HDShadow

Without the pics of the 'controller daughterboard' or more info I cannot see what help anyone here can provide. However you say two controllers (official MS ones?) are not working which suggests its not the controllers with the fault. You may be asking about the controller port(s) of the actual Xbox. From your limited description you might be talking about the Xbox v1.0 which uses 'USB' daughterboards for the controller ports. Only the Xbox v1.0 had those so if your Xbox version is v1.1 - v1.6 then the "missing" daughterboards are not missing.

Looks like a skin corruption error from the log but how you fix that when using XBMC4Gamers I'm not 100% sure. With XBMC4Xbox, assuming you had the default skin available in your skin folder holding both thumb stick in (L3/R3 pressed in) when the Xbox is booting will get you to a screen asking if you want to reset XBMC. What it does is return the UserData folder to the default state and that will include the skin choice reverting to the default (usually Project Mayhem III/PM3). Obviously you don't want it to do that and I'd guess that XBMC4Gamers doesn't have a backup skin as it is 'just' a skin itself. So I doubt that is appropriate for XBMC4Gamers and hold off trying anything like that until you have advice from somebody who knows XBM4Gamers better than I do. EDIT Just read SS_Dave's reply - if you have FTP access that would seem like a good solution.

It just seems to me you could have two, maybe completely unrelated problems, and until one of them is fixed you're not going to know if they're related. The cost of replacing the cap is very small and as you will be doing it anyway surely it is better to do that now.

I'd hoped somebody would help you on this as I'm not certain of the cause but your speculation that having 256 E:\UDATA folders maybe involved does ring a bell. There's some limit I'm pretty sure about that but if it is this why it would have the problems described I can not even guess at.

....................or you could just rename the game's default.xbe XBE title to something very much shorter so that any failing in the UnleashX file manager's character support become irrelevant. I had similar problems title length with Dead Or Alive Extreme Beach Volleyball which I think is 37 characters but the reason I wanted to change it was one of skin menu display limits. I needed to reduce it 25 characters/spaces or less to fit in my preferred skin's menu 'display box'. So all I did was abbreviate it to DOA XBV and I've actually done a similar thing for the rest of the Xbox DOA games so all of them are grouped together in the menu. In your case I'd just use Star Wars - KOTOR 1 and Star Wars - KOTOR 2.

I have and use multiple different options including a 17 - 19 years old ED/HD WS CRT, an SD only WS CRT and a 20" 4:3 CRT. Literally just today I've replaced my ageing kitchen CRT TV (15" 4:3 Philips portable) wth a new 24" Panasonic WS LED . The Xbox attached is set up with XBMC and principally used as a music player. New does not necessarily mean better though, there is always something that the old set up does better than the new which I why I like to keep my Xbox and other games console display options varied. What is a problem for me with this new LED is that the TV's built in speakers are inferior in every way of the CRT it is replacing. As its effectively a communal situation I don't use the headphones I use for all other TV watching and gaming purposes. Headphones, even cheap ones, put in built TV speakers to shame. With all the CRTs I've owned and own the speakers are facing forwards on either side of the screen and even with only a 15" TV's separation you still get good stereo effects. The audio quality is a not often considered advantage of CRT use. I beginning to understand why sound bars are now a thing with modern TVs and I'm seriously thinking of getting one for this kitchen TV. An extra expense I had not budgeted for.

I've not had that problem with XBMC but I have experienced a strong green cast with certain tools (Chimp) when used on some TVs with RGB SCART cables. I eventually realised that was a known problem with the particular PAL EU/UK TV not supporting RGB SCART for NTSC use. The TV did not have Component connections so could not display in 480p. Using PAL60 resolved the green colour issue. You could try swapping back to PAL and seeing if the problem remains when you're using (PAL60) 480i/60Hz or (PAL50) 576i/50Hz. If it is not that my thought is either you have the Component cable RCA plugs (Green/Blue/Red) in the wrong sockets or the cable has been incorrectly modded. The only way you could check the latter is with a multi-meter and knowledge of the Component pin out configuration.

The No DVD drive check option does not affect the boot priority AFAIK. It just omits the check for a working DVD drive before boot. In this case the DVD drive is clearly functional but maybe not fully functional, so if a disc is inserted and spinning up the No DVD drive check surely becomes irrelevant. The Xbox DVD drive will try to boot from the disc first. At least that is what I would have thought. TBH this is only a theory. I've not checked this with any BIOS I've used where the No DVD check option is definitely enabled but with all my hardmodded Xboxes, (2 x chips, 2 x TSOPs), ones with 100% working DVD drives, all of them still priority cold boot from disc ie. audio CD, DVD, DVD-R or other compatible media. I've also found that If you insert any disc quickly even after starting the Xbox it will usually boot that first too.

Too much work to sift through all these replies so perhaps this has already been suggested......................there is no problem with the BIOS or even if it was a softmod. Most (all?) BIOS even the retail MS will priority launch from disc either during a cold or reset start up. It is a normal and useful feature. My thought is that in this case, if we are talking about genuine original CDs and DVDs or burned ones, although more likely with the latter if they're on incompatible disc media, then it is simply another Xbox DVD drive beginning to fail issue. Disc media launch is correctly prioritised but the disc cannot be read so you get a blank screen and then the main dash should boot instead. However, as SS_Dave I think is saying, if any of the UnleashX dash disc media settings are set to AutoLaunch then before the main dash screen boots it will try to launch the disc again and fail again. The Xbox will be in loop of trying to launch the disc and failing. If you can hear the disc spinning up and trying to read then this is very likely what is happening. The dash Autolaunch settings, probably, just need changed but, of course, it won't fix the DVD drive read problems, if that is what is wrong.

Curse The Eye Of Isis is known to be one of those games which have problems on a v1.6 when trying to play in 480p. The unusual thing is that no known 480p launcher works. Rocky5 warns about this, listing it as one of the games that can't be patched to play in 480p on a v1.6. On the Thief Deadly Shadows matter, it could be that FMV PAL/NTSC naming issue prtscn describes. Whilst the game itself doesn't start with an FMV it does display a MS Studio logo FMV at boot. I'll have to check that and see if the PAL version is a PAL specific one only.

Most PAL games work fine, support NTSC and ED/HD resolutions when using Component cables. But there are a few that are region locked but I wasn't aware Thief: Deadly Shadows was one of them. I've just checked my original PAL disc on a v1.4 Xbox with Philips DVD drive and can confirm that on a NTSC set Xbox (RGB SCART cable) it doesn't display with anything other than a completely blank screen. If you switch the console to PAL using the Enigmah region changer it launches and plays perfectly. I'm trying installing on the same Xbox from that disc using DVD2Xbox which should ACL (Action Control List) patch it for playing from the HDD. I don't expect that to work any differently ie. it won't display when using a NTSC set Xbox. The only PAL game I've installed which wouldn't display properly under NTSC but when installed and ACL patched under PAL, then the Xbox switched back to NTSC and did display correctly, was the Riddick EFBB game. But Riddick EFBB did not display with a blank screen before that, the start screen was just scrambled so I suspect Thief DS PAL is region locked at the very least and won't play under NTSC even when installed and ACL patched. .......................................Just finished installing it and as I expected it works perfectly under PAL but when you switch to NTSC it freezes on the loading screen. That's actually quite unusual; what normally happens if the PAL game is region locked is that it will play but with no picture, sound only under NTSC. Sometimes it may have a scrambled screen too or dirty disc error message. So this blank screen and refusal even to load the game when installed on the HDD is certainly not typical behaviour of a game that is simply region locked.

I'd suspect what the artwork installer is telling you is correct and you need to find a new source or re-download. However I'd check the XBE titles for those games because it would have to be a specific corruption of the "default.xbe" for it not at least to appear in the Games list correctly even if the game itself did not launch. With XBMC4Gamers, which is essentially a dedicated XBMC skin you should be able to use the WHITE controller button when highlighting the game on that Games' screen and you should see a Rename XBE menu option. It could even be that old problem of double packing the game ie. the game folder is inside another folder of the same name. That is usually as result of unpacking a ZIP or RAR file to another named folder rather than just unpacking the content: the game folder. Before unpacking any compressed file you should check how it is is packed first.

Effectively yes, they support PAL, NTSC and the ED/HD resolutions allowed/supported by the game when using the NTSC dashboard. There are region locked games but also genuine region free games eg. a nominally NTSC game will play on an unmodded PAL Xbox an example being Myst 4: Revelation which was only released in the US and so says it is NTSC but plays perfectly on a unmodded PAL Xbox. The powers that be didn't want people to know this, presumably in case the game was latterly a hit and they decided to sell it as a 'PAL' game which, inevitably, would be more expensive than the 'NTSC' labelled version. So even the publishers were reluctant to confirm directly if their games were region free or not. That is from personal experience because I contacted Ubisoft directly at the time and had an odd answer about whether they were going to release Myst 4 in the UK. The reply said they had no plans to do that so if I wanted to play it on my Xbox I'd have import it. I later realised that this had been tacit admission the 'NTSC' version was actually region free. I had not said or even implied I was using a modded Xbox. I was just enquiring if it was going to be released in the UK. The Xbox console itself is not region locked but MS hobbled the PAL version with a dashboard that only allowed a video display choice of PAL50 or PAL60. That is one of the main reasons for PAL Xbox owners to mod their console to be able swap it to NTSC and get the far superior 480p display option which most PAL game versions included but were inaccessible when using the PAL dashboard.

Question is - why do you want to do this? Converting a NTSC version game to PAL is practically pointless unless your TV is one of the very few which don't support NTSC display. Most have for decades. NTSC and PAL60 are both 480i//60Hz and in practical use are indistinguishable. I'd guess ninety percent of Xbox PAL games support NTSC which means, with Component, you have a ED 480p resolution option which is noticeably superior to any interlaced resolution.

The skin.xml is only able to modify things like how many main menu items are displayed at a time, text colour, text background, whether they rotate and, most importantly the positioning. The actual main menu names, as KE ^^^ says, are all determined by the Config.xml not the skin.xml. However you can introduce additional text information as part of the Source skin.xml entries and/or, of course, graphics overlays. Your skin can be used by any UnleashX user as is, they don't need to mess around with or replace their Config.xml. It just won't display exactly as in your demo because not all the items in the menu will be available, their customised names or in the same order. There's nothing wrong with that modfied Config.xml with its inclusion of additional menu options and names it is just you don't need to use it. Good work, I like the skin, particularly its relative simplicity. If it was me I'd find a better way of displaying things like app icons rather than stretching them vertically just to fit the Xbox case dimensions. I always use square icons as they work with all dashboards and if you want them to fit in a rectangular border it is simple just to add top and bottom borders or extensions to fill the rectangular space.

Sounds like too much like work for me and I suspect most other people just wanting to refer to the UnleashX manual. Readers surely want it to be clear, understandable and attractive as it is and not have to re-edit it to suit their own needs or tastes. But I appreciate the information on how to do that.

It was just the UnleashX manual XML code display I was talking about not the skin XMLs etc. You can use whatever colours you want and almost whatever else you want in the latter. Its just those UX manual XML code examples font colours I'm questioning not the font used itself which is perfectly legible. I was thinking particularly about users who might be colour blind. On the subject of Xbox use fonts: I've converted dozens of TTF/OTF fonts to XPRs. Some work in 480i/480p better than others at those typical Xbox use resolutions. I have a very long term project to go through my entire UnleashX skin collection (1000+) and 'fix' edit all the things wrong. I'll probably never get them all done because of getting sidetracked by skins I like. I end up spending more time developing and adding to them than is required merely to make them better from the graphic design point of view. However one of the things that often needs a complete replacement are the unforgivably poor choice of font colour/size and background colour. They have to be legible at 480i/480p but many are not. Such matters are a bit of a hobby-horse for me and I'd far rather have legibility and clarity than whatever it was the original creator was trying to do. I'd not seen those full (?) UX Fonts and Sources lists before; that's very useful information because there are some things there I've never seen used in any skin.xml. Most of my knowledge on such matters comes from studying existing skins and the UX manual.

I have the original and just done some comparisons with your rewrite update. It seems mostly the XML code pages/entries that have altered from green/red/blue/black font primary colours on a white background to what I think is better, certainly easier on the eyes, an off-black background. Good work and thanks for this alternative UnleashX manual source. That alone makes the effort worthwhile. But that new choice of font colours........................hmmmm, I'm really sorry, I'm not convinced. However it may look better on a more contrasty monitor than the old TN one I'm using now so I'll reserve judgment on that and wait for other comments.

It is quite simple for all of the dashboards you specify. For EvoX KaosEngineer has described the method perfectly and for other dashboards there are similar methods which basically just add an F:\ and G:\ path configuration to what should already be the default E:\ path. However with an "Emulators" named folder not all dash versions include E:\Emulators even by default. You have to create the actual folder on any or all of the drives ie. it does no matter if you have them on all or just one or two. But you then have to check the dash configuration file to see if the path exists and if not add it. As KE describes you edit the evox.ini for an EvoX main dash. For UnleashX you edit the config.xml. The syntax used can easily be understood from looking at whatever other entries are already there, like "Games":- <List Text="Games" Sort="On" Auto="On"> <Path>E:\Games</Path> <Path>F:\Games</Path> <Path>G:\Games</Path> </List> You just change "Games" to "Emulators" or whatever the containing folder is called. BTW make certain you use that </List> at the end of the new Emulators insertion. If you miss it you find your main menu listing will be messed up. For XBMC (refer to prtscan's new post ^) : once the Emulators folder location has been created you just need to go to the main Programs menu and use the WHITE button context menu to bring up Add Source. It is pretty much self explanatory from then on - you just add the path or paths to the folder(s) location(s) and save. Avalaunch has its own XML configuration file which looks more complicated than it actually is because it contains tutorial elements which make what the actual 'active' entries are less clear. But thankfully the Emulators section is usually already set up so if it doesn't include an E:\ path already you can add it. Again the syntax, in this case, is simple to understand:- <list presetname="Emulators"> <path> E:\Emulators </path> <path> F:\Emulators </path> </list> As said with all dashboards you can have the same folder name on E:\ and/or F:\ and/or G:\. In all cases as long as the location path is included every Emulators' folders' contents will be listed as one under you main dash "Emulators" menu whatever the main dash or dash as app you're using. My advice, as always, when doing something like this, is to back up the original configuration file before editing the copy. Once done try it out on a mirror or test copy the dash installed as an app. With XBMC its not so important, because messing up an Add Source entry doesn't effect the main menu or other dashboard functions. But when editing any other main dashboard's configuration file it is recommended practice.

I tried cold removal of the heat-sinks on an already dead, bought for parts Xbox. All it proved was what I already knew and that is you will damage the chips if you do anything as stupid as that shown in this YT tutorial and use a screwdriver or other similar tool to lever them off. The correct way is to let the Xbox heat up - play a game or just let it run on the dash for 15 minutes. How long depends on the ambient temperature. The existing TIM should get softer and when the heat-sink can be wiggled (gently) you should be able to pull it off without damaging the chip at all. There is also a huge question mark over whether replacing the TIM is even necessary

If you only have a config.xml then you're not using an EvoX dash, you're using UnleashX. But the same advice indeed does apply although it is rare that any version of UnleashX doesn't come with a config.xml that enables G:\ by default. Looking at the screenshot it is clear that the config.xml is significantly customised so I guess whoever did that neglected to include G:\ paths that's all. I think you assumed you were using EvoX because the primary dashboard XBE is "evoxdash.xbe". That is just the adopted standard name for the main dash XBE no matter what dashboard you are actually using.

That ^ possibly but equally likely it being an EvoX main dash is that a G:\ path for Games is simply not included in the evox.ini. The commonly found and used EvoX v3935 dash's default evox.ini only includes E:\ and F:\ paths. Check the evox.ini under Section "Games" and the AutoAddItem entries will probably only show those e:\ and f:\ paths. The simple solution is to copy the whole evox.ini, and edit it to include a g:\ path, otherwise using exactly the the same syntax as the other two. Then test it on a copy of your main dash installed as an app just to make sure it works before replacing the actual main dash evox.ini.

I think you misunderstood. Of course that is correct; what I meant was that you should not unlock a softmod unless you have a backup or alternative method available to re-lock it.

I think that is pretty risky advice for a softmod. I'd only unlock a softmodded HDD if it was a cloned backup or I had another one locked to the same Xbox or all nulled eeproms or a chipped Xbox to lock it with the imported eeprom from the Xbox. Safety first in my motto and in this case having alternative methods available so that the HDD in question could be relocked by other methods (Chimp) if there was some problem locking it on PC.

Samsung 605B ones are the most compatible, its the F version that has more disc media compatibility issues. That's generally agreed I believe and certainly what my testing results with two Samsung 605B and two 605F suggested too. But in the case of DVD+R the oddity is that whilst the 605F does not like any CD media (inconsistent results with CD-RW) they were both OK with DVD+R. Again there was some inconsistency in the results of the multiple burn tests I did but It was indeed the 605B pair that more often than not rejected anything I burned using the two brands of DVD+R I tested. So there is a good chance the problem is that and not a failing DVD drive. DVD-R should work fingers crossed.