Ok, this is from a xbox mod gone wrong a few months ago. Anyway I tried to do the bert and ernie mod and pheonix bios and after that everything went wrong. Now I am at the point that when I boot the box i get an error 21. I then try to hotswap the drive to change everything back to normal. I have the HD hooked to the box, I boot the box, then when it boots I plug the HD to the computer and boot the computer, when it boots it says the drive is locked and i need to enter a password. I have also tried to boot the xbox and the computer then swapping them, that does not work either. Now I do not have the eeprom or anything at this point. However I do have the original xbox taht does not seem to be unlocking it. My main question is y is my xbox not unlocking the drive when it is booting and is there anything I can do about it.

I am willing to buy a modchip if taht will fix my problems. If I need to do this which one should I get. I feel the smartxx for Xecuter 3 would be the best choice.

I have searched the forums for hours adn it looks like I am pretty much out of luck without the eeprom.

For reference here is the original problem:

http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=161564&hl=

Can you boot retail games?

If so you can gain ftp acsess, and using the files from the slayers disc, rebuilt your retail drive.

PM me for full instructions

Thanks for the reply. No i can not boot retail games, I at one point was able to FTP into the xbox but now it will not even boot. Right after the xbox screen when it boot it, I get the error 21 screen. If I try to HotSwap it the computer says that the drive is Locked.

Error 21 is something wrong with the Dash, to boot a Evo-x Disc open the tray put your disc in, close the tray and power off, power on again and it should boot the disc, then use FTP to rebuild your C partition I've fixed loads of error 21's mostly because of people trying to hack their MS Dash, this method has always worked for me.

By the way you need a hacked bios loaded from a modchip to do this.

Albino:

which modchip would you recommend and which bios would you recommend. Also even if the dash is fubared shouldnt the xbox still unlock the hard drive to allow a hotswap.

I'm not too sure about softmodding and hotswapping the hard drive, personally i wouldn't touch those with a barge pole, I tend to stick to modchips and TSOP flashing. As for a good chip Xenium Ices are quite good, that's what i have in my box, but Smartxx and Xecuter 3 seem to have a lot of desirable features. Really it all depends on what you want your chip to do, for most of my customers I use the Xecuter 2.6 because most of them just want to play backed up games off their HDD's and emulators, but also be able to switch the chip off with the flick of a switch rather than messing around with OS's. If your not sure, then Xecuter chips are pretty much always a safe bet, have a look around and see what you feel would be better for you.

id go with the ice its user friendly in about every aspect. notice i have one and im a noob.

From what I see the SmartXX looks like the best for me.