Posts Tagged ‘harddisk’

How to mod your XBox to play games from harddisk

Important you can cause your Xbox not to respond if the steps described aren’t followed carefully. It worked for me and countless others, proceed with caution and make sure you fully understand the process before attempting it.

What will installing UXE do for my Xbox?

  • Allow you to play unsigned/backup games.
  • Allow you to use homebrew software such as “Emulators”.
  • Allow you to run/copy games to the Internal hard-drive.
  • Allow you to Install a new replacement/larger hard-drive.
  • Allow you to FTP into your Xbox to load files and edit/delete files.
  • Reset your Xbox with “IGR” (In Game Reset) button combo.
  • Allow use of Xbox *’Live’ (a script is included to revert to the original dash).
  • Limited Use as you’ll need the original game to use the ‘Live’ service

Tools and Items you will require:

  1. Memory card (Highly suggest you use the Microsoft Version).
  2. Microsoft Controller or Action Replay/Gameshark with USB Memory card Writer.
  3. Original copy of ‘Mech Assault’

You might also find useful download here.

Get the right Game:

I recommend you start with obtaining an original copy of the game Mech Assault that will work with the exploit save:

1. Mech Assault

Important, the files you will download sometimes use a compression called ‘.rar’ so you will need a tool called Winrar to decompress the files, it can be downloaded from here.

  1. If using Mech Assault then continue read this tutorial.
  2. If your not using Mech Assault don’t bother reading or continuing this tutorial.

Get the save game on your Memory Card

1. Use an Action Replay or GameShark to get the save on your Xbox

Prepare your Xbox:

First thing you should do If possible is connect your Xbox to the Internet and update your Dashboard. You can do this simply by choosing the ‘Live’ options and select ‘Account recovery’ this updates your dashboard automatically and once finished will ask you for details of your account to continue, just quit as you’ve accomplished the task of updating the Dashboard. If you actually have a ‘Live’ account you probably don’t need to do anything as your Dashboard will be up to date.

Time to Load our save game:

Start the ‘Mech Assault’ Game, once in the game and it’s loaded select the option to load a saved game. Make sure it loads from the hard-drive and if needed delete any existing save games that you may have had before you copy the game save exploit over. The save game should start to load, after a wait of about 10 seconds it should load the UnleashX dash. If this doesn’t work try starting over, there’s a chance your game is newer and patched to fix the exploit hole. You should see the UnleashX dash which looks like the photo below.

waffle3

From the main menu you should see ‘Waffle Zone Tool’ press ‘A’ to enter this menu and you should now see the options as the above photo. From this menu select ‘Install UXE Package’ and press ‘A’ the script will start copying the needed files. After it is done copying the package, it will boot to Linux and make a backup of your EEPROM. On a 1.6 Xbox, your screen will probably display a corrupt unreadable image, this is fine just ignore it for now and watch for your LED to flash green which means the process is complete. If your not sure just eject your game disk and power off the Xbox after two minutes, this should be more than enough time to create the EEPROM backup.

Power back on and without any game in the DVD-drive your Xbox should boot to the UnleashX screen you saw earlier. The first thing you should do is FTP into your xbox using the IP address shown on your dashboard (user=xbox pass=xbox) if you need information on using FTP click Here. Now copy the EEPROM back-up to your PC’s Hard-drive, the back-up will have been made of your original MS Dash, as well as the installed UXE package in E:\Backup\. Your EEPROM will be saved to E:\Backup_linux\, copy these folders and burn them onto a CD to keep them safe. If you don’t see the files look on the root of drive E:\ as newer installers put the file there, REMEMBER these are the keys to your Xbox, loose them and you won’t be able to recover from a Hard-drive failure or other problem.

Verify that your Xbox will Play an Original game and then try a back-up version, If these test work you have successfully applied the UXE package.

If you would like to install a Larger Hard-drive or simply need to replace the existing Hard-drive due to failure then you need to read this article Here.

Using the Xbox ‘Live’

If you desire to play online you’ll need to make sure you never modify the files located in ‘E:\Backup\’ or ‘E:\Backup\Modded\’ if you do then the included scripts won’t work correctly as the scripts expect the files it needs to be located in these directories.

To reset your Xbox to the Microsoft Dashboard simply choose ‘Waffle Zone Tools’ press ‘A’ to enter this menu and now select ‘Backup Menu’ and press ‘A’ the next item to select is ‘Restore Unmodded Backup’ press ‘A’, the script will start copying the needed files, after it is done reboot and play the Games you want online (of course you need the Original game).

A possibility exists that Microsoft will eventually implement a check for these type of exploits and when discovered will Ban your Xbox from be able to use the ‘Live’ service.

When you want to revert back to the Softmod you basically repeat the steps to do the exploit the first time with the exception that you should choose ‘WaffleTools’ then ‘Backup Menu’ (NOT Install UXE Package) now here simply choose the option ‘Restore Modded Backup’ this will copy the files needed to revert your box to the UnleashX dash, once complete reboot your Xbox and you should be back to the UnleashX dashboard.

For more info about XBox modification go here.