Tried to hotswap, lost partition 4!

[ScubaBMW]

I did a dumb thing and tried to hotswap softmod a second console I have, with a guide from consolemods.org everything was going great but Xplorer360 seemed to have deleted my Partition 4. I saved all the files I could (this is pre softmod so i wasn’t able to backup EEPROM) and now when I boot the Xbox it just goes straight to an error screen, no dashboard. I’m unsure how to unlock the HDD again and what to do from here. It’s a v. 1.0 console with 3944 kernel. Any help is appreciated!

 

I realize what I did was dumb and my only other hope might just be to chip the console, but I have no idea to solder so it might just be out of my scope of knowledge and I’ll have to sell the console as parts or something. 

[KaosEngineer]

Forget that the buggy xplorer360 ever existed.  Try FATXplorer 3.0 Beta. 

When you hotswap connect the Xbox drive to your PC before powering on the Xbox, connect a wire from the PC's power supply ground to the Xbox's shield (aka ground). Then, do the hotswap connect again.  Start FATXplorer 3.0 Beta can it access/mount partition 4.  Report back if it is or not.

[ScubaBMW]

I’ll give that a try, the main trick is getting it to get unlocked again, it was easier with the dashboard booting up but now that doesn’t even happen, any tips for getting it unlocked?

[KaosEngineer]

3 hours ago, ScubaBMW said:

I’ll give that a try, the main trick is getting it to get unlocked again, it was easier with the dashboard booting up but now that doesn’t even happen, any tips for getting it unlocked?

At the end of the startup animation once Microsoft appears under the big X logo, the hard drive is unlocked.

You could also disconnect the DVD drive from IDE cable and once the error screen appears the hard drive should be unlocked too.