or not for this. I searched all the setup options in it but was unable to see any option to fix it however. I'm pretty sure however I can just use DVD2XBOX when I need that.
Made a few changes to the unleash-x config.xml, to set the menu structure as I like. I did also notice that for some reason, when I put back ZsnexBox back on, the XBpartitioner now has the menu icon as the ZsnexBox (it's not a reall major deal of course, both load correctly). Still, abit odd. I think it's because both have their ID as all 0's. But I don't want to mess with that until I know it's safe to and what to do about it (if anything).

Still, so far it looks good. HeXen seemed very nice to work with as well (good job on putting that all together).

[Heimdall]

HeXEn 0.99B11-22 is the latest, made by me, but the differences from 0.99B11-21 are minor.

You need to check the cluster size on F and G (see the link in my signature), because I suspect that your G partition still has the wrong cluster size, and you will get data corruption once you have more than 256GB of data on there.

[thea1ien]

Yup, checked it out over lunch. G drive was 16k. Followed the steps and it's now 32k cluster.

Thanks again