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I just got a 1.6 motherboard with the LPC rebuilt in the mail today, and slotted in an OpenXenium. It included the stock hard drive which unfortunately was destroyed in the shipping process. The drive I planned to upgrade it to, a 500gb SSD, had previously been in a softmodded Xbox which I completely bricked attempting to do an LPC rebuild myself, and was locked with an HDD key of all 1S thanks to Rocky5's Softmod. After installing the new drive, when I try to unlock the drive from XeniumOS it fails. When I try to format any of the partitions that too fails. When I try to boot a Hexen disc, it hangs on the Linux Xbox logo splashscreen for an infinite amount of time, with OGXboxInstaller producing the same results. I even flashed a different BIOS trying to get Hexen to boot. So I installed the SSD into my PC to erase the drive and start over, no big deal. Wrong. My PC will not move past the BIOS splashscreen when this drive is plugged in. I can't even use F12 to boot a GParted USB to wipe the drive. When hotswapping the drive in after Windows has booted up, any attempts to erase it with diskpart or partition manager give me I/O errors, and GPParted too will not detect the drive after a hotswap. I can't interact with it in any way from any operating system. As it stands, I have a modded Xbox and no way to use it. I'm not really sure where to go from here, so any help is more than appreciated.

I recently picked up a used Seagate Barracuda 400gb IDE drive to put in as an upgrade for the stock drive on my hardmodded 1.6 Xbox. I also upgraded the IDE cable to an 80 wire, and seemed to have absolutely no problems getting it to work. Once I started FTPing games over, though, it stops adding anything new onto the drive after ~150gb. The files take up the space they should, but can't be seen or accessed at all after a power cycle. I looked into it and saw it was potentially a cluster size issue, but since my drive is only 400gb the maximum cluster size is 32, which I set it to. I've tried wiping the partition and starting over a few times, but this problem persists. Anyone know what could be causing it? I unfortunately can't connect the drive to my PC right now since I don't have any IDE to SATA adapter.

just want to plug and play

OK, I'll try to be thorough here. I have a 1.2 XBox with an X-B.I.T. It had been stored in my loft for over 10 years. When I attempted to use it, the 120GB IDE HDD had failed. I re-installed my original XBox HDD which I must have also modded back in the day, and everything worked fine. I got a replacement 120GB IDE HDD and set it up as new using FATXplorer with the C and E file from the link mentioned at https://www.hazeno.com/guides/fatxplorer-2tb-preload Now, my XBox will happily boot from any disc that I put in the DVD drive, but when I boot to the UnleashX dash and pop a disc in the DVD tray in order to copy it to F:, the tray shows as Empty. It doesn't matter what disc I put in, it always shows as empty. Subsequently, if I launch the MS Dashboard from UnleashX, when the MS Dash loads I get the standard "Your Xbox can't recognize this disc. Make sure it's an Xbox game, DVD movie, or audio CD. Also check to see if the disc is dirty or damaged. Remove the disc to continue." I have iND 5003.67 and evox M8 Plus 137 flashed in the X-B.I.T.

I'm going to replace my original XBox HDD with a larger capacity one. In the meantime, since the original HDD has been modified (additional dashboards etc), what is the best way to put it back to "stock" mode and to remove everything that got installed when it was originally hard-modded?

Chimp or FTP is the question I have about 1TB of games on a 2TB drive in a modded box with an xecuter 2.6 chip. I recently picked up another xbox and actually found that I had an extra xecuter 2.6 chip on hand. I recently installed it, and it works just fine, so I have purchased another 2TB drive to put in it. Would it be best to use Chimp to clone it, or should I just throw Hexen on it and FTP over the files. My mind is saying to use Hexen and go the FTP route so I don't have to swap a live drive or touch the other box but maybe I am just over thinking it. What would you do?

Hi, Today a colleague and I replaced the DVD drive in my Xbox 1.6 with a cross-flashed GDR 8163B. Unfortunately we were a bit careless with the connections on the bottom of the DVD controller board and ripped off the solder pad for READY. The drive works to an extent regardless, I can launch games when they're inserted at boot and Video DVDs also work in XBMC. The drive status in EvoX dash is constantly "Ejecting" as it seems. Now, the only thing that bugs me is that the Xbox's LED is constantly blinking (alternating orange/red). It only stops blinking while the tray is out. It's probably confused because the pin is not connected and it thinks the drive is getting ready all the time. Am I right to assume that the blinking is done entirely in hardware? I couldn't find any LED setting code related to it in the kernel. Can somebody tell me what kind of signal the Xbox motherboard is expecting for the ready pin? Can I solder it to ground to stop the blinking but keep things working?

I have had a 200GG Seagate and X3 chip since it was released and recently I decided I wanted to try an SSD. I got a 2TB SSD Loaded it up made my way to getting the partitions setup with a split between F/G as 64k sectors and moved all files over. When I run my games however the save files are all unavailable. I'm figuring there is something to this but of everything I've found I've not found anything to address this. Also when I run burnout 3 I'm limited to like 30-40km/h. Just not sure what I"m missing with this.

I apologise for the tech OCD, I’m just so stoked to have this console back in my life and every little noise or sound makes me wonder, “What if”? My Xbox has a Philips DVD drive and when I power the system on with no disc inserted or close the tray with no disc inserted while powered on, I can hear the lens move up and down the track 3 times before settling. Is this normal behaviour for this brand of disc drive? I’ve included a video below, you can clearly hear it after the tray closes. Thanks!

Hi folks, A friend pointed me in your direction, and I hope you can shed some light of this issue. I picked up an immaculate Xbox today, boxed, sealed manual, still had the plastic over the eject and power buttons, not a mark on the case I played some OutRun2 and Dead or Alive 3, no issues. I then decided to “stress test” and run a game for half an hour, and chose Halo 2, letting it sit in its promo/demo loop. After around 35 mins, the game froze. I ejected the disc, returned to the dash, and reloaded the disc … nothing. The green light around eject just flashes, but there’s no action from the drive other than 3 whirs then nothing. Tonight I took the console apart, and it’s immaculate inside. No leaks, no dust, no bulging caps, not even a spec of dust on the fan … I doubt this console has seen much use, which is what makes this issue even harder to understand. When I had the lid off the drive, I tried to load a game, OutRun2 … but the behaviour is the same for any disc. The lens moves to the top of the track and back 3 times, and each time it returns to its “home” position next to the disc spindle, the spindle tries to turn and moves, if it’s lucky, a centimetre or two. It does this 3 times, then nothing. I don’t get any disc read errors, because the disc doesn’t seem to spin up. The drive, like the rest of the system, is very clean but it just stopped working so suddenly. Any and all advice will be greatly appreciated. I don’t want to return this to CEX for them to scrap it, especially given it’s condition, so I want to try and save it. If the drive is toast, as I suspect it may well be, what are my options in terms of modding without a working disc drive? Thanks all. Edit: I have uploaded a video of the drive in action, here:

hello guys i have an xbox with 80gb hard drive i have another 120gb hard drive my question is how i can replace it with the 80gb my xbox has Aladdin modchip

Hello Team. I have run into something unique I have never seen before. I just hard modded a friends OG Xbox (v1.0) and everything went swimmingly. Although his original DVD drive (Thomson Okmco Shenzhen) would not read discs before the hard mod (pretty common issue of course), it would open and close and the Xbox booted just fine. I used a working Samsung DVD drive to work the modding magic and I had no issues with any part of it. The TSOP is an ST. After the hard mod and BIOS flash, I put his original DVD drive back in the unit. Now, however, the unit will not boot with the original DVD drive installed. It throws error 13. If I replace that drive with a different DVD drive (also a Samsung), it boots just fine and everything works. If I put the Thomson DVD in another v1.0 with a Hynix TSOP, it boots just fine. Has anyone seen an issue where the DVD model causes the unit to not be able to load the dashboard (at least that is what error 13 is I believe) after a modification? I am guessing the TSOP chip has something to do with it. This is more of a "huh" moment as obviously the unit is fine with the other DVD drive connected and I can just use that. Just curious if anyone else has seen this issue. Any insight is greatly appreciated!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqdMb6xT8cI I've had this v1.1 console for a few years, it's been sitting in storage for 3 years. I decided to power it up to see if it's still running only to find I get this weird lens issue with an error code 11 on screen. I've also tried the disc drive on my main console, the same thing happens. Would anyone know why? I've got another GDR-8163B that's already been modified for use on the Xbox. I'll use it and modchip the system.

As it says in the title, I'm new to the Xbox modding scene. I'm wondering if I could just take out the hard drive and replace it with a brand new one (plain and simple). Or do I need to do some other stuff before putting a new hard drive. My Xbox is also unmodded (unmodded as in STOCK, no softmod or hardmods done to it.) And if some soldering needs to be done, then does anybody know what (affordable) soldering equipment do I need? Considering I have ZERO skills in soldering.

Hi has anyone had much success fixing the dvd drives, I cant believe how crappy they were. Seems like everybody has a bad drive. I have a samsung and replaced belt, cleaned and installed a new laser and still no good. Is a modified LG the best option? How good is FatXplorer I got my 1TB running from it. So much better than the ftp that is hit n miss

As the title states, the Philips drive in my 1.2 is refusing to boot/read discs. In XBMC4Gamers it appears in the top right corner as you would expect, but the text that accompanies it just says "Busy". It says this as well in the file manager. In the retail dashboard it will throw up the usual "Could not read this disc" error. It also has the telltale 'hitches' during the flubber animation that appear whenever the DVD drive is disconnected. Is this indicative of a hardware issue with the drive? I'm confident its not my mainboard nor my cable. I'm really, really not up for cannibalising another Xbox to fix this one and listings for individual drives are non-existant.

Hi guys, I recently discovered all the cool stuff everyone has done on the og xbox. So Ive tried to join in. I formatted the 1TB drive and used indbios4.67 on a a hard mod old aladdin advance chip. Used boxexplorer 1.3 and had working on unleashx, but now f: drive is gone. I ftp games possibly more than 120gig. The f drive was setup to 920gb or what was left at 64 no ER, I followed a 2tb video on youtube to get full drive showing. When i open boxexplorer its still there. Does anyone know what might fix it ? Should I reformat and speard to g drive ? Any help is appreciated.

My Xbox is not modded and kind of wanted to keep it that way, I wanted to replace my hard drive, is it as easy as just putting a new drive in my xbox? because i heard about having to unlock and lock with eeprom key, is there a way i can do it without modding or unlocking and locking a hard drive? thankyou for your time everyone!

I have an OG Xbox that no longer works, I've tried a different power supply and replaced some capacitors that were bad no luck, my friend gave me a working Xbox same model. Is it possible to swap the drive from my dead one to the "new" one and retain all the data? Also if I can't do that would it be possible to transfer the save data and games to the new system?

Can I ask the community for some help please: I’m trying to make a back-up of my WD Blue 1TB hard drive from my Xbox and can’t seem to get the duplicated drive to boot. My Xbox is modded with an Xecuter X3 chip and that is working fine; I have the X3 panel on the front which is lighting up blue and booting ok with my original drive – and it is booting to the X3 bios on my duplicate one. I’ve duplicated my original drive using HDD Raw Copy 1.10 (through two separate USB docking stations). Obviously I received read errors throughout the process; but it has reached 100% and finished. However, when I plugged in the back-up drive and booted up the Xbox, I got error code 16. When I switched banks and booted to the X3 bios it updated some settings; but when I boot to the bios bank that should be loading my XBMC Media Centre dashboard, I get error code 13. Basically my question is: am I missing something/doing something wrong? I wonder if I still need to “tell” the bios that this is a different drive somehow? Any advice gratefully received thanks.

Got a 1.6 crystal in pretty great condition here with one serious problem - DVD drive (SDG-605) is dead, error 12. Tried swapping a known working DVD drive in and using exactly the same power+IDE cable+HDD it successfully boots to dash so it's definitely the SDG-605 causing the error. If anyone has any working DVD drives they are willing to part with, especially if they're in the UK, that would be great. Otherwise, it's going to be the eBay lottery, and I'm not feeling lucky.

I am quite familiar with using fatxplorer for xbox 360. But i cant seem to get the og xbox partitions to show up in fatxplorer.

Hello, first time Xbox repair-er here. So I took an old Xbox out of storage (10-ish years). Turned it on and it powered up fine, clock set screen came up which was expected since I assumed I was going to be ripping the clock cap out anyway. Also the disk tray wouldn't open, again an easy fix, no big deal. I open it up, clean the DVD drive and reset the belt (boiling water, etc.) and put it all back together. Only this time it doesn't turn on. I can hear a faint noise coming from the hard drive but nothing else, no indicator lights, no disk tray activity, nothing. My guess is more than one of the caps was going bad and that final power on I did was just the nail in the coffin. I plan to open it up and do a full cleaning to see if there's anything obvious, but the fact that the HDD seems to still be getting power makes me think that I possibly broke something. Is it possible that bad caps could cause power to stop going to certain components but not others?

I seem to have a lot of issues with my data files on my G partition. Any emulators, games, media, etc., on the F partition work flawlessly. I can copy the same files over to my G partition and it is very hit and miss on whether things will function properly. There are also times when I can have everything working on G, then copy over some files (FTP or FATxplorer) and suddenly, things go wonky even with files that I never touched. My HDD is a Samsung SSD 860 EVO 1TB. So my G partition is quite large (803GB). My F partition is only 120GB. I used AID to prepare/format the drive. My BIOS is the EVOX m8+ CEE FG w/no DVD off the OGXBOX installer 1.5.3 disc. Is it possible that I am using a BIOS that doesn't handle that large G partition very well? Should I be using a different BIOS perhaps? It is very frustrating to work on making a HDD and getting the xbox all set up and then suddenly my files are corrupt for no apparently reason when they work just fine on F. Any insight here is greatly appreciated.

Hi again Following up on my previous post about mt ram upgrade. Ive ran into another issue. I have installed a 1tb HDD. Prior to upgrading my ram I had already formated the with F partition taking 120gb and G partition taking the rest of the space. I have filled F partition with xbox games which has taken quite some time. Ive now realised that IND-BIOS 5003.67 will not read G partition. M8 bios will read the G partition but then i wont be able to take advantage of my extra ram. From what Ive read it is to do with how my G patition table is written. If this is the issue, is there any way I re-write the partition table without disturbing the data?