Banning Modded XBoxes

[WolfmanNCSU]

Of course most of you knew that Live will ban your box if it detects mod chips in them. Since them, chip makers have made their chips with a switch which you can turn off to play Live then turn back on.

Looks like MS has wised up and are now looking at the size of your HDD in your box. If it does not match what you are suppose to have in there by default, you can be banned from Live. Not sure if it is checking size, model, brand, etc.

I have heard numerous reports of people playing live (mostly yesterday for H2) and have modded boxes being banned, even if the mods are turned off.

Just thought you would like a little warning and be careful for those of you who may have made such changes.

[r33hash]

Dont mod your shit then.....simple as that.

[WolfmanNCSU]

That's always a safe approach. Mine is the same as the day I got it. It is one of the few things in my apartment that I have not modded.

[Redwall2004]

Oh no!!! I can't get on LIVE!! LOL jk.

[Patrick-NE]

There is a way around it...All you need to do is split your hdd. Lets say you have a 120GB hdd, well you can split that into lets say 2 parts. E and F. E is where the xbox looks for saved games and all, make it 8GB, so that M$ can't pick up that you have a different size hdd, and the F part of your hdd, make it 112 GB where you can store DVD, Games, Music etc. And voila, you're done!

A bit of reading goes a long way (of course my xbox isn't moded ;))

[WolfmanNCSU]

I have heard the same thing, but have not heard if anyone tried it yet.

[Patrick-NE]

We'll have to wait and see I guess. I don't see why it would fail. Also, there's away around to making the game uncopyable (if its a word...). Well sort of. Make it harder to copy anyway.

[TeMpEsT]

My friend got his XBOX modded, and hence he can't play on Live now. :(

[Patrick-NE]

But like we have been discussing, if he got it done well, he can still play on xbox live as long as he has the original. Right size hdd, and the chip off, and he's ok.

[WolfmanNCSU]

A little new info I found on this.....

New Xbox LIVE Banning
>> 'It's Good To Play Together' ... but not anymore if you modded your Xbox.
From all the reports we get in our Xbox LIVE forum section it's clear Microsoft added new checks on their Xbox Live service.
Here's a quote from shanafan the X-S XLIVE forum moderator:

Ever since Xbox Live came out officially, people who accessed Xbox Live with their modchip on were banned. Live detected the modified BIOS that was loaded, and the Xbox's EEPROM (the unique identity of each Xbox) was banned. However, their Xbox Live account was still safe. So, these banned users got a different EEPROM from various sources, and they were back onto Xbox Live.
That has been the way for a long time, and was the way to get banned, unless you used a Xbox Live cheat or was a disruptive gamer.
However, until recently, it seems MS is taking extreme measures to stop people with modified Xboxes from accessing Xbox Live, even with their modchip off.

The Xbox Live Director of Programming already said a few weeks ago they were working on adding new 'security updates' to LIVE.
At this moment it's unknown what Microsoft is exactly checking when you log-in. There are many things they could check: HDD serial/model, HDD-EEprom match, crc check of xboxdash.xbe, search for specific files on HD (example c:/evoxdash.xbe), specific hacked or modified gamesaves, ...
While the banning does NOT appear to be game specific heinrich found the Halo2 .xbe is also checking kernel and HDD:
0x0041158C, "XboxHardwareInfo"
0x00411594, "XboxKrnlVersion"
0x00411770, "HalDiskSerialNumber"
0x00411774, "HalDiskModelNumber"
etc

It also seems (several days ago already) that many people who got banned previously and changed their EEprom to unban themselves are now banned again. This is probably because MS not bans an Xbox only based on the EEprom, but now probably also based on the HDD info. Team SmartXX proved some months ago MS was already sending HDD info to the LIVE servers during sign-in().
While waiting for more research to be done on these new checks, if you want to make sure you won't get banned best it is best to remove the xbox LIVE account from your modified Xbox console (save it on a memory card first so you can easily restore it).
If you still have your fully unchanged (no F, no homebrew files or modified gamesaves) retail Xbox HD - it *should* be safe to login with it and modchip off ofcourse. That's of course if you never connected to LIFE with your swapped HD 'cause MS might have detected it some weeks or months ago. It's not because they ban now that they only start tracking it now.

Right now it's doesn't seem all modded Xbox consoles are getting banned - but keep in mind they ban with a delay. So if you log-in on LIVE today it's possible you'll only get refused access tomorrow.

[JohnXE]

Well I think it is a good thing, and it is helping to keep piracy down.

[Patrick-NE]

Yeah I agree. I wonder if people have been able to by-pass it...

[slimscane]

good, it serves them right =D. My favorite thing about xbox live is that it is all skill based, everyone has high speed internet, everyone has the same system, everyone has the same features at their disposall, and most importantly there is no hacking (except for on R63 where people were using AR to cheat online >=(, oh well, there isnt any in halo2 that i know of).

[Patrick-NE]

yeah people cheating always ruins the game for everyone. I really don't see the point in it. I for one never cheat on games...

[Kenshin]

me either, I think they feel they need to do well at video games anyway they can because they have a small penis.

[Patrick-NE]

lol. Well its good that no one can cheat in Halo 2 (atm anyway).

[Anarchey]

Alright I just got more memory in my xbox! Let's go on live so I can tell my.....what? NOOOOOOOOOOO!
Why the hell do you need more memory anyways?

[Patrick-NE]

because people like to keep games on their HDD

[Sandman]

I'd much rather not have to worry about my Xbox Live, and play legally.

Pirates are fuckers and they should all wilt and die.

[Anarchey]

why in the hell would you want a game on your hdd? are you too fucking lazy to change the disk or what?

[VerTiGo]

Why would you want a game on you Hard Drive?

Well, for one you can keep games you borrowed, rented,or previously purchased (which could then sell without regrets). Two, the load times are shortened because it's not reading from a disc.

Most people with the Xbox have their hard drive seperated into partitions. If not, whoever did the mod did a half-assed job.

Also, the mod is beneficial to those wanting to download games without paying for them. It's not much different than emulation in that sense. In fact, you can even acquire unreleased games.

[Xfreaky]

Renewing Live soon, gonna fix mine :p

[Anarchey]

lazy bastards.....