OK i an still so confused with the soft mod ban crap and now i am even more confused when i found out about this MARRIGE THEORY thing i have all i need in my xbox and the splinter cell files in my box i was gonna do it last night but i came accross this, i have friends that all have soft modded and thats all they did nothing else they just loaded the exploits with splinter cell and thats all they did and they went to plAY xbox live and neither got banned they can still play ......why why me noooooooooooooooooooooo !! i need an answer from someone who is a softmodder and plays xbox live please.

If you use the ndure softmod then you can boot the xbox with the dvd drive open and it will boot into a working xbox live dashboard.
You can then use xbox live (with original game discs) but there is a chance you will be banned, but it's not 100%.

Just use Ndure as mentioned. Cold boot to the game you want to play on XBL with the original game disc. You should be fine.

As far as the marriage theory goes, your eeprom and hard drive are married when you sign in to XBL. If you change your drive after being on Live, you'll need a clean eeprom. If for some reason get get banned, you'll need a clean eeprom and new drive.

Ndure 1.1 is great. Make sure you use it.

-- Geek