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Halo 2 Used to Sniff Out Mods
TexasDex writes "C-Net tech news is reporting that users of Halo 2 who have installed mod chips are being banned from the X-box Live forums. It is unknown specifically how the Halo 2 game finds out the console is modded, Microsoft will only say in the X-box live Terms of Use that "Xbox Live may only be accessed with an unmodified [...] Xbox video game console.'" In related news, the New York Times (registration required) has a quickie interview with the folks behind Red Vs. Blue about changes Halo 2 bring to the series.
It's not Halo2 that's banning the xboxes. It's just xbox live. People *without* halo2 are getting banned as well. And it's not everyone. They record the hard drive serial # and the eprom serial when you first sign onto live. If one changes and not the other you are banned. If you modded your xbox before you ever signed onto live then you'll be fine.
He got fired.
From his blog:
"Well I've officially been let go... along with a bunch of other people from TSS and three other shows. Kevin and Sarah are the only ones left on screen and I don't know what they are planning to do with them. The Screen Savers as you know it is GONE!"
Winner of The Second Annual Montgomery Burns Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence.
It's only banning people that mod their xbox. There's notthing evil or mean about it, it states clearly in the ToS that they don't want modded xbox's on live. It STILL lets you do everything else. Why would they do this? To piss off gamers? Make more money? No. The great thing about Live is its a VERY closed system. If everyone and their grandma start running linux on their xbox's, and find out how to hack live, then they can ruin alot of other players experiences, which sucks. Also, I guess it keeps people from finding out how to steal xbox live, but if no one pays for live then it isn't going to exist any more. Normally I hate MS as much as any other self respecting person, but I have to applaud them for doing this.
That was a different story. It had nothing to do with Halo 2. People with mod chips were still able to play simply by flipping the switch. This story claims that Halo 2 is detecting mod chips and reporting them. Completely different.
Among other things that keep doom3 (and farcry) from running are ide drivers. In specific the optimized drivers that come with some nforce2 motherboards such as my brothers gigabyte board.
To be fair those divers have a prominent 'no guarantees these will actually do anything good and thier use is strictly at your own risk don't call us we don't support them' type blurb shoved in your face if want to install those drivers(you can cancell the install at that point, and xp's driver rollback worked just fine to get said games running).
If you are thinking of installing them or already have be warned Farcry and Doom3 will NOT play with them giving a 'cd not found' type error in both cases.
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
The Halo2 DVD contains a file called dashupdate.xbe. If you have a modded XBox and a storebought copy of Halo2, you can rip the game to a PC, remove the file and burn a new copy to use with the box. However, you have to do this before you start playing it for the first time...