Hello!

I just unpacked my xbox which I haven't used for years. I am pretty sure it is softmodded and it has EvoX installed on it and XBMC pre-2.1. The thing is that I wanted to update it to a newer version of XBMC but I am a bit confused on what I need to do. Everyone seems to talk about files like evox.ini, but I can't find that file anywhere. I can only find standard files like xboxdash.xbe and no configfiles.

Any direction would be helpful. Thanks in advance!

Just download XBMC4XBOX 3.1 stable and transfer it via FTP to E\Apps\XBMC

Thanks for the response!

So I do not need to remove any files?
On E: I have two folders called: TDATA and UDATA. Should I create another folder called APPS and copy xbmc to that place? And how would I set it to load the new XBMC instead of the old one?

Let's step back a bit here.

Are you sure your Xbox is softmodded?

Is XBMC your current dashboard, or does your Xbox boot to an Evox dash then you run XBMC as an application?

I am not sure it is softmodded, but I thought that was most likely. I bought it years ago and can't remember. To start my xbox I must press and hold the powerbutton and then an EVO X symbol is at the upper left corner while it boots. Directly after the bootscreen Xbmc appears, so I don't actually know if that is the dashboard or an application that is run.

If you get an Evox symbol while booting then the Xbox is chipped or flashed, not softmodded.

If XBMC launches when you boot the Xbox then that is your dashboard..........

You need two things. The latest XBMC (3.1 is the latest stable version, r31107 is the latest nightly build), and the Team XBMC Shortcut.

1. Install XBMC and get it working:
- Unpack XBMC and put it in E:\Apps\XBMC\
- Use the file manager in your current XBMC to launch E:\Apps\XBMC\default.xbe, to make sure that the new XBMC works properly.

2. Set XBMC as your dashboard:
- The Team XBMC shortcut is two files - an xbe and a cfg. You need to give them the same name as your current booting dash, which is probably C:\evoxdash.xbe (you need to check), so you end up with evoxdash.xbe and evoxdash.cfg
- Edit evoxdash.cfg so that it points to your new XBMC installation i.e. E:\Apps\XBMC\default.xbe.
- copy both files to a temporary directory on your Xbox e.g. E:\Temp\
- Use the file manager in your current XBMC to launch E:\Temp\evoxdash.xbe, to make sure that the shortcut launches XBMC.
- Finally, copy the two shortcut files to C:\

When you reboot your Xbox will have the latest XBMC as its dash.

Thank you for the clearing that up and giving easy instructions!

A question though: In my C drive I have a file named xboxdash.xbe but no .cfg file. Could I add one and in that file point to the new .xbe-file? Or could that configfile be somewhere else?

Stop!!

Where in my post did I mention doing anything with xboxdash.xbe? And what makes you think that a file called xboxdash.xbe might even be vaguely similar to a file that you download and rename evoxdash.xbe?

Stop making things up, and re-read my post. Then download the two things you need (the latest XBMC, and the Team XBMC shortcut files), and follow the instructions in my previous post.

Sorry if I missunderstood you. I read what you said carefully but since I didn't have any file anywhere named evoxdash.xbe and that xboxdash.xbe is the only file that is named .xbe I thought that one might be the one you meant.

So I am not supposed to have a .cfg file until I add the one from the new XBMC-release?

You are making this very hard work.

- If I'd meant xboxdash.xbe then that's what I'd have said
- Even if you do have evoxdash.xbe on your Xbox, that's not the file you need. If it was then I wouldn't have told you to download and rename the other files.

Let me requote my first post.


So, where do you think you get the new .xbe and .cfg files from?

Now, in the middle of your confusion you have identified an issue - the fact that you don't currently have C:\evoxdash.xbe on your Xbox means that it is booting the dash from a different location. So, can you answer the following two questions:

1. Which .xbe files are in the root of your C partition?
2. Which .xbe files are in the root of your E partition?

Sorry.
My confusion is based upon buying the Xbox years ago already fixed, so I thought that maybe the guy I bought it from had named the files differently.

I have downloaded the two shortcuts from Team Xbmc.

As to my C and E drives:
On my C drive the only .xbe-file I have is the xboxdash.xbe, no other. And on my E drive I only had two folders named: TDATA and UDATA, so now .xbe-file. I have added the Apps folder and put the new XBMC inside of that one(so I have the default.xbe inside that folder.)

Don't know if this will help, but I have 5 partitions totally: C, E, F, G and Q. C and Q seems to be exactly the same, G is empty and F contains movies and games I've added.

Which xbe files are in the root of the F partition?

Edit: And how big are the F and G partitions?

The F drive contains no .xbe files only movies and other things I've added.

F drive is 120 GB
G drive is 60 GB

More questions:

- are there any .xbe files in the root of the G partition? If yes, what are they called?
- how big is c:\xboxdash.xbe?
- which directories are in the root of the C partition?

There a no files at all in my G-drive.
C:\xboxdash.xbe is 7.4 MB

In the root of my C drive are the same folders as I got when I downloaded the new XBMC-version:
credits, language, media, plugins, screensavers, scripts, skin, sounds, system, UserData, visualisations, Web.

OK. It looks as though your Xbox has been set up in a very strange way, but fixable.

Leave all of the existing files on your C partition exactly as they are. Follow all of the steps in my first post. If we're lucky it will work exactly as I described, and your Xbox will boot into the new XBMC instead of the old one. If not then we can fix it easily from there.

No other .xbe except for C:\xboxdash.xbe anywhere and, for a .xbe, a vast 7.4MB in size? Very weird. Just a thought: I was just wondering if the the xboxdash.xbe in this case is not a file but maybe a (renamed?) folder with the expected dash contents inside.

Be interesting to know what did this and/or how it was done but I suspect we'll never know.

It's the XBMC default.xbe.

We can guess what happened. Whoever modded the Xbox didn't fully understand what they were doing, but they knew that most BIOSes have C:\xboxdash.xbe as the last dash they boot. So they deleted everything else from the Xbox, put XBMC on C:\, and renamed the xbe from default.xbe to xboxdash.xbe to make it boot.

Not a crime, but not very smart.

Hopefully they didn't edit the BIOS before they flashed it, so it will still boot C:\evoxdash.xbe before c:\xboxdash.xbe.

I hadn't thought about it just being the XBMC default .xbe and just checked my own and indeed the default.xbe is 7+MB.

That leads to a question I've wondered about before. Hope it's not stupid . :-

If we choose to have XBMC as a main dash why do we use a shortcut to boot it from, typically, E;\Apps? Why not do it in a similar manner to the OP's Xbox ie. using the actual XBMC default.xbe?

A few very good reasons:

1. It gives you a much cleaner installation. XBMC is a large application, with a relatively complex directory structure, as compared with the one file plus a config file that you need for all other dashboards. The shortcut is only two files, the same as all other dashboards. This has a number of knock-on benefits:-

2. Updating. When you update XBMC you have to delete and replace all of the directories and their contents, and that's much easier to do if the whole thing is contained in a single directory. If you put the entire XBMC directory structure in the location of the dash for your Xbox then you have to remember which directories belong to XBMC, and which were there originally. Given the number of possible locations for hacked dashboards (and remembering that there are no real standards for the hacked dash location) this would make support very difficult. With the shortcut you leave the shortcut exactly as it is, and simply delete and replace the contents of the XBMC directory, usually in E:\Apps\XBMC\.

3. Testing and Rollback. You can have as many copies of XBMC on your Xbox as you like, just with different directory names. That allows you to install and test a new version, for example in E:\Apps\XBMCnew\. Once you're happy with it you can just rename your current XBMC directory E:\Apps\XBMCold\, and rename the new directory E:\Apps\XBMC\, and the new version is now your dash. If you change your mind you can just swap the directory names back again. Note that you can achieve the same result by simply editing the shortcut .cfg file instead of renaming the directories.

4. Replacing XBMC as your dash. If you want to revert to another dash but still retain XBMC as an app you just replace the two shortcut files. XBMC is still installed in E:\Apps\XBMC\, and is still available as an application, complete with all of your configurations and tweaks.

5. Scripted dashboard switching from menus and installation disks. You can switch dashboards just by editing or replacing the shortcut config file. This makes scripted dashboard switching really simple.

Wow, I wasn't expecting an in depth reply like that. Very illuminating. Thanks for taking the time to explain.

I followed your instructions and it worked very well. Thank you so much for your help and patience!
So now if I would ever want to update I just have to replace the e:\Apps\XBMC folder?

Correct, but you should do something else first - make sure you can boot from a boot/rescue disc, as a recovery mechanism in case you have a problem in the future.

Get a copy of HeXEn (Google Heimdall's Xbox Engineering Disc) and burn the iso to DVD-R at 4x or slower using an iso image burner, like DVD Decrypter 3.5.4.0. Put it in your Xbox DVD drive, and reboot. Once the Xbox boots the LED will turn red, and 40 seconds later the HeXEn menu will appear. As well as having loads of useful tools, it provides FTP access to your Xbox hard drive, which allows you to repair the contents of your hard drive if anything should go wrong in the future.

Ok, I will do that. Thank you for your help!