My Xbox 360 is unmodded, besides the Xclamp mod, and playing a store bought original with absolutely no scratches.

My Xbox 360 was giving me the 3ROL a while back and I did the Xclamp mod and this cured it.

My situation seems to be a bit different from what most people are experiencing. When Halo 3 freezes, it is generally in heavy traffic firefights, or grenades in the face explosions. Not always, but usually. NO graphical glitches or anything/no checkered patterns etc... And after it freezes, for about 4-5 seconds I can hear the sound playing. And the strangest thing is that even though the game is frozen, I can hit the Xbox Logo on my controller and I hear the "blip" noise when it comes up.

When I proceed to hit the eject button on my Xbox 360, it takes me back to the dashboard and I am disconnected from XBL. But I can get right back on again and keep playing. I played for 7 hours with it freezing once, but now I can't seem to play 1 hour without it freezing.

My Xbox 360 is out of warranty, and the seal is broken, so MS will not be getting it back.

I know it probably isn't heat related because when your Xbox 360 freezes because of GPU/CPU overheating, you have to shut down and powerup your Xbox 360 to get back to the dash, whereas I am able to just hit eject to bring it to dash.

Faulty DVD laser? Or?

Help is much appreciated
~IrishLad

So it only freezes in the halo 3 beta?

Just remember it is a beta, not the final version of the game, so glitches like that may be just due to the game, not your 360. Also, since the halo 3 game isnt on a disc (though, it sounds like you have the disk for it or something, im not sure weather you could get the beta on a disk or anything?)

I would test the 360 on another game on XBL and see if the same thing happens. Its just so uncertain what the problem may be especially when your playing a game thats still in the beta stage....

It just seems weird to me that my friends have been playing for hours on end with no errors, and I can't go without one or two games without it freezing up.

I had originally messed up setting up the ports on my router for XBL (3074/88) so I re-did it inside my router. Maybe this will help because I noticed that whenever it froze it kicked me off XBL.

I'm also going to try redownloading the beta/clearing the cache.

I bought this Xbox 360 a while ago, but never really bought any games for it. Crackdown is the only other game beside the Halo 3 beta that I've played. I've played tons of demos as well, and never had one single problem. I'll try out Crackdown on XBL, and see what happens. But I've just got a feeling this is Halo 3 beta specific...If all else fails, I'll delete everything on my HDD, a complete format, then try everything up fresh.

Just so frustrating to have things that are supposed to work not work...

I had the same problem with halo 3. I would press the Y button to see my freinds it would freeze for like 20 seconds and come back. Once i hit the X button in middle and i had to restart the xbox in order to unfreeze it. Well I did not do anything to fix this because after couple of days it went away and don't have the problem anymore.

Have you tried clearing the cache on the hard drive, it's better to do that than a full format.

Yeah, I cleared the cache, and loaded up Halo 3 beta again, I did the 2 updates, and then boom the first game it freezes up again.

Haven't tried it out today with all the things I plan on trying. Will get back here and post what is successful. One thing I did find was that the UDP port 88 controls patches being downloaded, and my ports weren't configured properly so that may have caused something to go bonkers.

Nope. Xbox Live is ALL UDP, and updates are 'linked' to the vendors(maker of game) update specific IP address, and 88 is for the common internet http. It may have been that it did use that port, or maybe looked at the logger you used wrong or whatever, the case is that it will always use port 3074. I just cleared my cache on my 360 to test this again, xbox live does use other ports, but I've rarely seen it use 88.

I got my updates from different IP's + not a single packet hit port 88, and looked at the first packet of each one to verify it was an update starting, the second packet looks like...

GET... Content/4d52032/3098jd39uj2njd/... I'm guessing that, I logged too much and lost the actual packet.

I looked at the packet that 'started' the download, it does indeed get from http sources... funny enough on servers running apache I quite uselessly found out lol.

Idk, you did say something with opening/configuring ports, do you have the forwarded or something? Maybe you through your configuration are getting it on that port... I have seen live on that port before just through normal use, not in large amounts of data though just a few 10-15 packets.

Have you tried just, playing non-stop on any other games? Go a whole day or so playing all different things and don't turn it off, but don't play h3, it probably is just an h3 beta problem with your setup you got going.

It couldn't be a bad dvd drive becuase crackdown is only used to launch the beta. The beta itself is run off the harddrive. I got the beta though email where they sent me a key and I just go to the demos part of the dashboard and run it there. Since you said you can press eject and go to the dashboard that makes it sound like its a hard drive problem. Try re-downloading the beta.

Thanks Prankster/BullWizz for the advice/ideas.

Since I had both downloaded the Beta through a wireless connection, and applied the updates through a wireless connection I decided to bring my Xbox 360 down to my router and hook it up directly. After I hooked it up directly, I logged onto live, deleted everything Crackdown/Halo 3, cleared the cache then loaded up Crackdown again.

Downloaded the Halo 3 beta, started it and applied the 2nd update once it started. Then, once I knew everything I needed was downloaded, I took it back upstairs and hooked it back up to my wireless connection. I played for a long time with zero freezing. It looks like it was either a problem with my router setup, or downloading the beta wirelessly. Anyone else having this problem should try what I did. It seems to have worked for me.

Argh! Just froze up on me this afternoon again. Looks like my fix was flawed. Same symptoms as the previous times it has locked up. I can hit eject and it takes me back to the dashboard.

Is this looking like a HDD problem? A corrupt sector or something?

I've gotten a few PMs from people randomly googling my thread and telling me they have the EXACT same problem...Is there something we are all missing? If I have to play it over a direct connection I'll be very pissed off...I'm using the MN-740 original Xbox wireless adaptor.

Help?

~IrishLad

Dont forget it IS a beta build. All 360's are not identical, some may have memory timings which barely meet QC standards...etc. Bungie may be aware of the issue if it is widespread, and may even have a solution. With only a week left in the beta, do they care? I am not saying not to look further for a solution, but it may be that there isn't one, at least not a solution attainable by the enduser.

The memory timings can be different from Xbox to Xbox? That would be horrible QC.

I think it has something to do with playing wirelessly. All the people who seem to have this problem have been on wireless connections. I mean...I get around 1 bar where my Xbox 360 is, so it is totally possible. And the fact that it kicks me off XBL when it freezes..

yah it crashd on me once but i have had no problem since.. this has happend to me on a couple beta games for pc also. just a bug, theyll fix it.

Hopefully, looks like I'll have to put up with this shit for a while. Thanks Bungie.