Retail 360 Checking USB On Boot?

I've never messed around with retail stuff much, but got a few hard drives I'm giving away for Xmas so wanted to update them all with BC. Figured I'd try USB before burning a disc (yeah, lazy) and noticed that the 360 tries to read the default.xex on the USB on boot.

Console then gets a single red ring and returns E71 error.

Certainly not what I was expecting. I had figured that it would either work or it wouldn't. Didn't expect it to crash the boot process.

Why, exactly, is a retail 360 attempting to read a default.xex file on a USB drive on boot? What is it looking for?

-hl718

 

Yeah this has been known I don't really know the answer to it either, it's a good way to mess with one of ur buddies put a default on a usb when they aint looking in the back port just to mess with them haha.

 

It appears to get partway through the bootup process - video initializes, audio plays and the RoL starts spinning before it suddenly freezes, audio stops, red light comes up and video resets to the E71 error screen.

E71 first started appearing after partially corrupted System Update files (the system would try to load an update off a partially corrupted file and would result in an E71). Fixing that was a matter of just clearing the cache, but the error itself indicates a software error as opposed to an E74 which is hardware.

Pulling the USB stick out and rebooting clears the E71 instantly which is what you'd expect.

Note that this is on a fully stock, completely current, retail console. No exploits, no mods, no hacks. So it should be reproducible by anyone.

The system is obviously setup to boot *something* from the USB stick for a reason. I'm now curious to find out what that something is. Might be interesting to get a flash dump and try booting the system with different flash files set as default on the USB stick. I wonder if they would all E71 or if one or more might execute?

Then again, perhaps this has already been explored and someone will pipe in tomorrow with "been there, done that, got the t-shirt." Or not. At the very least I now have a really easy way to prank some buddies. Throwaway 16MB USB stick + default.xex + plugged into the rear USB jack out of sight = PRICELESS!

-hl718

 

Is it not related to media flag error?

 

Get one of the super small USB sticks that could fit in the front USB door, then theyd really be confused

 

it tries to run the so called "dash update" from usb if it finds an xex thats why usb stuff can't be inserted...

unless its XBR then it tries to run Xell as i understand

 

But dash updates aren't .xex files are they ?

Also the op says that he was trying to do the bc updates, and failing. :?

 

A empty file named default.xex is enough for this?

 

I have no idea but just posing a quetion.. Could this be a back door to fix a system if the flash gets messed up? It sounds just like a PC where you can set a precidence of order.

 

1. Not related to media flag
2. Doesn't boot XeLL on XBR thats the rear usb + controller
3. Not sure what its really designed for but I assume its a Microsoft secret for testing or repairing NAND.

 

Lmao man people are way off. When you put the system update on your usb stick, as instructed from xbox.com, you have to reboot. On boot up the system looks for the update xex on the usb stick if its fat32. It WILL try to boot it, and if it's not the update then yea it's obviously not gunna work.

 

Its not an xex, we already had that settled. So no its not for the update.

 

In order to update the backwards compatibility you need to run an update, so it would have to be a xex file. Putting any old non .xex file won't make the console through an error.

 

I bet it has to do with an normal XEX using a different "environment" than an updater XEX so if you have the kernel load an game XEX like if it was an updater XEX it would give you E71.

If you try to load an ingame XEX from some game with multiple executables some of them may E71. For example the Raiden game has multiple XEX files but only the default.xex will load properly from xexloader. All the others will give you E71.

 

Some .xex files require data to be passed to them correctly before they load.

I would bet that the only .xex that loads in the raiden game is the default, and the others are called by the game when necessary.

Only them game knows the correct data to to be passed. Unless you are really keen lol.

 

Thanks for this, I'm so pulling this on some people. lol

I just save the digit '1' in a notepad file as default.xex and presto.

 

xbr_xenon_0 worked fine with booting default.xex from usb _1 didnt support it _2 does enjoy