I keep reading about these guys that have problems with there Xbox, and when they get the answere to how to fix it they say "I don't have my xboxdash.xbe anymore?" .

PLEASE back up your whole c: drive to a SAFE place. Mine is burned to a cdr, ziped on my pc hard drive, and placed In a folder by where I edit my dash so I have fast access to the orig xip files.

This is so important. It should be the first thing you do when you get your mod chip working.

Acually, it is not that important. You can always download Slayer's auto installer. It has all virgin files for a HDD on it.

what i want to know is if it get me baned on xbox live?

Slayer's disk don't work if you format you hdd and reboot, cuz you have no way of booting a SOFTWARe mod if there is no sofware to copy your game from.

I backed up my whole shit and the power went out in my house, now I have no dash and no way of saving my hdd.

well, get another set of files, a blank drive and your in business.