Having a problem with my X-Box taking forever to load.

[jsmith921]

Hi,

I'm having trouble with my X-Box loading up. I have a apple chip in it. It comes up on the tv with the orange XBox but sets there for a good 5 to 10 minutes. Then when it comes up to the avaluanch dashboard everything looks ok. I can go into anything from there and its another 5 to 10 minute wait for it to go to the next screen. I can watch movies, play mp3's, and play games off the hard drive.

If I boot without the mod chip it comes up pretty much like it should.

If anyone could help me out I would much apprecitate it.

thanks
jsmith921

jsmith@marmc.org

[pepsik]

Try clearing your cache, the cache is drives x,y,and z. HTH

[smokafatty]

Hey Jim, not sure if it will make a big difference in boot time, but if you want to get rid of that x-selector and boot straight to avalaunch just rename these two files from your c drive:

evoxdash.xbe change to xselect.xbe
avadash.xbe change to evoxdash.xbe

Not sure it that will help with your problem but at least it will be one less step to rule out.

[nimbles]

sounds like it may be bios related, or as pepsik said- cache related- do you have any idea of what bios (in the modchip) you are using.

how big's the hard drive in there? >200gb? and are you running it with f: and g: paritions or just one big f:?

[smokafatty]

I modded the xbox for him a while ago so I can help with the details. :)

Its an apple V 5 chip with whatever the stock bios is that comes in those chips (maybe M7?).

The hdd is a 160gb Western Digital 7200, with one big f:

And I'm pretty sure its a v1.4 or v1.5 xbox.

[nimbles]

oh ok that explains alot then ;)- just kidding smoka :D,

yeah i think its m7 that comes on the apple- hmm... this is a bit of puzzler- m7 is set to look for C:\evoxdash.xbe right? actually that can't be it cos then launching an app from the dash wouldn't take so long.

could this be the first instance of an xbox hd needing to be defragged- pity avalaunch have shelved plans for a defragger :(

cache maybe but isn't that supposed to be wiped on reboot/power down?

unless its something dodgy with avalaunch- avalaunch spacks when set up to play shoutcast and there's no internet connection or something similar- or if you point it to an empty folder for your music etc. If you are using xselect try booting evox or another dash and see if the load times are still that long.

also boot up the xbox normally (with the chip off) and delete the avalaunch game save

[smokafatty]

Ya I think you might be on to something. As it takes a long time to boot, and it takes a long time to load apps. So it does look like it may be a dashboard that is giving him trouble. (btw I think hes using avalaunch v0.48.4 Jim please confirm this cause if you have updated the dash to any newer versions they may be the problem)

Jim, try these steps and we can see if your dashboards are working ok.

Lets first start out by removing 'x-select' and replacing it with avalaunch by doing like I stated in the previous post:

evoxdash.xbe change to xselect.xbe
avadash.xbe change to evoxdash.xbe

Then if that doesn't fix the load times then try evox:

evoxdash.xbe change to avadash.xbe
evox.xbe change to evoxdash.xbe

You can do all this through flashfxp, let us know when you get a chance to try this.

[nimbles]

wow you're not the only one :eek:, my bro brought his back and it was running really slow- took about 20 secs to laucnh xbmc only, loaded a game and other apps off the hd reasonably fine. Also changing any settings in avalaunch is taking around 20 secs to complete too- eg choose to change form mp3+ripped wma's to shoutcast takes ages from when i hit the "a " button

also suddenly its not playing music i ripped from cd for him.

Did a bit of asking over at xbmc forums as evox was suffering from this too- slow loading- they seem to think that its cos you can't have a very small amount of free space in the partition that xbmc is on (<300mb)- i did some moving of music files from f: to e: but no luck it still boots really slow and settings take ages to be completed.

my idiot brother has left taking his xbox still in a sluggish state so i can't really try out any other things to work out the prob is. Tried different bios's, but thqt doesn't seem to work either I'm a bit stumped mself but can't try anything anyway to work out what the problem is as everything works perfectly for me...... at the moment :suspic:

I'm thinking maybe a complete reformat reinstall maybe the order of the day. Can slayers actually format the drive and repartition it- as opposed to deleting and re-installing the software

[jsmith921]

Thanks guys. I'm going to try all of this when I get home. I've been out of commision with eye problems the last week. I appreciate all the help. I will let you guys know how it goes.

Jim

[Devil-Man]

please do bro. also, try deleting the save file for avalaunch and all your homebrew apps from the ms dash. then reboot and ftp in and clear out the z: drive. z: is what ava uses all the time. most of the time cache doesn't get cleared until it's overwritten. i've had the same halo map caches for weeks now without having to re-mod them :)

[jsmith921]

Ok here is what I did last night.

I turned the X-Box on and timed it to see how long it took to get to the dashboard. It took 5 minutes (not 10, just seemed like it).

When I turned the xbox on the Screen shows a orange x-box logo but the buttons on the xbox are green.

After 5 minutes I get the Avalanuch dashboard up. The xbox buttons are now orange.

I checked the version of Avalaunch and it is v.0.48.4.

In the left hand corner it is saying No Link (I don't have broadband or any internet hooked into it.)

I FTP'd into it and cleared out the cache in x,y,z
I changed the evoxdash.xbe to xselect.xbe and the avadash.xbe to evoxdash.xbe.

I then rebooted the xbox and it booted up in four minutes.

I then changed the evoxdash.xbe to avadash.xbe and evox.xbe to eboxdash.xbe.

I rebooted the xbox again and this time it took 5 minutes to load up.

I wanted to go ahead and get the xbox to load up in avalaunch because I really like the layout so I went in and renamed everything back the way it was.

I reboot and guess what? I'm a dumb@#$ or something. It boots into the normal xbox dashboard. I try to ftp into it and can't. So I screwed something up. I'm not sure what.

So I'm guessing, hoping that I just need to intall the apps again? What do you guys think? Oh, and this reminds me why I have Smokafatty do my stuff for me. He knows what he is doing.

When I get this fixed though I think it will be a good thing it happened.

oh and thanks for all your help.

Jim

[nimbles]

ok you've renamed the avadash.xbe something that the bios doesn't look for-

usually depending on what bios you had, it will look for (ava and evox may be swapped round)
1. avadash.xbe
2. evoxdash.xbe
3. xboxdash.xbe

so it can't find the first two and boots to the m$ dash.

don't worry shouldn't be a prob. Burn either a copy of avalaunch or evox (with the settings files and folders that come in the rar file- edited to the ip settings you use)
rename the .xbe file to "default.xbe".

Create an xiso with qwix or simplexiso, burn this to a cd-r (if your xbox can read em) or a dvd-r and bung it in- it should boot the disc and then you can ftp into the xbox and rename the files back to what they should be.

you might as well get the newest versions of avlaunch and evox (0.48.64 and v3935) while you're at it- may help on the booting problems- the load times i was experiencing were no more than 1 minute

[smokafatty]

Yep, sounds like its just a few files that need renaming.

Just make a bootdisc like nimbles said so you can ftp your xbox again. I'll email you the avadash.xbe and then you can transfer it to your xbox and rename it as 'evoxdash.xbe' so your modchip will boot avaluanch. (I don't think that chip will boot straight from avadash.xbe)

When you get the dashboard running again you should back up your C: and E: drives to your pc for safekeeping (I should have had you do this before). That way you will have a backup.

Do you have alot of gamesaves? Another thing we can try is to delete your cache folders in your E: drive (CACHE, UDATA, TDATA) This is where all your gamesaves and app caches are stored. You can delete the folders and they will rebuilt the next time you boot. But you would have to backup any game saves to your pc using this (http://www.xbox-saves.com/index.php?category=manager) program. Then after your folders are cleared you can transfer the saves back.

[thecheekymonkey]

anyone tried another hdd in it? ive had a few probs with this before, turned out the hdd was knacked, worth a try?

[nimbles]

I've now done a "slayer's" format and reinstalled everything- loading is still buggered.

I'm all out of ideas now :confused: hd's is either minced, low level format seems a bit ott and how would i repartition the drive properly?

Its something i can't recreate on my machine- so probably is hardware specific.

will wait till the next release of avalaunch (should be 1.0) is out before doing anything any more. besides for him (he just wants to play games and dvd's) tHc lite will suffice- i got to say that apart from ftp that dash is sweet- plus multi region playback with the remote, no need for m$ dash anymore (second xbox no intention ever of going Live)

[smokafatty]

Did you try using his hdd in a different xbox? That would let you know if its the hdd or the mobo thats the problem.

[nimbles]

nope- he left taking the xbox before i could do anymore meddling- plus i don't have any torx screw drivers :( - thats the next on my todo list :D

cheers dude- i assume before doing any hd switching i better unlock the hd with evox?

[smokafatty]

Yep, or config magic

[jsmith921]

Well I finally got my XBox up and running again. I am using evox and it does seem to be booting up a lot faster. Its taking a little over a minute to load up now. Thats a big jump over the 5 to 6 minutes it was taking.

Could it be if you don't have a lot of space on the drive that it could slow the load time? smokafatty do you remember how much space I had left on it? I'm thinking not much with everything that you put on it. Just a thought.

I'm going to try to get avalaunch up and running again and see what the load time is. Thanks for everyones help.

Jim

[old engineer]

ALL Xbox's are designed to boot up in under 9 seconds.

...Any longer than this, youv'e got severe problems :(

...What is your Xbox 'stalling' at during bootup?

DVD drive?

HDD?

[smokafatty]

Jim, go to the settings in evox and it will tell you how much room you have for each partition. You should have around 300mb free on your C: and a few gigs on your E:.

One thing you should do since you can ftp now is to backup your C: and E: drives to a folder in your pc. Its very important to always have a working backup of your hdd.

9 seconds sounds right for the msdash, I timed my avaluanch it was around 24 seconds to boot to the menu.

Actually that kind of rang a bell. A long time ago when mxm dash first came out my friend installed it in his xbox and when it booted it took forever to boot on his xbox and was always stuck while loading that 'matrix' intro part.

So after seeing how cool his scarface menu was I decided to get it but with my xbox it loaded really fast. So I looked at his xbox and turns out that his hdd was all messy with alot of unneeded files in the c: drive.

So maybe these long load times are coming from some added files to the c: drive.

Jim, ftp your c: drive and see if it looks like this (http://server6.uploadit.org/files/smokey99-screen.jpg).
Lmk if theres anything extra or missing (except remember you renamed a few files so it may be a little different)

[nimbles]

update- brother brought his xbox back last night- moved everything to the e: except, thc lite which requires hex editing i couldn't be arsed to do that (it's his default dash) after a botched bios flash which took all night to fix http://dvdrom-guide.com/forums/images/smilies/mornin.gif, i can confirm now everything boots fine xbmc, and avalaunch are loading within 3-6 seconds and settings in avalaunch are responsive again :luxhello:

i have no idea why this works but it does http://dvdrom-guide.com/forums/images/smilies/saywhat.gif