Is it just me or does this seem wrong? How will the pc lock the drive back without the key? Are you sure you don't need to attatch the drive back to the still powered on xbox for it to lock it on poweroff?

--Bikr

He is hotswapping, the drive will relock automatically.

Updated Main Post with yet some more information & a few warnings for pete's sake.

Also updated second post with some XboxHDM Tips, so check that post as well.

at least thers a warning now.

Just for you buddy,

Thanks for Great Tut. It worked Perfect for me. The only problem i had was getting the drive unlocked but it only took three tries at it. Just after the X opens and before the m$ logo comes up was where it worked for me. Thanks again.

I can't ever launch Xbrowser....

I get error 12...and the ribbons are switched...but it can't find the drive...

I need to talk to someone on MSN or AIM or something...to help me...

This is the farest I have gotten...

someone help me?

SnaveZ

ok...I got so far as to have the drive seen by the linux distro...

it just can't see the partition...

I tried over and over hotswapping...and I still can't get that partition seen...

what am I doing worng?

SnaveZ

Can you explain a little more.
Cant see the partitions when trying to load xbrowser? or xboxhd?

This can be a result of the drive still being locked, so your hotswap method needs to be improved.

ok...what happens is...I boot the Xbox...and leave it on the dash...

then I boot the comp...till it comes to the linux screen for making the selection of the modes...

I quickly swap the IDE cables...a few secs later...the linux disk loads...and lists what the steps are that it will do to my xbox...with backing up and all...

if I go to load xbrowser...it says something like, "found drive on primary" then ti says it can't find the partition...

same goes for if I launch xboxhd...I get the same error...found drive...partition not found...

I'm soo lost on this right now...

ooo...and also...I have the computer hard drive on master and cd drive on slave on the Primary IDE...

I was talking to someone on IRC about this...he does soft and hard mods all the time...

he didn't even know what I can do about it not finding the partition...

can someone list the steps in deep detail of what to do?

BTW...I have Xbox v1.6...

thanks for the help!

SnaveZ

try using the error 12 method as in my tutorial above.

I still can't get this...I tried it like 10 times...

what happens is that when the X appears on the screen...it immediately goes to Error 12...

my computer that I'm using for the modding...has the PC hard drive on master...and cd on slave...on the primary IDE...

After the X shows on the screen...I try as fast as I can...to connect the IDE from the Xbox...or the computer...but there is like a split second...between the X and Error 12...

I have to have the CD drive...and Hard drive connected to the computer in order for the computer to boot from the CD...otherwise the computer beeps the error for not finding the hard drive...

am I doing this right?

the tutorial is confusing :s

SnaveZ

Instead of editing the config file, why not just hit the "1" key and then it bypasses the defualt time and will sit forever at the main screen?

thats what i do, wait for the screen to come up, put a 1 in myself then turn on xbox and swap harddrive.

Just a tip for new hard drive swapping people, I find it works best if you leave the DVD plugged in and use a power source from you comp, almost always works in 1 try. Also pull the xbox IDE cable from the HDD right after the sound is done playing when the BIG X comes up. If you can have the white MS word at the bottom when you pull the IDE you will have success..... well I have success that way.

I can now see the drive...but it won't unlock...

what do I do now to get the drive unlocked?

when I try to run unlockhd -a...it can't find the eerpom.bin...what util do I use to extract me eeprom.bin from my xbox...and save it on lets say...mmm...a floppy?

SnaveZ

You are still incorrectly hotswapping. The whole point of hotswapping is to install the exploit to obtain the eeprom.
I've wrote this tutorial to be as easy as it can be.

If I use buy an unlocked Hard Drive off E-bay, will I be able to do this hotswap, and have it relock automatically when I finish?

NO
A retail kernal cannot boot an unlocked HD. You will need a chip to boot the unlocked hd, then lock it using your eeprom. then remove the chip.

Alright, I'll just try using my hard-drive instead of buying another. Thanks.
Edit*: If it's not much trouble, could you look at my reply in "Something Disappeared?" It'll be very much appreciated. Thanks.

this is a fantastic tutorial for hotswap, i was reading for days but no tutorial make me feel confortable as yours, so i tried and now my xbox is back to normal thanks to you and a also thaks to a friendly guy IAmCanadian how pointed me to this tutorial...

thanks you all

Its not just a tutorial, its an extremely coherent tutorial..

I am a complete and utter n00b when it comes to soft modding, but I have to say these tutorials helped me greatly! I hotswapped my xbox and it worked on the first time so shortly after, I got my exploits on and my box was modded! That just rocks! Thanks to all you tutorial makers!

Thanks DaddyJ for the great tutorial on hotswapping. Between this and ldots tutorial on Xboxhdm, I restored my Xbox that I was sure was gone forever. Thanks!

I've been recently TRYING to hotswap, but I could never get the timing right. I tried taking out the DVD IDE cable but the light never went to the flashing green/red, it just stayed at a steady green sometimes, and every once in a while I'd get the flashing and I'd swap, and I even tried running a game and swapping while the game was going. But I always get the error where it says no drive was found. Does anybody have an idea as to what I'm doing wrong? I've read three tutorials already, and followed them specifically, but I always get the same results.

Are you loosening the cable before powering on the xbox? I find wiggling it alot during removal reduces the chances it will stay unlocked.. The drive is unlocked when games are loaded.. Are you sure you are attaching it to your pc properly?

you should be removing the dvd ide ribbon before you power the xbox up also.

I'm am unplugging it before turning on the X-box, and as far as I know, I'm hooking it up to the computer properly.

Hi,

I'm hotswappping for the first time only i still get the same error again and again...
Who knows this problem...

When i come to the part of the tutorial wich says to run xbrowser it tryes to find the xbox hard disk wich i plugged in the right way; primary master but it can't find the harddisk....

What am i doing wrong... Please help...

thx.

Tom.

In my experience this can be caused by two things.
The drive is in fact not detected by the system, or the drive is still locked.

attempt the hotswap again, paying more attension to the timing of the hotswap.

also make sure you hook your hd up after the pc bios detection, this seems to work better in some cases.

Back to it.

You have a few options here, but we are only concerned with typing
xboxhd

This is a excellent script that Ldots has written for us, and it will bring up a nice little menu. With Several Choices. We are only concerned with Option 2 {Rebuild C Partition} ***(WARNING, this will delete everything on the C partition, Make sure you backup or C)***(This is also why I choose C only Exploits, as If you have info on E that is required, you will either need to run Option 1 and wipe the complete drive, or manually transfer these files needed in XBROWSER. See My next post.)

After it formats the C partiton, it will look on the CD for any files that were placed in the C folder before we made our ISO. It will ask you if you want to copy the files, type
yes


hI, with great respect I have red this tut, but...
at this point things went wrong.
can you please describe how this is done?
My C is formatted but then the CD spins and stops without doing any installation.
can you please inform me where to look for? and is it maybe possible to copy all nesecerry files to the Xbox with the xbrouwser?
thanks,

To add on my last question:
I get the following message after the format sequence: (and the cd starts to spin)
===========
how you can rebuild th c-drive with backup files
searching for files (error)
you will need to replace the CDrom with the one containing the C-pad E-drive files
eject:unable to eject, last error invalid argument
Insert source CD rom and push (enter)
Sarching for files (error)
cannot find system files
please report bug..
=======
any thoughts?
thanks,
kabouter

transfer the files mnaully using xbrowser

hmmm,
I think I am a little closer to the solution; I had to copy the files in linux/c
this is what I tried with the UXE Complete v0.2.x -> these where copied on my xbox but nothing happend.
So I have red all the replies to you and came up with the xboxhdm installer from ldots. (same which did not worked due to the incorrect copie fo the files)
Now I have the following question:
*what to do with the files in SMINSTALLER and intird.gz? where they go?because the description in the readme.txt below doesnt seem to work.?????


(IN THIS FOLDER THERE IS ONE FILE AND ONE FOLDER (INITRD AND SMINSTALLER)

1. COPY THE INITRD FILE TO "LINUX>ISOLINUX" FOLDER. THERE IS A INITRD FILE ALREADY SO WINDOWS WILL ASK YOU IF YOU WANT TO REWRITE, SAY "YES"

2. COPY THE "SMINSTALLER" FOLDER TO "LINUX" FOLDER, WHERE THERE IS ALSO OTHER FOLDERS LIEK C, E ETC.

3. USE MAKE-ISO.WIN.BAT TO CREATE THE ISO))

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So, I am learning every day (haha)

Today I restored my c/ to its origin and started all over again
made an ISO with the files in SMINSTALLER and intird.gz
Started the thing with command : softmod
and choose option 1 at first
it gives this as result: cannot remove "/xbox/xboxdash.exe''
no such file or directory

Went over again and restored to its origin
choose option 2 with the 5 steps
took a long time,,,,, but?????

again gave the result at step 3 of 5 ==cannot remove "/xbox/xboxdash.exe''
no such file or directory
kept on going an finished all the 5 steps

Tried to fire up the XBOX and THIS WORKED
SO FINALY I HAD THE SOFTMOD WORKING VIA A HOTSWAP!!!!
happyhappy.
so today I will try and access the box via ftp and have the media center in there.

Any tips?
thx

I tried it today and it was quite simple: just copied the hole directory in the e/apps/ and could load it right away.
Something strage is still boughtering me... Thats the fact that I cannot access my C disk for any ajustments tot the system.
Anybody some tips for me how to restore this ?????????????????

for those of you who are having a problem with the timing, here is the trick that worked for me & made this hot swap soooooooo much easier.

I did the hotswap blind (Xbox not hooked up to the TV)

power on computer & boot into bios. set it to exit witout saving, but dont confirm yet... it will just sit there waiting for you to hit 'Y'

power up xbox, as soon as that first flash of red hit on the LED, pull the ide cable & set the hd aside, then hit 'Y' on your computer to tell it to start rebooting. once it starts going through the POST (for those of you that dont know what that is...thats where it starts telling you how much ram you have ect...) as soon as you hit that stage, pop the IDE cable onto your xbox hdd & BAM, you have hot swapped it.

It literally took me about 10 tries the other way before I tried it this way.
for those of you who keep having the problem with it saying there is a drive but no partitions, your xbox drive was not detected. this process should help with that.

now the only problem is that I have to reburn the boot disk & try again because it cant read any of the information that I burned onto the disk

lemme know if that process helps anyone.

Today I was confronted with an other strange thing: I could not play any games????
Tried to play it from original disk ie. splinter cell and from a dl version and copied to the harddisk. All of them hang up my Xbox?
Can you tell?
thx
harry

i had originally posted this somewhere else, but in hindsight it might actually be more apropriate here.

I went to copy BWI-MA into the folder, but one of the files wont transfer, it keeps giving me an invalid arguement error 22 when that file goes to copy. I took a look at the file and when I am booted into xboxhdm the file name is different and contains a ? in it.
when I take that same disk to any one of 4 win boxes they report the correct file name & size.

I have reburned the ISO a few times and on different media (DVD-r DVD+RW CDR & CDRW) and on different computers & the same thing is happening from all of them.

Is there some info that someone can give me on this problem?

We can ignore the previous post that part is fixed.

I was getting error 12 once I turned the xbox back on after transfering the files.

now, without anything in the DVD drive, I can get in & see the installer save that I pushed to the hdd, but when I put a disk in, it goes to the xbox splash screen, gives me the white MS under the x and then I get an error that says "your xbox requires service, please call the customer care number..." with no error code numbers or anything else.

I am on day 3 of trying to get this done & im really starting to get stressed could someone please help me out here?

we can ignore that last one too...
the exploit that I had loaded was corrupted. deleted that & it came back up.

Hey,
Well i'm a total xbox mod noob, but i followed daddyj's nice litle tutorial and everything worked flawlessly..

I took pics of the entire process, so if anyone is interested I can post them here..

Thanks Daddyj for such a clear and helpful tutorial, it made my xbox-modding painless, free and easy!

Let me know if you guys want to see photos of the soft-modding!

Thanks, sure post them.

Here are the pics of my recent soft-mod.
My xbox is a PAL, version 1.6 (Bought in New Zealand, the "halo" pack)



before the mod


six screws removed, the lid is off


Close-up of the standard xbox hdd


I unscrewed the hdd tray and removed the hard drive so I could access it a bit easier..


Here's a shot of the xbox logo, by now the IDE cable has been removed and my xbox hd is unlocked


here it is, all hooked up while i'm accessing the disk.


shot of the xbrowser backup tool (also known as midnight commander)


finished, with evox running!


Basically I followed the tutorial step-by-step, using the uxe exploit..

I had a couple of tries at getting the unlocking right, but after the 3rd time I had it easily..
I found it works best if you watch the xbox boot up a couple of times, to get your timing rightr then unplug the cable JUST BEFORE the MS words appear..

anyway, any questions, feel free to ask

I have hotswaped my xbox useing this method, although I read it first elswhere. This is a very well writen tutorial. Thank you.

I have a question I was hoping you could help with. I have a 160 gig harddrive and its only showing 130 gigs or so. I have been told I need to upgrade the bios to evov M8. I got the metoo m8 plus. Is this safe to use with a xbox moded in this manner? If it is do I have to put the orginal eeprom in the config file? It says you do then 4 line later it says in m8 you dont.

I have broken and fixed my xbox 3-4 times. Learning experances all of them! ANyway I dont feel like doing that again and I want to make 100% sure I wont before useing this program.

Thanks for any help!

just use NKpatcher 9+ kingroach made a xboxhdm package for it..

There is no way to do this without taking the HD out? If I have to do that then I have to use a buddys desktop. Was hoping to avoid that because it sucks diging it out.

That one pic of the hdd sitting circuits down ontop of the metallic dvd drive scares me.. Doing this is a very bad idea.. I find its usually most convenient to lean the top side of the hdd against the metal EM shielding..
Killing your hdd before retrieving your eeprom.bin means chip time..

Naw, it was fine

I agree though, if I was doing it again i'd be a little more careful about sitting the hdd on top of the dvd drive.. leaning it against the metal shielding is a good idea, but putting something under the drive (an anti-static bag or something) and leaving it sitting on the dvd drive would be better..

Hi there, great tutorial!

Just softmodded my first xbox using this tut and everything actualy went pretty well, i can do everything, like running all sorts of apps and emulators and playing Divx films... but yeah there is a pretty huge BUT, i have a lot of backupped games here and none of them is beeing reconized by the dvd-rom, about every game or other backked up media i try to run doesnt work, dvd-rom empty is a very common message.
I tested one original game, no problem, doesnt even take one sec to run an original disc, but coppied once... damn...
One backupped game did work for a few seconds, after that the "disc may be dirty or dammaged" message came up, but visualy there is nothing wrong with the discs.
i also tried to swap regions in the evox settings, that doesn't work either, it almost looks like the laser is dirty, but that doesnt fit every sympton either, aaaH!

anyone ?

Sebas

to bad this forum hasn't got a delete function, anyway.. i hooked up a new dvd-burner to my XBOX and now everything works fine, so laser must be indeed dirty or something, so now you all know there is nothing wrong with this tut!

Great tutorial DaddyJ, between your very easy to follow instructions and Ldots great liveCD, I was able to hotswap my HD and softmod it in a little over a half hour (my 1st and only n00b mistake during the process was to forget to put the exploit into the C directory of the ISO, thank goodness for external drives and laptops! ) My next step is to load applications.

Once again thank you for this clear and concise guide.