Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Banning Modded Xboxen
An anonymous reader writes "Since the release of Halo 2 (ed: and just before), Microsoft has been banning modified Xboxes from Xbox Live. Some have even been banned with their mod-chips turned off. Previously many users had been able to use Xbox Live provided they disabled their mod-chip. There are a few theories floating around as to how MS is doing this: from scanning the hard-drive for non-MS material to being able to check if the DVD-drive/Hard-disk serial number is from stock or not."
you afraid ms bans slashdot too if you refer to xboxes?
and anyways, surely it would have been known for you as a xbox owner, especially owner of a modded one, that the software can scan the hd(and itself, which it should do for the net play anyways, on which they will pin the reason for this to be).
yeah, it kinda sucks that you can't get the most out of your xbox (use it for emulators, xvid playing AND gaming on xbox live, you pretty much knew you would in reality have to choose between the two) - BUT YOU KNEW THAT when you put down the cash for the system anyways.
obvious solutions? don't modify anything on the harddisk by yourself. pretty darn hard for the box to guess by which bios it was last booted with..
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
From the start, everyone here has been saying that since they owned the XBox machine, they can mod it however they want.
Great. Go nuts.
But it works both ways. Microsoft owns the Live Network - and if they say "No Modded XBoxes", that's what it means.
They are under no obligation to let you break their rules. Just because some people have gotten away with it up until now means nothing.
...Also, I didn't know Buggalo could fly.
It doesn't ban based on the mac address. It bans based on a unique number stored in the Xbox's EEPROM. Based on that, you can get someone else who never plans to play on Xbox live to use a utility to get the data out of their EEPROM, send it to you, and you can reflash your xbox with this. This will get you back on Live. Unfortunately, unless you figure out how they banned you in the first place, they'll just ban this new EEPROM. It was a useful trick when the only way to get banned was to forget to switch off your modchip prior to hopping on Live, but no longer.
Let's say I go to Gamestop and buy a used unit. If I buy into the Live service, and find out the box is banned, does Gamestop have to replace with another unit? This is assuming that it was used with a removeable mod, of course, and that it was removed before Gamestop accepted it, etc., or that its EEPROM was used to reflash another unit.
Also, what good is the Live service if I don't play multi-player games? Do they do any kind of software updates, etc., through the service?