xbox i have bricked it :(

[notsosleepy]

Ok guys so i tried a hundred times to softmod my xbox using the mech assault save exploit and for 1 reason or another i could not get it to work i finaly gave up and decided to go down the hotswap route as i have used this method a few times before with sucess.
all went well right up untill installing ndure .

it failed because well i forgot to delete save files and the hdd ran out of space yes i know im dumber than a box of rocks.
i did manage to create a backup of c before it failed however
and also got into the drive via xplorer 360 from which i dumped to my pc
shadowc .
but this dumped as a img file that will not burn to disk

i think all the hotswapping has killed the puny 8gb xbox hdd

here is why i think that

i can unlock the hdd using the error11/12 method but when i try to acess it the computer freezes (exactly like every other corrupt hdd iv ever owned)
if i dont unlock i can get to xboxhd but of course this will not work as the drive is locked

also i can no longer acess the drive in explorer 360 as when i unlock it and click open hard drive explorer 360 crashes

so im hoping whatever information is kept in shadowc can save me by creating a fresh hdd please tell me the eeprom is kept in the c partition and that i can use this to make a xbox hdd from a non dead drive

 

[T2Steve]

sadly, no your shadow C cannot save you. EEPROM is backed up after soft mod, not during so it won't be saved anywhere. Unless of course your mech assault booted into a dashboard that you then used to do an EEPROM backup....

can you get into the drive via xboxhdm if you hot swap? In my experience when an xbox HDD is out of space it still runs just very very very very slowly. try hot swapping into xboxhdm, give it an hour or so to do a boot and then in xboxhdm format the hard drive. Once formatted you can then copy the C and E partitions back to the disk in such a way as to not muck everything up. may want to consider just getting a new set of NDURE files for soft mod, or just re-doing it from scratch once you have formatted.

if you have another xbox that is already modded, you can also try hot swapping the drive over to the chipped/tsopped box after the hard drive is unlocked (don't let it power down) and see if it will boot in the other box..

if none of the above work, there is still hope! you can borrow a chip from someone, add in the pin header and boot with an altogether new hard drive, format and install all retail files, soft mod files, and then lock the drive to the motherboard and after doing all that power it off and pull the chip... you can also build an EEPROM reader and extract the EEPROM from the motherboard. I picked up all the supplies for that for about 15 bucks but could have done so cheaper..

 

[notsosleepy]

Hi and thanks for the reply it is very much appreciated whenever i unlock the hd and run the ndure disk it freezes when i choose my option in my case option 1 i have not left it for more than a few minutes as i assumed it was not doing anything i will try leaving it for around an hour and see if i can get into xboxhd
i didnt ever take into account that the drive may be very slow due to being so full

i am confused however that u said format the drive wouldnt that delete my eeprom?

if i unlock the hdd i cant access it via explorer 360 as it freezes

i do have an old xbox with an executer modchip installed but this has been in my shed for years and is missing the jumper switches from the front of the xbox .Could this be usefull to me ?
it has no hard drive and is probably in a bad way

 

[notsosleepy]

sorry also forgot to mention that i did backup the c drive to e but i have no way of getting at that backup (am i missing something?)

 

[T2Steve]

You can format the hard drive without removing the lock/unlock status from it. That goes beyond any files or etc on it. You cannot flash the firmware or a bunch of other things that can remove a lock and keep it in locked status though, not that that has anything to do with anything.

So here is how it works, Xbox boots, unlocks hard drive, and then reads it. If you format the hard drive the process remains the same - boots, and unlocks, and then fails to read file system.

I have filled a few xbox hard drives in my time and they become extremely temperamental once they are at or close to their filled point. if you are lucky you can still nuke it. I believe that option 4 is to boot into dos tools.. you may be able to get the drive unlocked, boot into DOS tools and then use one of those options to nuke the drive, but I'm not sure. I've used DOS tools for very limited reasons when it comes to xbox HDD.

as far as the xbox in the shed goes, that actually can make things go a lot easier. If it is an xbox version 1.0-1.5 and your current box is also 1.0-1.5 then you just need to swing by a radio shack or similar store, pick up a bunch of pin header and solder it into your current box. Take the chip from your chipped box, and put it into the new box. D0 will need to be grounded and you may also need to short a couple of pins on the chip switch header in order to get it to boot. I did the same thing recently trying to get a 2.6 executor to work that had no switch. Shorting I think pin #3 or 4 to ground on the switch header pushed the chip into "On" and D0 was grounded, so the chip tried to boot. Chip was dead on it, but that's really not the point.

Once you have the chip on there and it is mounted up, D0 grounded and the chip shorted into "on" status, you should be good to boot from the chip. Presuming that the chip still works, you should be able to boot an AID or Slayers or Hexen disk with a new hard drive, format and configure it to the xbox, soft mod it, and then lock it. you may need an app for locking it, but they typically come with any of the above mentioned disks. Once locked, or even before locking, back up the EEPROM and FTP it right out of the box so you have some way to recover when the hard drive fails..

The alternative is to build an EEPROM reader, download PONY on a windows xp machine with a serial port, and read the mo-bo itself and extract the EEPROM.

I'm actually in the same position myself with a 1.6 xbox that has no hard drive. I have bought the things needed to read the eeprom but am too lazy to instal XP and Pony on a pc with a serial port, and build the eeprom reader.....

 

[T2Steve]

thought I would give an update, I built the EEPROM reader and it worked flawlessly. Pulled the EEPROM.BIN and used it to lock a new drive and now all of my not-dead xbox's are working perfect..