Hacking Games hanging on loading screens on (actual) JTAG

secondsabre

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I have an old Falcon 360 with a classic JTAG hack. Some time ago it stopped running certain games, freezing at specific points and always at the same place. Most of them have the same problem, hanging during a loading screen before the 'game' itself starts. Some make it past the main menus, while some stop during the initial loading. All of these games have worked in the past, both on disc and loaded onto the hard drive, but now they all consistantly freeze in the exact same place every time, no matter what format I play them on (original disc, burned disc, internal, external, extracted xex files, GOD, etc). In most cases, when I press the Guide button on the 360 controller, I can *hear* the sound of the Guide opening, but it doesn't show on the screen.

Meanwhile, the majority of my games work flawlessly, no issues at all. Since they all *used* to work at some point, I'm fairly certain that I effed something up somewhere along the way, possibly during a dashboard update to the JTAG at some point. My NAND is clean (no bad blocks), and I'm running on Dash 16202 without any overt 'errors'. I've tried running both my original JTAG'd NAND and a recent 'working' backup through the latest version of xeBuild, and each time I've been given an E71 error on boot. Might be related, but kind of it's own problem.

Working Games:
Bioshock Infinite
Lego Marvel Super Heroes
Lego Star Wars
Mortal Kombat
Marvel Ultimate Alliance
Rayman Origins

Hanging Games:
Split/Second (hangs on loading after checking DLC, before main menu/opening movie)
Fist of North Star: Ken's Rage (hangs on loading after selecting New Game)
Batman: Arkham Origins (stops at the end of intro cinematic, after main menus)
El Shaddai (gets through disclaimer/engine credits, hangs on initial loading before main menu)
Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions (hangs during loading after 'new game')

As you can see, it's a pretty decent spread of new/old, publishers, etc. Can't seem to find anything that links them together. I've also tried re-ripping or grabbing new copies of a couple of the non-working games to see if it was a 'bad rip' problem, but so far multiple copies have given the same result. Hoping someone here would be able to help.

Traditionally, I run these games off an external drive (a mini 2TB drive, non-powered) through FSD, but launching through XeXMenu or other options doesn't seem to change anything. Any help or insight would be much appreciated, thanks in advance all.
 
Last edited by secondsabre,

secondsabre

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The system is currently on dash 16202, not the latest. I thought about updating the dash as a possible fix, but as mentioned in my previous post, I get an E71 error when I try to flash to the newest dash. Not sure what's causing that, or if it's related to the game problem, but it's been tried with zero success.

None of the games have been modified, all ripped from working discs (or are working discs), checked out with AGBX.

I do have title updates for a few of them, like Arkham Origins or Split/Second, while some don't have updates available, like El Shaddai. Tried enabling/disabling a few of them with no change.
 

DinohScene

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If there's a possibility to try and load the games from the internal drive then try it.
Make sure the DLC isn't corrupted nor the TU's are corrupted.

As for the non working updates.
AUD clamp enabled?
 

secondsabre

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Have tried Arkham Origins, El Shaddai, and Split/Second from Internal, both as extracted files and GOD. Same issue with all of them, which is what lead me to believe that it may be dash-related (or at least not hard-drive related). No DLC for any of them, and I'll try deleting the TU's and see if that makes a difference, but I'm pretty sure I downloaded the TU's in the first place to see if it would fix the problem.

Not sure about the AUD_clamp thing. I've seen the words thrown around a bit, but aren't sure what they mean. Bought my JTAG pre-modded, so I have zero knowledge of what the internal workings looks like. When I run my NAND through xeBuild, it detects it as a 'normal SMC hack'. I have a copy of the original JTAG nand flash log, would any of that information be contained in there?
 

secondsabre

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Got it all fixed, thanks all for helping me re-evaluate! I did some extra stuff before flashing this time (pulled my existing dash.ini from my box and inserted that through xeBuild, deleted a weird $TitleUpdate folder from my HD root, and disabled all my plugins in dashlaunch before flashing) and it's all working now! Problem games are all playing fine, and the box is good as ever!

Thanks again to everyone who chimed in, sometimes you just need to bounce some ideas around!
 

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    I appreciate the insight!
    TwoSpikedHands @ TwoSpikedHands: I appreciate the insight!