Ndure Softmod Through Xboxhdm, The free way to mod the Xbox Options

[muggsy]

Well looks like I will be one of the first testers...... left my xbox in NZ when I moved to the uk so just ordered a new one from play.com. Was going to use your old tutorial but will go thru this tonight or tomorrow..

Thanks for your great work and I will let you know how I get on

Well got my brand new xbox from play.com yesterday.. and after ensuring it worked out of the box I promptly took it to pieces....

Kernel - 5838 and hotswapping doesn't work unless you do the audio track pause etc....

Everything worked okay, but on Part 2, it complained about about a directory being copied as a folder and then said there was no space left on device.....

I'm not 100% what apps it is suppose to copy, but when I rebooted my xbox to start again it booted in unleashx and all was okay, minus any apps etc (Which I installed myself anyway)

But other than that I am a happy owner of a new soft modded xbox thanks to you and the other great contributers

[Tomdabomb3333]

Great TUT...he's right about the spoonfeeding....

I modded my 4920 dash with out a problem using Ndure 3.0 and XboxHDM...But when It came to my newer box K: 1.00.5838.01
D: 1.00.5960.01
I Did the same thing once with generic fonts(worked with my other box), and again with the kernal specific fonts...Upon completion and reboot of my xbox, I was greeted by the pesky error 21.

I was thinking about hotswapping in a game expoit and then coldbooting the game of chioce?....Is that possible.

Also was thinking of hotswapping and returning it to its retail state. I was reading that I need Slayers 2.6 to obtain the original M$ dash...would someone be able to help me restore it back to stock so I could go about trying to mod it another way!?!?!

anyhelp is great...

GOD bless people like Krazie, and Kingroach for coming up with this stuff!!!...Moddern day Robin Hood is what I say.

And thanks for VERY in depth TUT....its sometimes nessesary to be spoon fed!

[MajikNWA]

Many thanks for the tutorial there sir. You have inspired me to not spend out money and softmod it myself.

I am no newbie to modding, but it's my first foray into XBox modding, so please bear with me. I have read an enormous amount of information, and I'd like for you to clear something up for me if you wouldn't mind.

re: Doing the NDure softmod onto a fresh drive - I may well be trying this this weekend. Bearing in mind my limited practical knowledge - here's my thoughts. Refute and laugh at if possible so I don't make a mess of my XBox. I have a new, untouched XBox. If I do the Ndure mod on a totally fresh and clean IDE hard drive, the eeprom will be missing, right? So here's my question - as hotswapping locks the Hard Disk on reboot, will this put the eeprom file on the new hard disk when inserted into the Xbox and rebooted? I'm thinking not, so the only problem with doing a new hard drive is getting that blasted eeprom on there.

If all the above is correct, then I have walked through my method of softmodding a new, retail xbox and upgrading the hard drive - can someone tear it apart or let me know if my logic is sound?

1) Using NDure hotswap method (without .67 addition), softmod original Xbox drive successfully.
2) Backup eeprom using ftp
3)Create NDure ISO disc with .67 addition, placing eeprom in correct area on CD (and any other game saves wanted etc)
4) Use NDure ISO, softmod new 250gb hard drive
5) Lock hard drive with Xboxhdm using inserted eeprom
6) Install new hard drive and we're rocking, right???

Thats seems to make sense to me.

Majik

[Tomdabomb3333]

Kernel - 5838 and hotswapping doesn't work unless you do the audio track pause etc....

I don't know about that....My box was 5838 and since I have an error 21 goin on, I have to Hotswap right when I boot the xbox(after the Big X but before the white MS)

anybody wanna make a tut on how to restore your hard-drive to retail if you've softmodded and something went wrong Ex: Error 21. If this is even possible....Ive read posts where people say you can, ive also seen posts saying that I have to now get a mod chip...

Man I wish I knew how to get ahold of Krazie or KingRoach right now! haha

[kingroach]

can you boot any burned games in your ver. 5838 xbox ? if so then it might be problem with copying dash.. other than that you have two option:

use the script and use option "1".. it checks every file needed for mod and copy them on eby one..

get clean C drive from slayers disk, use ndure installer patching option on the C drive files and thyen using xboxhdm go to "xboxhd" option and use the option that says "recreate C drive".

@MajikNWA,

when you upgrade the xbox.. it better if you just copy all the contents from your hard drive's C partition and anything needed from E partition ( dash folder). Use xboxhdm and just create a whole hd from scratch. That way all the files from your old harddrive will be there and if you made any changes then they will be there too.

[MajikNWA]

@MajikNWA,

when you upgrade the xbox.. it better if you just copy all the contents from your hard drive's C partition and anything needed from E partition ( dash folder). Use xboxhdm and just create a whole hd from scratch. That way all the files from your old harddrive will be there and if you made any changes then they will be there too.

D'oh. Good call. Thanks brother.

Following the method above, does that seem fine for upgrading the Xbox?

Majik

[Textbook]

anybody wanna make a tut on how to restore your hard-drive to retail if you've softmodded and something went wrong Ex: Error 21. If this is even possible....Ive read posts where people say you can, ive also seen posts saying that I have to now get a mod chip...

Soullar already made one, specifically for error 21. Click HERE. Thanks Soullar.

D'oh. Good call. Thanks brother.

Following the method above, does that seem fine for upgrading the Xbox?

Majik

Yup, looks good, you obviously did some reading before signing up to post in the forums. Congrats to you, as many people do not do that. After having the stock hard drive successfully modded, it is a lot easier to just clone your hard drive. But remember, this softmod installs a Shadow C drive. Your "true" C files are hidden, so if you ftp'ed over while NKPatcher (the softmod) is running, it won't copy everything correctly. So, in order to see all the hidden files, launch the Ndure Toolset before FTP'ing into your Xbox. The Ndure toolset will give you full hard drive access and let you backup every file.

Also, another note. After upgrading the hard drive with .67, you will have an F and G drive. But your G drive will say 0 hard drive space. This is because XboxHDM does not have the ability to format the G partition. So in your dashboard, look through the settings to make sure "Use G drive" is enabled. Then, use UnleashX to format the G drive, and you should have your free space on there.

Good luck to both of you.

[MajikNWA]

You are a legend sir. I'll let 'all know how it goes. May even document it incase anyone cares

Majik

[colt45joe]

ok i followed this guide, and it worked. my box is modded. But how do i remove the hack completely and make it normal again?

This post has been edited by colt45joe: Mar 11 2006, 02:54 AM

[MajikNWA]

Okay - had a go at this tonight (posted in other thread) and return here to see if you can help me out.

The installer just won't write anything to C:, I keep getting "unable to open *whatever* during option 1. And "no space left on device".

Does this simply mean I haven't unlocked my drive successfully? I'm doing it blind, you see.

All files transfer to f and e with no problems, and I can even boot into UX, but due to C being empty, it's somewhat limited, as you can imagine!

Any ideas?

Majik

This post has been edited by MajikNWA: Mar 11 2006, 05:29 AM

[Tomdabomb3333]

I had problems with no space left on my drive too... are you hotswapping to do this?,...if so then once your in xbroxser, you've unlocked your HD.

[MajikNWA]

Yeah - hotswapping. Think I've sorted the space problem (didn't have av cable in...) But still can't ftp or write anything to my c drive.

Majik

[colt45joe]

Okay - had a go at this tonight (posted in other thread) and return here to see if you can help me out.

The installer just won't write anything to C:, I keep getting "unable to open *whatever* during option 1. And "no space left on device".

Does this simply mean I haven't unlocked my drive successfully? I'm doing it blind, you see.

All files transfer to f and e with no problems, and I can even boot into UX, but due to C being empty, it's somewhat limited, as you can imagine!

Any ideas?

Majik

hey , same thing happened to me(cant write to c drive...but i did have av cable in..) , and also, i cant see files on c drive, or write to c drive. I think its a safety feuture of ndure, or something. Wont let us mess with c drive, so we dont ruin anything. its just a theory.

also, im still confused...why did it say no space left on device? the hack worked...but is it bad that it said that?




anndd... how do i remove this hack completely, and make my xbox normal again?

This post has been edited by colt45joe: Mar 11 2006, 07:58 AM

[Ndure protagonist]

{!
It's not a safety feature ... the error message indicated there was a problem during the install.

If Option 4 (Backup) was wisely and successfully performed ... then Option 5 (Restore) can be used to revert the real C.
!}

[Textbook]

Hmm, that's weird. I have never seen XboxHDM say "no space" on C drive. Maybe it's a little bug Kingroach has to work out. I know the backup C drive option doesn't work, at least with my build, and he said he was going to be fixing that and some other things. I'll let Kingroach handle this question, because I've never seen this and have no idea what it could be.

As for not being able to write files to the C drive after the softmod, that is a safety feature. If you want to write files to the C drive, launch Ndure Toolset.

As for uninstalling the softmod and going back to normal, there are a couple ways to do that. If you made a full backup of your C drive before installing the softmod (probably not, because I didn't tell you to) then you can restore that using either Ndure Toolset or XboxHDM. The other way would be using NDURE toolset and FTPing in, deleting everythign in the C drive and FTPing over a stock C.

NOTE: Kingroach, I tried restoring the C drive from SlaYer's and got a few errors halfway through, not sure if this was known or not, but it was really weird.

By the way, to all the people asking if you can use this tutorial to install on a completely fresh, brand-new hard drive: I tried today installing on a freshly formatted hard drive and I couldn't get it to work. No matter what I tried, nothing was working without the stock C files already on the drive.

SIDENOTE REQUEST: HSD gave me edit abilities, so that I could maintain this tutorial, and I plan to do so. But I have a question for all you smart people. When I initially posted the tutorial, I posted it as three posts, one right after another. It combined these three posts into one post for some reason, not sure why. Well, that's fine, but now I can't edit it. Whenever I go to edit the post, and hit submit, it says there are too many images (which there are, that's why I wanted it to be 3 posts). So how can I edit my tutorial?