Can someone fix an xbox for me?

[punkoffgirl]

I can have an Xbox for free, if I can get it working.. It was my sister's boyfriend's. He apparently accidently disconnected the hard drive while he was attempting to clean the dust out of the inside, and now it's giving an error message (that I can't recall off the top of my head), and won't work.

[Richter Belmount]

thats what the microsoft warranty is for ~_^ get a situation to take advantage of it

[shadowkn55]

Are you talking about the Xbox 360? The original Xbox doesn't have a hard drive that can be disconnected so easily.

[MonoTekETeA]

He apparently accidently disconnected the hard drive while he was attempting to clean the dust out of the inside

I am going to take a wild guess and assume it is the Original Xbox. According to this FAQ:

http://www.llamma.com/xbox/Repairs/hard_drive.htm

You are going to need to buy a mod chip and have that installed before you attempt to place another, any old hard drive in it. Thing is, it is pretty much just as expensive to buy a modchip and a get a hard drive from some one or buy one cheap, as it is to get an official Xbox hard drive.

*Edit* I read Disconnected as Discarded. Heh. My revision of my statement above, with additional comments.

It could simply be that there is some dust in the IDE port, or that the cable isn't in all the way. You should simply try blowing some compressed air into that port and attempting to place each wire harness in fully.

I understand that you are looking for some one to fix it, but truth be told, unless they live locally to you, the shipping fees may not even be worth the diagnostic.

Your call.

-Jeremy

[kazuo]

I'll take it if you don't want to mess with it :)

[punkoffgirl]

Yes, it's the "original" Xbox (or else I would've added 360!). You can't contact Microsoft for warranty issues once you crack open the case. I don't have it myself; it has been offered to me for free, and I'm trying to figure out if it's something that can be fixed quickly/easily/cheaply.. specifically, cheaper than buying one. I don't know the code/error that's coming up offhand, I'll have to get back to you on that one.

[Robotron777]

Just disconnecting the hard drive won't cause a problem, unless the xbox is running at the time and you shut it off with the drive disconnected. In that case you need to re-lock the drive to the motherboard. For that you need a mod chip. The ones I use are less than $20, but it takes hours of work and you need the programs to run it to.

To put it simply, if you have never done it and don't know someone that can, its fairly difficult to do. As weird as it might seem, even a messed up xbox like this one will still bring $40 on EBay. People on EBay are nuts. I should know, I've been a member since 2000.

[ROTS MKII]

I am 100% positive you do not need a mod chip to repair the box. However using one to upgrade it will not hurt.

Also I hear the X-box loads from the HD itself. It might also be something else that was removed.

[punkoffgirl]

Okay, the error that comes up says that the Xbox needs service, contact an authorized dealer. There's no error code or number at all. And, as far as they know, nothing else was disconnected. They also said it was not powered on when the drive was disconnected.

[omnedon]

I am 100% positive you do not need a mod chip to repair the box. However using one to upgrade it will not hurt.

Also I hear the X-box loads from the HD itself. It might also be something else that was removed.

Please elaborate with useful information to back this claim up.

[ProgrammingAce]

You have a few issues here. The fact the error message doesn't have a number in the upper left corner means that it's an early launch xbox. There are a few known hardware defects on the original xboxes (1.0).

There's about a 5% chance that the motherboard will need to be replaced. The MCPX chip controls the IDE channel, there's a transistor hooked into the +5 for the MCPX that's over voltage on the original design. It's possible that by unplugging the IDE cable while the thing was running your friend sparked the MCPX. If that's the case, the motherboard is hosed. I don't think that's particularly likely though. Usually if the MCPX is blown, the console only displays a black screen.

If what your friend said is true (and he wasn't playing around with data on the hard drive), i'd say that either the power or the IDE (data) cable is still loose on the hard drive. Just double check the connections. You'll need a T10 and a T8 Torx bit to get into the case, you can get them from radio shack for ~$5. Check the DVD drive while you're in there, that may have come loose too. It'll throw the same error.

One thing to test, try putting a disc in the tray and rebooting the xbox. An xbox with screwed up data on the drive will still boot a game if powered on with the disc in the tray. If it boots a game like that, then a quick soft mod will get the box back up and running, you'll just need to copy the files back to it.

If it still gives you an error after cold booting the game, you have one of several things wrong:

- Hardware failure on the motherboard (fairly unlikely)
- Disconnected Hard drive
- Unlocked Hard drive
- Disconnected/broken DVD drive

Let us know what cold booting does, and we can work from there.

[Cryomancer]

This will sound really bad...but the drive is plugged in now, right?