Has anyone here personally been banned when using 1.61? I'm on that, but a few of my friends weren't so lucky. 2 of them got banned and I need to know, when they get their new consoles how do i make the gamertag, gamesaves and dlc work again?

Lots of people on 1.61, But what do you expect the only people that would of updated to it would be the heavyest back up users.

To get there stuff back you will need to.
go into hdd. delete gamer profile (dont delete the saves)
Connect to live and recover gamer tag.
Saves should now work.

DLC should work also when you connect to live again but you might need to re-download it.

Thank you, I always thought erring on the safe side here was acceptable... updating ASAP just keeps the chances of getting banned down yknow?

It is but 1.61 isnt even officially released yet. Every ones just using the leaked version.