HDD Unlock Fail

[Chungaloid]

Hey all, I have a 1.6 aladdin chipped xbox that runs perfectly fine with stock hdd.  I received a 1.0 a while back that the original owner had no idea what him and his kid had done to it, as it was so long ago.  The mobo is pretty bad, but it had a WD2000 200gb ide hdd in it.  So I yanked the hdd out, and threw it in my 1.6.  Upon booting with no disk, I was greeted to Error 16.  Reboot and I got an Error 13, which is persistent when booting with no disk.  When attempting to boot any game, be it official or burned, I get an error 21.  I figured it wouldn't boot to anything other than errors, but I have never done this so I was curious what exactly I would be greeted with.

 

I then threw a verified working copy of Hexen 2018 in the dvd drive, where the linux logo and red ring popped up.  It usually takes this drive about 30 seconds to load it up, but I am stuck at a persistent loading screen.  Downloaded Hexen 2021 and the OGXbox installer disk and the same thing happened.  I did, however, manage to get Slayer 2.7 to load up.  Slayer is telling me that I have no free space in any of my partitions, and it states the I have an HDD unlock fail.  I tried locking and unlocking the drive with no success.  I've tried formatting and reinstalling EvolutionX and MS dashboard, and the whole process only takes about 8 seconds, so it's obviously not doing anything.  Also my hdd activity light only blinks like twice.  My questions is, is the hdd toasted?  It's spinning and gaining heat, so I know it's not completely dead.  I've never messed with xbox hard drives before so any advice would be greatly appreciated!

 

Sorry for making yet another thread so soon after the last one, I just have a few projects going at the same time and I keep running into issues lol.  I swear I'm not trying to litter up the forum lol.  Thank you so much for your help.

[SS_Dave]

Try putting the hard drive back in the original Xbox (the Xbox it was in) and run hexen to unlock it.

Then it may boot or at least be usable in your Xbox.

 

Cheers

SS Dave

Soft modding is like masturbating, It gets the job done but it's nothing like the real thing.

[Chungaloid]

21 minutes ago, SS_Dave said:

Try putting the hard drive back in the original Xbox (the Xbox it was in) and run hexen to unlock it.

Then it may boot or at least be usable in your Xbox.

 

Cheers

SS Dave

Soft modding is like masturbating, It gets the job done but it's nothing like the real thing.

 

Copy that, I'll try it.  Thanks Dave!

[SS_Dave]

49 minutes ago, Chungaloid said:

I just have a few projects going at the same time and I keep running into issues lol. 

I know what you mean

My list of projects seems to be getting bigger.

 

Cheers

SS Dave

Soft modding is like masturbating, It gets the job done but it's nothing like the real thing.

[Chungaloid]

On 3/7/2021 at 6:21 PM, SS_Dave said:

Try putting the hard drive back in the original Xbox (the Xbox it was in) and run hexen to unlock it.

 

That worked!  Got that mobo up and running with a modchip and was able to unlock the drive.  Feel like a dummy lol, I guess I just assumed it had already been unlocked, but I guess the original owner installed and locked it.  Works great as far as I can tell, no games but a bunch of old dash files it looks like.  Once again, thanks for your help @SS_Dave!

[sweetdarkdestiny]

Just a little side note: All installer, which use a BFM Bios, will fail to boot if you use a locked HDD from a other XBox. Funny is that Slayer's and X-Disk, which both don't use a BFM bios, are able to boot up the XBox with a locked a HDD from a differend XBox. Maybe it has to do with the kernel swapping.

 

[KaosEngineer]

3 hours ago, sweetdarkdestiny said:

Just a little side note: All installer, which use a BFM Bios, will fail to boot if you use a locked HDD from a other XBox. Funny is that Slayer's and X-Disk, which both don't use a BFM bios, are able to boot up the XBox with a locked a HDD from a differend XBox. Maybe it has to do with the kernel swapping.

 

I don't see how this is possible.  A locked hard drive is locked - data inaccessible from it - until it gets unlocked.

Maybe the console boots from the DVD media but you won't be able to read / write anything from/to the LOCKED hard drive.

[sweetdarkdestiny]

1 hour ago, KaosEngineer said:

I don't see how this is possible.  A locked hard drive is locked - data inaccessible from it - until it gets unlocked.

Maybe the console boots from the DVD media but you won't be able to read / write anything from/to the LOCKED hard drive.

I can't tell but, I can tell you that I had the same failure.

Both X-Disk and Slayers are booting and seeing the drive but they are not able to do anything. All other like HeXEn (All versions) or my installer failed. But both of the non BFM installer booted up. I guess it's because of the switching kernels. To confirm this I would need to make a non BFM of HeXEn / OGXBox and test it. Another thing which is might be possible is, that the ones use UnleashX instead of EvoX which, in this case, would not care for the HDD.

But if you don't belive me, go ahead, swap out a xbox with a locked HDD from another xbox and see your self.

In my case it was just a old 8GB of which I didn't cared a lot but I found it funny some how. I will bookmark this topic and when I have some new blank DVD-R I will made a non BFM OGXBox and a non BFM HeXEn to test this out. If they both will fail, it's probably UnleashX which I don't belive.

[KaosEngineer]

2 hours ago, sweetdarkdestiny said:

UnleashX instead of EvoX which, in this case, would not care for the HDD

I think this may play a big part in the problem, not the BFM vs. non-BFM BIOS. 

I believe UnleashX always tries to access the hard drive and if it's locked, gets stuck.