long story short i have a locked xbox hdd without the matching eeprom, so i tried using atapwd to unlock it with the master password (which i know to be set to TEAMASSEMBLY) and i have the screen where the hard drive i want to unlock set as primary master and the cd drive is the secondary master. but when i try to unlock the drive with the password it says "command rejected by drive" and i am dumbfounded. i really hope that this can be fixed or else i have a 250 gb paperweight

you can try using xboxhdm's lock/unlocking tools. If not, then you can always return the hdd as "defective"

make sure you're typing TEAMASSEMBLY exactly like that. It's case sensitive and has to be perfect.

If you try typing teamassembly or TeamAssembly or TEAM ASSEMBLY, it won't work. It has to be TEAMASSEMBLY. If that's not your problem, at least I tried.

trust me, i've tried that many, many, many times. and ldots unlocking tools need the eeprom or the user password to unlock the hd, i don't think that it will accept the master.
but what i'm going to try and do is use a newer comp to unlock it with. the one i'm using now only has 16 megs of ram! so i'll post again when i've tried on a newer one.

If you are trying to unlock a HD that was locked with an eeprom, you are probably out of luck without that eeprom.

When i first started out I screwed up 2 HDs before I learned. Now I am very careful and very anal about my procedures.

Most vendors won't allow you to return locked hard drives. I ran into that with my 2 locked ones.

In atapwd try XBOXSCENE. That is what I remember the master password is set to. I always go into atapwd and set the master password manually to XBOXSCENE just to be sure.