Embedded Files
Original Xbox
April 3, 2022
I've been working on a v1.6 Xbox lately, and one of the issues was that the machine would hang at a black screen after the startup animation completed. Initially I observed some leaking capacitors which I addressed, but this didn't solve the problem.
After doing some reading it sounded like the problem could be caused by a failed softmod attempt. The Xbox had been picked up second hand and I wasn't aware of it's history. To pursue the idea that the HDD was corrupted by a softmod attempt I would need to gain access to the drive to review it's contents. This was going to involve connecting the drive to a computer, removing the ATA security lock and then using a tool to browse the FATX file system.
The machine that I had available to use with the drive didn't have an IDE port, and so at first I tried a IDE to USB adapter to connect the drive. Initially things looked good and the drive was detected by the PC, but as I moved further along in the process I ran into complications with the unlock features provided by XBOXHDM. It would seem that my computer BIOS was freezing the state of the drive so that XBOXHDM couldn't unlock it.
In the end I found that the particular USB adapter that I had could not act on the necessary ATA unlock commands. So backtracking a little I picked up a StarTech PCI Express IDE adapter card, the PXE2IDE. That, coupled with a SATA to IDE power adapter and I was all set to be able to attach Xbox drives to my PC.
To provide a clean environment for unlocking the drive I decided to make use of a Slax boot key which contained a version of XBOXHDM.
Once booted into Slax I was able to use XBOXHDM to unlock the drive, and then boot back into Windows with the drive connected to run Victoria for a surface scan.
Although there were a few slow sectors, the entire disk was readable.
After confirming that the disk didn't have any bad sectors, the next step was to review the information on the drive. The Xbox uses the FATX filesystem, which is not natively understood by Windows. Luckily the excellent FatXplorer tool from Eaton-Works gave me everything I needed to move forward. Through the tool I was able to mount each of the drive partitions, and while exploring I discovered a few things.
First, there were indications that the system was in fact softmodded as there were some 'emulators' related directories on the E partition. But among the other files was also a \backups\Cdrive directory which looked to have been made before the softmodding process.
I used FatXplorer to copy the current contents of the C partition to a subdirectory, then I copied the backup files from the E partition back to the C partition. I rebooted into the XBOXHDM USB key, relocked the drive and reinstalled the drive into the Xbox.
The moment of truth...
Success! The system booted into the stock dashboard! Next I tested loading a disc, and confirmed that everything was working. The DVD drive still has some hesitation with the tray eject, so a new belt is in order but otherwise this system is ready to be enjoyed. I'll do a final burn-in test to ensure the system is stable after replacing the belt, and then close everything back up and give the final polish to the case.
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