And I for one would like to elaborate because for some reason I find it all horribly interesting. Let me start by saying I don't know it all. Some of what gets typed here might be complete bullshit followed by my mind filling in the blanks. So with that out of the way here goes nothing. Also spelling and grammer can fuck off so dont try to be a smartass. Once upon a time Live was a happy, unhacked even playing field that I regularly got my ass kicked at(not much different from now). Enter the modchip. All the sudden people were going 500mph in racing games and crashing the shit out of the Xbox's and the live system(one interesting note is I think softmods came before modchips. Thats a discussion for another place and time). MS had left too many holes in its console and its Live system. One day people started getting banned. If memory serves correct it was only modchip users. Turns out MS had a way to tell if you were logging on with a chip(I assume it was due to logging on without first booting a legit MS Xbox dash. Please correct me if im wrong on this guys). Enter the modchip with an on/off function. This way you could boot your Xbox "retail" or "modded" depending on if the chip was on or off. All was good in MS and user lands. No one cheating, we got homebrew. Good times. Guess what, some asshole/s found out how to cheat on live. Heres the fun part(a bit of this is conjecture on my part). MS decided to implement a new procedure twoish years ago where they "married" the EEPROM to the HD. They didnt start banning people right away, they waited and waited and waited untill, you guessed it Halo 2 release day!!!! They had been collecting the data on upgraded HD's that were originally "married" with the stock HD for the better part of a year and all the sudden mass banning. This included softmods as well. No one was safe or so it seemed(one note of interest. When Halo 2 got leaked some of the people started getting banned. People thought it was due to "timebomb" code in the software that made sure anyone who stole it early was punished. Turns out it the early adopters got a big fat slice of "marriage" theory). I decided for the better part of the community I would try to get on with an upgraded HD and an Xbox that had not been on Live for three or so years(as of this writing). Eureka no ban for me. So that solidified the "marriage" theory for me not scanning HD's for what could be deemed as questionable content. On that note I firmly believe if you were flagged as a "problem"(start a new gamertag with the same CC that you once got banned with) they MIGHT be scanning your HD. Heres where it gets sticky. If you got banned with an upgraded HD that HD is flagged forever in some MS database. These guys are correct in saying if you get a new EEPROM they will think its a new Xbox, but if you use that larger HD that was banned before they will know and you will get banned again. If you have been banned on Live you MUST A)get a new unused larger HD if you have had a larger one banned before B)get a new unused EEPROM. This can be a shady endevor as you never know if its a "virgin" EEPROM or not. One last interesting note to all of this is Halo 2 was hacked to shit after all of this. Look up video of warthogs flying its fucking funny. Nothing is ever secure but I do hope Live can keep up some kind of standard. That being said Xbox 360 and the newest Live is going to be a bitch to hack and not get noticed. If you want to have a chip(when and if) in your 360 you might as well kiss Live service goodby. My two cents If I am wrong in any of this please, please correct me guys. Those who do not remember the past... Handles25
So if you upgrade the hard disk before the box has touched live you can get away with it? Why didn't MS just tie new consoles and hard disks in newer versions together as they left the factory?
Yeah pretty much. Thats a good question though, perhaps they do now but when they started doing this they had a hell of a lot of boxes in the wild that had never touched live and the only way to get it to do it would be connecting to live.
