So I was at a family friend’s house tonight. My brother saw an Xbox 360 Slim console lying inside a cabinet underneath their TV set. He asked our hosts if he could plug it in and play it, and they agreed.
My brother, having no technical knowledge, asked me to plug it in. And so I did.
Turns out that the only controller in the house had no batteries in it, and there were no AA batteries around to put inside it. So all I had to interface with the console was a Kinect, which seemed to have no trouble recognising me.
I booted up Kinect Star Wars, and told my brother to walk in front of the TV and wave his hand, like a normal person. No matter what he tried, the Kinect would either not recognise him at all, or would recognise him and then instantly “lose connection” with him. But it would still recognise me without any trouble.
I decided to turn the console off and on, because that apparently fixes things. The animated Xbox logo came up on the TV, but then went blank and a small grey box with text showed up in the corner of the screen, with a red light on the console and an error code.
I restarted it again, same error.
At this point, I had resorted to Google. Looking up the error code took me to Microsoft’s support website, which detailed instructions (with pictures) for removing the console’s hard drive. To this day, I had never used an Xbox 360 before, and didn’t know they came with removable hard drives. So I took it out, and it booted up successfully.
But then I got a new error. I was unable to use the Kinect without a firmware update, which was supposedly stored on the hard drive I just removed. So without a standard controller or a Kinect to interact with the console, I gave up and packed it away.
It turns out that the owners had won this Xbox in a contest, and paid nothing for it. They assumed that it was dodgy because of this reason, which I can understand living where I am. They also hadn’t used the console since they won it, so it may have degraded or something.
So that was a fun two hours of my life. And with that, my laptop's battery is flat, goodbye.
My brother, having no technical knowledge, asked me to plug it in. And so I did.
Turns out that the only controller in the house had no batteries in it, and there were no AA batteries around to put inside it. So all I had to interface with the console was a Kinect, which seemed to have no trouble recognising me.
I booted up Kinect Star Wars, and told my brother to walk in front of the TV and wave his hand, like a normal person. No matter what he tried, the Kinect would either not recognise him at all, or would recognise him and then instantly “lose connection” with him. But it would still recognise me without any trouble.
I decided to turn the console off and on, because that apparently fixes things. The animated Xbox logo came up on the TV, but then went blank and a small grey box with text showed up in the corner of the screen, with a red light on the console and an error code.
I restarted it again, same error.
At this point, I had resorted to Google. Looking up the error code took me to Microsoft’s support website, which detailed instructions (with pictures) for removing the console’s hard drive. To this day, I had never used an Xbox 360 before, and didn’t know they came with removable hard drives. So I took it out, and it booted up successfully.
But then I got a new error. I was unable to use the Kinect without a firmware update, which was supposedly stored on the hard drive I just removed. So without a standard controller or a Kinect to interact with the console, I gave up and packed it away.
It turns out that the owners had won this Xbox in a contest, and paid nothing for it. They assumed that it was dodgy because of this reason, which I can understand living where I am. They also hadn’t used the console since they won it, so it may have degraded or something.
So that was a fun two hours of my life. And with that, my laptop's battery is flat, goodbye.
