Gaming New to Jtag. Some questions..

[j0nnywolf]

I just recently picked up a jtaged xbox, because I found a good deal where I live. This was probobly an impulsive move on my part though, as I know little to nothing of xbox mods.

Almost all guides and information I'm finding online though is about how to burn games, and I got a taged system specifically so I could play them from a usb harddrive instead of burning them. I've yet to find any guides or tutorials that explain how to get games to play from my usb drive. The person I got this from gave me a breif explanation in person, but having some other referance would really help.

I was also given some software to use. If anyone can tell me the purpose of these programs, I would be grateful.

First; Xbox image browser. As I understand, once I have an .ISO, this will rip the needed files from it that I will want to put into a folder in my usb drive to play from (by finding the .xex file in xexmenu). Please correct me if this is wrong.

Second; Swiss army knife. I have not used this yet, and don't know what this does at all. If it's used to format or partition drives, I already did that with paragon.

Third; Something to the extent of 'XBOX360GAMEHACK'. I don't remember exactly what it was called, but it was flaged for a trojan by my anti virus (AVG) and was deleted. when I found another download online, AVG reacted the same way. As I understand, this is used to make some modification to the game files before use. Some clarification on this would really help.


And this brings me to another question actually.

The more I look online about this, the more and more I see people talk about AGB360 and having to patch or mod your games for safety reasons (ie stealth patching to prevent banning)

Am I confusing this with something else, or getting something mixed up??

If I'm reading this all correctly, than none of this is actually necessary at all if you dont plan to take your system online (which I don't, ever). If I have this all wrong, please clarify

If there is another step after ripping the files from the ISO that is actually necessary to get the game to work, please let me know.



I would have done some more testing or playing around with this myself, but I havent gotten my hands on an ISO yet, which brings me to my last main issue I wanted to ask about;


I know it is very frowned upon to go to boards like this and ask where to get ISOs. I'm not asking for ISOs. I'm just going to explain my situation, and maybe someone can give me some vague tips;

I've had no problems finding what I need for my wii, or my portable systems, but I'm finding that decent torrents for 360 games are alot harder to come by and that sites such as [EDIT: was told not to mention site names] are just not practical at all if your not paying for a premium download service. Is there something I'm missing? Do I just need to look harder for torrents (I use scrapetorrent) or is it just random bad luck I'm having?



VVVV Actually my highest priority question right now[below], I don't know why I asked it last

Please tell me if this is just bad luck, or if there's something I need to do to get this to work. VVVV

I've managed to finish 2 downloads for good games that I wanted, but I can't successfully extract the ISO for either one. I get something about a broken or currupt file every time and I'm left with ether an empty folder or a 30kb iso or something like that.
I've tried with both winrar and 7zip.

I've noticed a particular difference in these downloads from most other things I get from torrents (zipped or compressed I mean). In most cases I just get a large number of winrar files (I guess because I use winrar, would be 7zip files if you use that, but thats not my point) they're either numbered or not numbered, and I can just click on any one and unzip it w/o a problem.

In the case of all the 360 games I've seen, I have about 30 unnumbered winrar files followed by a large number of numbered(starting from 30), non winrar files (my pc does not recognize the format). [I have three more games currantly downloading that also look just like this]

EDIT: The numbered files have the same filename but are than numbered after the dot. For example, the following is what my assasins creed 2 download looks like; about 30 of these; "gs-ac2" followed by the numbered files that look like this; "gs-ac2.r##".
i.e., the first few numbered ones look like; gs-ac2.r30, gs-ac2.r31, gs-ac2.r32, ect. and my pc would recognize the file types for those three as r30 file, r31 file and r32 file respectively. I don't know how much this helps, but that's as specific as I can get about this. /EDIT


My question is, are 360 games zipped or compressed in a particularly different way from most other things? and does this have anything to do with why I can't extract the files from them? (ie, is there a specific way I need to extract them?) Or did I just get bad downloads?

This is the main reason I posted. I'm hoping I can get these games that I already downloaded to work. If not, I think I'll just have the same problem with other games, because I can't find any downloads of just plain ISOs.



Sorry for the super long post, I actually have just two more super quick questions;

Assuming I get these to work and play from my usb drive (they are NTSC-U), will PAL and NTSC-J game also work in the same way? Can a JTAGed system play all regions?

Also, what about XBOX(regular non-360) ISOs?? Can a JTAGed system play those off a usb drive? What do I need to know to play those?




And that's it, lol

again, sorry for super long post. any help would really be appriciated, especially if I can extract those ziped downloads.

thanks in advance for all responses
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[Dermy]

For the .rar files, right click on the .rar for the game and click extract here and see if it works correctly. Don't extract from one of the numbered ones. And make sure you have around 7-8 gigs of space to extract the iso. If I were you I would remove the name of the site you mentioned too, I don't think it's allowed here.

I will edit my post if I have any more answers to your questions.

These are outta order:

I believe you can play games from all regions on a jtagged 360. I'm exactly sure how you go about doing it but I think it has something to do with patching the main .xex file for the game with a program called XeXTools. Maybe xbox360gamehack can make games region free too.

Your 360 can play xbox games burned to a dvd+r dl if you have a flashed dvd drive (it does not have to be jtagged). They cannot be played from usb afaik. There are xbox to xbox 360 converted games on the net. There is probably a way to do it yourself too but I'm not familiar with the conversion process. I've always used my original xbox for xbox games.

You shouldn't need to bother with abgx360 since you are not going online.

I haven't had any experience from playing games off of a hdd yet so I can't really help you. I think it might be extract game->patch with xbox360gamehack->copy to hdd->run from XeXMenu. Keep searching google and browse xbox-scene and you should find your answers.

 

[j0nnywolf]

For the .rar files, right click on the .rar for the game and click extract here and see if it works correctly. Don't extract from one of the numbered ones. And make sure you have around 7-8 gigs of space to extract the iso.

Since the first bunch of files were rar files this was the fist thing I did, before I knew there were any problems. After the extraction failed I took a closer look, and of course I tried clicking to extract from several of the files there.

I'm thinking of trying to rename the numbered files to be recognized as rar files, although I don't expect it to work, I know its a long shot.

I dont know if this will help, but here are the messages I get when the extraction fails:




! C:\Users\Mikey\Desktop\Torrents\Downloads\Assassins_Creed_II_NTSC_XBOX360-GameStop.[www.usabit.com]\gs-ac2.r10: CRC failed in gs-ac2.iso. The file is corrupt
! C:\Users\Mikey\Desktop\Torrents\Downloads\Assassins_Creed_II_NTSC_XBOX360-GameStop.[www.usabit.com]\gs-ac2.r10: The file "???" header is corrupt
! C:\Users\Mikey\Desktop\Torrents\Downloads\Assassins_Creed_II_NTSC_XBOX360-GameStop.[www.usabit.com]\gs-ac2.r10: Packed data CRC failed in gs-ac2.iso. The volume is corrupt


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[Dermy]

I don't think renaming is the way to go. Is rar number r10 the only one giving the error? It could just be that the file is corrupt (like it says) and it can't continue extracting. The torrent is 100% completed downloading right? Edit: Of course it is 100% done. You said you've downloaded torrents before.

I guess the file is corrupted or possibly the whole dl is bad. Try downloading at least r10 again. Or possibly all of the files again if it still fails to extract.

 

[cracker]

Go do some reading on the general things like usenet, torrents, rar archives, par/2 sets, etc. It is a simple process once you understand what tools to use and when to use them.

 

[Originality]

If it says it's corrupt, there is a high chance that one or more parts of the RAR was corrupted during your download. Open the torrent again and force a hash check to try and make sure it's all right - occasionally a file will corrupt at 99%.

Also, there is little sense in changing the numbered files, since winRAR will recognise them anyway. Whether you open the file from part 0 or part 7 or part 125, it will make no difference since it has to extract from the beginning anyway (at least it does for files spanning multiple parts). If any one part is corrupt, then the file(s) contained are irretrievable... at least until you get the file fixed.

Personally, I strongly disadvise against using torrents for your games. Torrents are known fake/virus/trojan breeding grounds, plus have many unchecked, unverified, and sometimes broken downloads. Not to mention that nearly all torrent sites are monitored by authorities/ISPs. Still, if you prefer torrents to warez sites (or just creating your own backups), then the risk is yours to take.

 

[FAST6191]

Edit: It seems I am very late to this party (or at least late pressing send), I will leave the info up though.

Your info is good but a bit out of date- most of those tools were used to patch things before the current setups made things work in a fairly simple manner (it was fairly similar to the first software disc loaders).
While here though I will mention the AVG thing is likely a false positive- files that modify other files tend to cause AV scanners to act up (this is especially true of apps made using methods/languages common in these circles).

Any apps/tools or files others than game isos worth damn on the 360 can be found on Xbins, xbins is a semi private FTP server that hosts 360, original xbox and some wii stuff. While learning things behind it is always good all you really need is easy xbins
http://www.360mods.net/index.php?file=deta...;name=downloads

JTAG hack can mean just a xell (hopefully xellous) install on the 360, the real fun comes from the rebooter app (XBReboot most likely). Hopefully that was done already, if not install it (there are software flashing tools now so no need for anything complex on the PC beyond building the required app). If you can run homebrew you have a rebooter installed (I forget the xbrebooter "I am here" signals- a blue LED is freeboot though).

After this is where it gets a bit more interesting. First the rebooter app allows any size SATA drive to be connected to the 360 so many are opting for that and using something like nxe2god or iso2god (it did not help that USB was a bit unstable at first) which is doubly nice as it makes things very simple (you install as an NXE install (disc in, press copy to dash) and run the app or you convert an ISO and FTP it across) which does include yours truly (making me a bit hazy on your specific USB questions and the bleeding edge state of affairs) but that is not what you asked I guess.

First things first you want XeXMenu
Xexmenu is a fork/rewrite/rename of xexloader which does what it says on the tin and loads xex files (including games) from any storage medium. They will need patching though, fortunately such things are more or less automated these days (xextool if you want to go manual though at http://www.xbins.org/nfo.php?file=xboxnfo1659.nfo , frontend if you want it http://www.digitalreality.co.nz/xbox360/?p=80 )


You do also have the option of quickboot:
http://www.digitalreality.co.nz/xbox360/?p=123

Other questions

ABGX360 is the app people speak of. First things first if you have a jtagged box you lose online options (trying with it will just get you banned, indeed I would set up the 360 so it can never connect online at the router level if you can). As you asked though ABGX360 is an app made for checking 360 isos/discs set for running on live systems via hacked DVD firmwares, you will need a hacked DVD firmware to take advantage of this though (from what you have said I doubt your modder did this). Good news is that a homebrew 360 will spit keys out for you saving you the hassle of dumping them yourself (nothing difficult but can be annoying).
I tend to run the games through ABGX360 even though I use an offline system just to make sure they are good (distribution of large files is easy enough but screw ups can and do happen and in case I decide to use them on an online system (you may meet someone else with a hacked 360 one day), for an offline system ignore LT and go for 1.6NS/non stealth if you go down this path.

Torrents are nigh on useless for 360 games, most people use sites like you mentioned or usenet.
360 games are compressed as there is a lot of junk in there that can not be removed according to scene rules and for simply having them work on hacked DVD firmwares (this round of homebrew stuff is only a few months old at this point in time as far as game running goes).
The standard format is split rar files as you have just described, open the single .rar file you will get as part of that package and extract that. I suggest you show extensions on windows (hiding them is arguably somewhat bad security practice anyway, on XP and similar on other versions of windows it is under tools-> folder options).

Regions do not matter on the homebrew systems (it was one of the first things to go in early versions of the rebooter apps). On hacked DVD firmware they do on some games- developers/publishers have the choice of region locking a game, it happens enough to take note of what goes). For the most part the US/NTSC U (Japan is NTSC-J if you go by that method, not suggested though- read one of the later 360 releases posts in this section for more) gets things at the same time or ahead of time, not that is matters for you though.

Regular xbox- if you really want to go down this route (there are a lot of good xbox games and homebrew apps) save yourself the hassle and softmod an original xbox.
Back on topic you can provided it falls under the compatibility of the 360, it should work with methods similar to those listed above though.


I have sort of skipped over a bunch of this and caused more questions (it got me to properly read up though which is good for me) but hopefully you can get something sorted and you have the tools to sort it now.

 

[tbgtbg]

Xexmenu is a fork/rewrite/rename of xexloader which does what it says on the tin and loads xex files (including games) from any storage medium. They will need patching though,

You shouldn't need to patch the XEX files to run them from USB drives in the current version of XEXMenu, at least I've never had to. Just rip the disc directly with XEXMenu or if you have the ISO on your PC, extract it using Xbox Image Creator, then stick it in the games folder on the USB drive. Neither method has ever failed to run a game for me.

XBLA or DLC still need to be Yaris Swapped, though.

ETA:Apparently the need to patch XEX or not depends on if you have the latest version of XBR on your 360, not XEXMenu.

 

[j0nnywolf]

Thanks for all the replies, especially fast6191.

I was able to get the downloads to work after I posted, but some of you hit it on the nose.

The 2nd download I had [was GTAIV] that wasn't extracting worked when I highlighted all rar files and extracted. I'm guessing my pc didn't recognize the later ones as rar files when going through them automatically. either that or it was just random coincidence that it worked when I did that.

The one I posted earlier [AC2] wouldn't work though until I redownloaded some of the files. It actually took afew redownloads before it was good, but I got it.

Tested both games and they play just fine. All I needed to do was use 'xbox image browser' to extract the files from the ISO and those worked from my usb drive.



I'm considering using Jdownload. It's new to me and I don't really like it, but its a reliable way to get games if I'm only looking to get 1 title at a given time.

I'm particularly looking to avoid any more monthly fees.


A question about rebooters; I'm not going to ask how they work or what they do to your xbox, as I'm sure that's a mouthful to explain and I can look that up at a different time. But I just want to know, what do they allow you to do that makes them popular? ie, their end-purpose.

I got this modded system pretty much only for playing games [360, original, xbla, dlc]. Emulators I pretty much have covered by my pc, wii, and psp. I'm gonna play everything on this off a usb drive and have no need for it to communicate with my pc, so I dont plan to ever stick an ethernet cable in it.


I'm still just trying to wrap my head around what the conventional uses are for this besides playing xbox games. I don't really know what kind of homebrew there is for it, I see names for lots of different software thrown around, and my system already plays games, so I'm just curious what all this does.


Fast6191, you put alot of info out there, but there were afew terms I did not understand. what is NXE? and what do nxe/iso2god do? just curious.
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[Armadillo]

Rebooter is what lets you run unsigned stuff

, console is basically soft rebooted into the hacked kernel that has all the protection removed.

NXE is just the dash the 360 uses now, it replaced the old blades dashboard. nxe2god and iso2god convert an nxe style installed game (disc needs to be in to launch the game) to a games on demand game (doesn't need to disc in to run) iso2god converts an iso straight to a games on demand container for you to stick on the 360 hdd.

 

[j0nnywolf]

Thanks armadillo, that was helpful.

I guess I'll take the time to look into what kinds of "unsigned stuff" there is to play with besides playing backups.


Actually I wanna ask about one more thing, and hopefully I'll be good to go after this.

what is the most practical way to get XBLA games running?

I downloaded 3 to try out, and I was able to get them working, but I know I'm not doing it exactly right.

inside the download there is the following folders:

[bunch of numbers]/000D0000/[GameFile-randomletters&numbers

So I take the [bunch of numbers] folder (which ultimately has the game file in it) and put it in the xbox HDD in the following location:

HDD1/Content/0000000000000 ........so in the end it looks like:

HDD1/Content/0000000000000/[bunch of numbers]/000D0000/[GameFile-randomletters&numbers

For the three games I did this with I got different results for each;

1. shows up and works perfect
2. shows up w/o proper icon and won't boot
3. doesnt even show up

So what I tried was to take the game files directly and to put them right into the same "000D0000" folder with the one game that did work.

Using this method I was actually able to get all three games to work, just not at the same time. only one or two would work for any given setup. (got different results any time I added or removed a game file from that folder).

So I was just screwing around I guess. I'm assuming if I just put everything in the correct directories, it will work normally. Is this the case? If so, can someone tell me where they go? (Also, where does DLC go?)

Or is there actually a simple way to get XBLA games to just play from my usb drive as well???
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[Armadillo]

All DLC and XBLA go in the content/000000000000/ folder (random number after it is the folder for whatever game it is and will change from game to game). I don't know why two of the xbla arcade games aren't working. If copying the actual game file to the working directory makes it play, then I'd guess the directory structure for the others is wrong and I'd go back and check it.

XBLA and DLC can't be run from usb, you have to have them on the 360 hdd.

 

[j0nnywolf]

I see.

And every one of them is in an "000D0000" folder as well?

 

[wyndcrosser]

Wow.... I'd love to help man, but jesus that was a cluster-"F" of a topic....

If you still need a specific answer to something, PM me.

I'm lucky I started with computers early and modding at a young age.

Wynd

 

[Armadillo]

I see.

And every one of them is in an "000D0000" folder as well?

From what I've seen yes, all xbla games are in an 000D0000 folder and dlc is an 00000002 folder.

 

[j0nnywolf]

I just got it working.

The files were being put in the right places, but there was some weird s*** with files vanishing after I copied them. I don't even know. but I kept at it till everything was in the right place.

it all worked after that.


And thanks Wynd but I think I resolved all my issues here. I'll take you up on that offer, though, if I have any questions in the future.

Thanks to everyone that posted. I really got alot of replies to this one, all very helpful. ima turn in for the night now.

 

[shanefromoz]

So if im going to jtag my xbox im best to buy a transfer cable or is it not required?

 

[FAST6191]

If you are going to JTAG your box (as in install homebrew) then we now have FTP servers which you can use instead. They are nice kits but FTP renders them somewhat useless.