feel free to vote/discuss.
(note ... option7 (don't know, stayed off LIVE) was added later on request, ~380 votes were in already)

first up. i have a banned benny. i guess no sammys yet cuz they suck and most have died of old age. wonder why the same hasn't happened for craptachis.

Only me and one other person dont have modified firmware?

Needs a slot for "Refuse to log in to get banned". I have a Lite-On and I doubt I have been banned, but it is not worth losing my HDD to log in to see.

Rockin a LiteOn modded with 1.6. Played a few games in the last few days with no problem. Even on live. ODST and GTA. No problems. Even beat MW2 campaign offline, no network no HDD attached about 3 times now. No problem connecting after each. Now I do let the internal clock reset to 2005/11/22 (or whatever) before I play MW2. Dont know if that does anything, but all seems well so far.

now we are 3!

It seems the Aussie wave just hit yesterday with quite a few Aussies all getting banned consoles at about the same time.

Ok here is the thing, there are very few differences between the people getting banned and not (I know as I've done the modding and supplied the backup equipment to a handful of people and have checked in with them on the status). In seems less people have been banned so far than have (it would be about 40% banned 60% not (This is only taking into account about 20 people that I personally know the setups etc of)).

No one that has never used a non-self created backup has yet been banned (So there is something in that for everyone whinging). Everyone that played pirated games before release were lucky enough to get banned.

I unfortunately chose to preview a game shortly before my retail copy arrived in the post and am thinking thats the culprit as it's the only difference between myself (who now has a nice polite xbox telling we I'm naughty when I attempt to sign into live) and several mates who have all other factors the same and are currently playing on live and having fun.

At least it came at a good time as there are some great console offers around at the moment.

It will be interesting to see if additonal bans are handed out over the coming weeks, so at this stage it still seems a little to early to speculate how the bans are being applied. (But it's really not a good idea to arr arr my maties if you want to continue using live, so support the delevopers that make the games you love and buy the original).

So... what are you doing hanging out at xbox "scene" forums with unmodified firmware...?

+1 for an extra alternative.
Yep, I havn't eaven dared to start my xbox

Danm it !!! Its plany valid True... you dont have to worry if you have modified firmware but play games on live with auto fix 3 abgx360gui, its PROVED !!! MODIFIED GAMES BAN FROM THE LIVE not the firmware hack... 'im safe for now only Auto fixed 3 games and some originals... and no unreleased games in my 1.51 Lite-on drive...

I have a mate that was banned from Xbox Live and people who saying you HDD is messed up after isnt true his is still working fine on other consoles just not the one that is banned i hope this helps some people out.

To clear up the HDD questions.....you will most likely lose all your games saves. You have to reformat on a nonbanned console and never use it on a banned console ever again. Once you make a game save on a banned console It will corrupt your profile and you will have to reformat again. Some have said as long as they didn't save anything after the ban they could transfer their game saves back after they reformatted.

Ex. Put all your important game saves on your comp. or a mem card and reformat your HDD on a non banned console, recover your gamertag, then transfer your saves back on the non banned console. It has been this way every time the ban hammer has hit.

I don't have a modified firmware (wish I did though) but this is just so stupid MS banning consoles now makes the console paper weight. There are so many people on ebay probably getting ripped off getting banned consoles saying "this console is banned from xbox live". Why not just ban that one user with his gamertag from that one console rendering his gamertag useless only on that console but let everyone who isn't pirating use that console instead of making the entire console useless to everyone its such a waste of good technology....

There are several "kinds" of Xbox users, and they all have different kinds of gaming habits/preferences. For example, I care about my gamertag and my gamerscore, and getting my system swapped out isn't a problem for me; I have the resources to change out my console as many times as necessary. Thus, if they banned my gamertag, it would truly be a proper punishment for me. However, there are others where their gamertag is basically meaningless. I know people that use an exploit to get free Xbox Live by starting a new gamertag every month. So to them, gamertag banning would be meaningless and Microsoft would accomplish nothing by doing that to that person.

You do make a good point though, one that I have been contemplating since these bans have started up again. I communicate with a lot of people from the "scene" in my community and all of them are finding ways to get their consoles replaced. Wal-Marts, Best Buys, GameStops, Targets, etc. are all unknowingly taking back banned consoles. In the short term, this is awesome, we all get to keep playing our games, but these systems all eventually get back to Microsoft and, again, it's a two-pronged reaction:

One, Microsoft will get this influx of useless systems that they will either have to unban and redistribute, or if they keep to their word and never unban, rescrap the parts and do whatever they do to make that cost effective. My first impression of this was that Microsoft shot themselves in the foot by banning consoles because, as everyone knows, this community is incredibly resourceful, and now, as thanks for banning our systems, we send them back to you courtesy of Wally and Geoffrey Giraffe, and keep doing what you banned us for intially. Basically, you burdened us with inconvenience while we burdened you with incommensurate man-hours to ban us in the first place, to the retailers that unknowingly took our defunct systems, and to your already-busy-with-rroDs repair department for them to find out the only thing wrong with the system is that its banned.

This brings me to part two of that reaction, and that is how Microsoft will respond to this cost that they will be bearing, and the steps they will take to try and ensure it doesn't happen again. I say try because, to reiterate, the pirating community is resilient, and will always find a way, but I certainly don't want to see more robust and thorough warranty checks and new equipment to verify bans, etc. One reason I don't want to see it is because I used to work for a GameStop and trading in systems is not a well-oiled machine. There aren't any real rules or regulations to checking them and any extra steps make the whole process longer and more arduous for the employee and the customer. That's just one example but my main point is that this action/reaction inertia sways back and forth and one could make the argument that pirates pushed first, Microsoft banned, pirates push back, and so on and so forth. I'm sure someone will also say Microsoft pushed first for charging $60 a game and cite the RRoD fiasco and blah blah but if you focus on that part you're missing the point: Piracy is a cat & mouse game, but this whole console banning and the subsequent reactions to it add a new element, and that is that Microsoft may actually incur further costs by banning consoles that play pirated games, while piracy itself loses a lot of money originally.

It's obviously my opinion, but I'm a bit concerned about how Microsoft will respond to how ineffective their solutions to combat piracy really are, especially when they begin getting a rush of consoles and have to now spend money on that. Say what you want about Microsoft, but they are a sleeping giant. Then again, pirates aren't no pushovers, either.

thanks for the info nastyn8 ill let him know not to save anything intill he has new console.

just to let everyone know, that if your going to hack your xbox you should start from scratch and read all the information about everything that needs to be done in order to get a perfect system hack and play un-noticed on live. in order to do that you have to flash the system exactly how it says in Legit Tutorials. Next you need to buy HIGH QUALITY VERBATIM DL Discs FROM SINGAPORE ONLY!! i must stress on that point and i tell everyone i know with a hacked 360 that they must burn games onto VERBATIM DL FROM SINGAPORE. you can check for yourself on cdfreaks and see they have the lowest errors and they read the best and burn the best etc... cehck it out.
to end this reply i will say that i personally know 3 ppl whos consoles have just been banned today (Nov 6) and they all were using games burn with bad discs. they wernt verbatims and everyone else i know who plays with hacked systems uses verbatims and are all fine... so far. but as far as i can tell, its the discs causing the problems and microsoft can detect that there are errors when reading the disc and loading the disc when playing. not big enough errors to stop it from working but big enough for them to notice if watching your console. i was just in a party playing with 2 other hacked systrem and 1 got banned and he was useing bad discs. also known as a bad burn. sojust watch it and always use abgx. dont play wave 4 games yet its way to risky. but that is my opinion. so do what you want but my suggestion is buy good discs.

The funny thing is I wasn't banned until i played a new game I bought. Got Guitar Hero World Tour(came with guitar) and then I wake up the next day banned, after the FM3 and Borderlands bans, THIS is how they catch me? LOL

2 banned yesterday

1- benq spoofed as samsung ix 1.61 console ban
played forza 3, tekken, borderlands, and call of duty 4

2- liteon ix 1.6 console ban
played cod4, forza3

all games checked out in abgx, played none early

1 banned

BenQ ix 1.61 (not spoofed)

played borderlands, tekken 6, Dragon Age, GTA4: episodes from liberty city -these games in order, last game i played was when i was notified of ban. I didn't play them early either.

i had two friends banned
one got banned 2 days ago
liteon 1.6 firmware
played leaked odst(he wasnt sure which group leaked it ),dragon age, cod mw 2, gta4ELC all pirated from various groups p2p, marvel, retail, origins, retail, spare
except for odst apparently all patched and/or scanned fine in abgx

another friend got banned today
liteon 1.6 firmware
he played all his own rips the most recent being cod5 and wolfenstien
apparently all patched and/or scanned fine in abgx


im not worried my hitachi with 1.51 still going strong

I have modded two of my friends boxes the last month, and mine has been modded for a year now, and we all burn our games on 2.4x burn speed with Verbatim DL dvds + abgx. None of us has been banned so far. Even played Forza 3 early. So bad disks may be the reason MS can detect modded boxes.

My HDD was on 2 Consoles that got banned while my HD and GT was attached, i removed the HD immediately in both cases "Not Playing anymore on the banned" I move my HDD to a new console all my data are safe "save Files" all Profiles nothing is corrupted. The moment you start saving on the banned console this is where your data will be corrupted. Mainly Save files

Might want to add banned for having a drive switch out. Meaning just spoofed the keys on a new drive. I've already seen 3 of these!

In the politest way BULL **** m8

proven that they are good because they are expensive !! i think not 4x disks and x4 bad burns

i use Arita RITEK disks - 100% valid without errors and ive been using em for 2 . 5 years yet to bad !!

i use 1.6 Liteon and BenQ 1.61 = no ban
m8 = liteon 1.6 BANNED mid conversation about being banned go figure !!

a pattern emerging also is that all the older flashed consoles seem to be faring better hence less hitachi and sammy drives more liteon and benq that have been done in last few weeks

could be the updates we recieved that said we didnt have anything new "skyplayer" setups



also heard of this your hdd id is also tagged along with your gamertag to aid in identifying new console with same gamertag / hdd combination.

quite an old post about changing the ket on hdd when changing out the chip that holds the info they used to ban your console their end. cant remember exact but was summat like the bios style chipset on the board and drive

Yeah just got banned don't play online game I use a normal account to play games then use xbox live account to watch netflix , i just put it backup of halo2 , koren drive copy , all games are abgx and no early game play liteon 1.6

I've got a Halo3 edition with a BenQ + 1.6 fw. Havent turned it on for about 3-4 days now because of the scare. Also unplugged my wireless adapter just in case.

I'm just kind of curious to find out if I have been banned or not. Always verified twice, thrice, quad times through abgx, and used verbatim discs at 2.4x; never played early, no hdd mods.

The only reason is that for 59.99$ a year for XBL, and the main reason for using XBL is to download game updates and a few XBLA games + GH/RB downloads, just seems pointless. Rarely do I play online, and if I do there is always XLink Kai, XBConnect, or my ps3.

In reality, M$ banning consoles won't stop people from pirating their software. Everybody will keep downloading them and burning them regardless. But I'm sure they will stand to make a fuck-lot of more cash because of a system ban and people going out to buy a system for X amount of money plus another live account for X amount of money.

Just my take, I don't play a lot, if any games multiplayer. None of my friends locally have a 360

I got the first Elite Edition, Not sure what kind of drive. Im sure im running on 1.6 fw. I havent went online in awhile, I think about a week.

I recently played

MW2 (Not Online Yet)

Halo ODST(Checked, Varified, and Passed) Not Online Yet

Both Played with HDD, I played with my main account offline with ODST, and made 1 offline dummy account for MW2.

1.)Im also skeptical, and ify about going online, I dont wanna be banned. So im just gonna just wait and see what happens, im sure things will be alot clearer on Nov 10.

2.)
a.)One thing im afraid of, is turning on my 360 and just like that im banned. So before I go online, I will remove all information from my HDD that has to do with MW2, accounts, save data, and etc...

b.) Another thing im gonna do is what another reccomended me to do. Which is play a bunch of varified safe games in order to clear MW2 from the NANDchip.

Thats really all I can do..

As of 5:30pm I have not been banned after putting my console online and downloading a few videos from the video ... tube... thing... whatever..

Played a bit of Zombie Apocalypse demo and idled for a while without and dvd in the drive, and I was still online when I disconnected.

So.. I don't know. It may be a matter of time for me

ok well you are very lucky for having such good burns with ritek as they are junk and very cheap discs. maybe they have made them better now but i know that 2 years ago when i first flashed my xbox i did alot of research and verbatims arnt just called the best because of price lol. look it up for yourself. also if your getting games for free, why cheap out even more and get bad discs. pay the price of 1 game and get 20 discs. its worth it isnt it? if your console wasnt hacked. you would have bought that game that your about to burn, correct? its all in your own opinion and mine is that i swear by verbs. i swear by my pioneer DL burner. i use abgx and i burn slow and verify my burn afterwards. not all ppl take the time to do that. im not risking it because i play online everyday.

also just to add that the discs dont seem to be the problem for getting banned. im just saying that i prefer verbs.

today i found out that 2 more ppl i know have been banned. they were useing verbatim discs. so that rules that out. they both had hitachi drives but i am also on a hitachi drive and did not get banned yet. they have all played different games and the only game we have all played is borderlands. there are only 6 more ppl i know with hacked consoles and we have not been banned yet.

all have hitachi except 2 they have benq so we will see lol. i servived the last few ban waves but this time it seems like they have more then 1 hammer swinging

Like Stewie once said "Your my eyes Goose"

Have you played the MW2 offline w/ hard drive? (ON A DUMMY ACCOUNT)

I haven't touched anything that has been 4th wave, like COD:MW2, Cars, Tekken 6, etc. I contemplated downloading activate.iso but thought it's just as easy to wait. I had also contemplated upgrading to 1.61 but after reading all of this, I have again decided to wait.

The last game that was in my drive has been Brutal Legend, and I have been playing that constantly for a week prior to all of this happening.

I downloaded Borderlands, but held off burning it because of people saying there were potential bands related to playing a bad rip despite abgx saying it was good.

I'm going to attempt to put in Fallout 3 later tonight and see what happens.

Do you think its safe to play Forza Motorsport 3? Its Wave 3 and safe according to ABGX.... I dont know though, because that would mean wiping MW2 off my 360, and who knows if its completely off the NAND.

How many Legit Xbox Games does it take to overwrite/clear the flash memory of mw2 data?

I did same thing. Thurs. night played MW2 w/ no HDD and no ethernet connection. Saturday afternoon fired up Live and got banned. Was playing Forza 3, Borderlands, Halo Wars in the weeks before though. Also, used boot disk to play MW2. Maybe that was detected? A change in the firmware by boot disk?

i was banned nov 6, hitachi 1.6, played mw2 offline with no HD ...within a few hours, new LiteOn 1.6and $109 less in my wallet i had a new console flashed and back on live... not playing any wave 4 games, as they are my biggest suspect for being banned.
Borderlands, GTA addon , MW2 offline with no HD, and no profile, so no achievements.)

If thats the case, whats the chances of me being banned when I log on. o_O I have played MW2, offline w/ HDD on a dummy account, but before I go online. Ill delete any trace of MW2.

Banned on nov 7. Liteon 1.51, played forza 3, borderlands, guitar hero 5, beatles: rock band, rock band 2, guitar hero: metallica, rf:g. All checked and none before release.

I got banned on 8 November, trying to play DiRT 2.
I had a LiteOn DVD-Drive with iXtreme 1.6.
NEVER player any Wave 4 games.

i myself have a benq ix1.61 and no ban, but 2 of my friends got banned this week:
1 benq spoofed as liteon ix1.6
1 samsung m28 spoofed as m25 ix1.6

maybe the spoofing has caused the bans?

anyone please comment

Got banned yesterday. Here's all the relevant info, which leads me to believe the latest dashboard update looked for a modded DVD drive...

-BenQ
-iXtreme 1.6
-Always twice-scrubbed with level 3 fix with abgx360 before I burned any game, with one exception...
-I burned Tekken 6, and used the one-shot boot disc to play it...just once though. That was a couple of weeks ago. Could that have been enough?
-never played a game before the release date (not out of fear, but because the seeders were giving it out soooooooo slow that I could never finish the download before the release date)

What I don't understand is that before yesterday it was fine, then yesterday it got banned when I was playing my copy of NASCAR 09, a totally legit game, with green box, manual, the whole nine yards.

I posted elsewhere about how I really don't care and how I've grown to see XBL as something that sucks and that is misleading and pretty much a rip-off, but a bunch of welfare cheats jumped down my throat so I won't go there again with it...

hope my info helps.

forgot to mention the guy with benq played backup forza 3 (don't know how many times) and the guy with samsung only played backup fifa 10 (BUT bought his x360 of ebay and when i flashed his to ix16 i found out that the seal was broken and that it didn't have the original drive in it (the seller "forgot" to mention that)) he got to play xbl for 1 month

I got the ban message when I tried to play an FIFA 10 for the first time on Nov 7 (abgx verified, Singapore Verbatim). Prior to that I'd only been playing a retail Fable 2 for quite some time. Never played anything before the release.

- Lite-on ix1.6, not spoofed
- Falcon board, if it matters

banned since nov. 7th
LiteOn 1.51, only played games I checked and NEVER before the release.

A well, at least i had an excuse to start MW2

liteon with 1.6 and only play backups!! mw2 booted with my profile signed in but not on live so it showed under recent games!!! banned today but not sure when because havent signed on since late thurs night!!
got an elite next to it with lite on 1.6 and just flashhed wed. it had no live connection or hdd but played backup of MW2 system link and then deleted the profile and all items and formatted the onboard memory. and only playing retail from now on to see if it gets smacked!! i really believe they are detecting firmware because we have around 50 of them out there and my friends sister who is an older lady got banned and she has no backups !! only played uno online!!! so i dont know!!!!!! my wife is on the way back with 3 of the wal mart $100 consoles!! sorry bout punc. andd one big paragraph!!!

Im not going online till a cure is found.


DarkBlades going Ninja

Have 1.61 with Liton Drive.

Only ever played Guitar Hero 5 online.

Played MW2 using activator Disk, Offline with no HDD.

Banned 7th Nov...

Mort..

played halo 3 mythic original, never touched any bad rips or before release,
just went poof- ur off live and console ban, not with any date or whatever..

benq 1.61

have been on live with this for like 2 years soon..
LOOL..

anyway, xbox live is filled up with little kids that are annoying so ill guess i have a weeks break before getting a new one..

are there any way to get information about how long im banned so im sure it was my FW or the way i talk to people @live?
my gamertag and bio was pretty offensive..

1.6 lite-on, been playing fallout3 pretty much every day while signed into live - no banhammer yet

*crosses fingers*

The option "yes, unmodified xbox" is missing.
With that option we could check if there are many false positives or not.

My Falcon had a Benq (ix1.6), i updated it last week and within 5 minutes it RROD - oh well

I got banned on my halo 3 edition xbox. BenQ drive. I play one unstealthed game of Dragon Age by accident, after release day, and get banned.

Guess it only takes one. Oh well, microsoft will just be receiving another, different broken xbox that I only paid 40 bucks for. Their loss more than mine.