My Xbox running Evox +3935 dash has suddenly started to take ~+5 minutes to boot completely. It will start to fade into the dash from the Xbox logo screen and will "refresh" every 5 or 10 seconds as it fades incredibly slow into the dash background. Everything else is the same - incredibly slow.

I am assuming from what I have read that I have a dying HD. What steps should I take first and worst case scenario I need to replace the HD, can I just boot up into something like Slayer's Auto-installer or whatever? It's been so long since I changed any software on the machine, I forgot what I did to load it in the first place.

Thanks in advance for any help.

unplug all controllers and retest
if still slow do the backup in evox and FTP your eeprom.bin
thats what you need to make a new HDD all the files can be had elsewere (slayers)

By "do the backup in evox" I'm assuming you mean backing up all my dash settings and config, etc.? I really don't care about all that stuff - actually I'd been meaning to wipe it all out and start from scratch. Now that I have a 1.5tb NAS I just mainly use it for XBMC and an occasional MAME session.

FTP my eeprom.bin - I haven't even tried to FTP into the system since this happened the other day - what does the eeprom.bin file do?

Thanks in advance!

bump

bump?
Your question has been answered, do as you're told.
Backup your eeprom.bin, as said, you'll need it to setup a new hard drive, unless you have a modchip.
If you have a modchip, toss in a new hdd and run slayers or aid.

Seeing as how there are two question marks in my last post, how has my question been answered when the only one who posted after that was me? I guess reading isn't your strong suit. Thanks for the info about the eeprom.bin.

First, go to your evox setup and click "Backup"...once it's done the backup, use Filezilla, or some other FTP program and FTP from your PC to your XBox. Browse to the C drive on your xbox, you'll see a folder called "Backup". Inside this folder you should see "eeprom.bin", "hddkey.bin" and a few other files. I suggest FTPing the whole folder over to your PC. Once you have the Eeprom, you should be fine. That's really all you need to build a new HD. If you want, you can FTP the whole C and E folders, that way you'll have basically your whole xbox backed up.

Once you build a new xbox hard drive (look for tutorials on the program 'xboxhdm'), that's what you'll use to build your new HD. You'll need the Eeprom file once your HD is built. xboxhdm uses the eeprom to lock the hard drive so it's usable in your xbox. REMEMBER! It MUST be YOUR Eeprom from YOUR xbox!!! Each Eeprom is different and the bios will know if you lock your hard drive with the wrong eeprom! If you do this, your xbox will not work, it will just give you a hardware error.

Hope this helps. I'm no pro at this as I'm having issues locking my new harddrive myself, lol, but I've done this 3 times with no problems and once (right now) with some difficulty locking the drive. If you need more help, I can tell you what I know