ok my first post so bare with me.
Let me start off by saying I purchased this 360 off ebay and it looks as though someone tried to flash this drive and screwed it up. I printed and read Textbook's most excellent TUT. 3 times before I started.

Problem before drive was flashed was it would read and play audio cd's but not dvd or games. dvd and games (originals) would not even spin up and they gave open tray error

Flashed with extrem52a.bin per all the instructions paying close attn to each and every step.

Now audio cd's still read fine, dvd's and games spin up but still do not read. btw these are all orig. games...

I am thinking I have a bad flash, perhaps a bad drive. My question is, can I flash original firmware to this drive and start over. I noticed there are a ton of other .bin files with extreme dloaded from xbins. What are these files for? I feel I am close here but just need a little help.

THANKS

GamerJoe

Unless you have your original fw there is no way to flash to original state.the problem is probably the drive key wasnt correct and without orig.bin you cannot get the drive key.

I recovered the drive key. I do have that. I beieve without that, the drive would not function at all. Or at least I would get some sort of error message. I am thinking bad laser or drive. If I replace this drive, can I just flash the key that I have to the new drive. What is the correct procedure for doing this??

Anhell28 is correct.

The firmware that you copied when flashing the drive and created the file called orig.bin is in fact just a copy of the botched firmware already on the drive. To get the xbox360 back to the original state you need the original firmware that was on the drive when it shipped from M$.

Perhaps that is why the 360 was on ebay

They are correct. Although.. one thing is weird.

With no drive key or the incorrect drive key, the drive will power up, spin up, eject and otherwise function just fine. It will be able to read Audio CD's and Video DVD's just fine. It will not read games, demo discs, updates, etc.

The thing I find weird is you said it doesn't even read video DVD's. This.. to me, points to a bad DVD laser. There are actually two lasers in your drive. A CD laser and a DVD laser. This would explain why CD's are still working.

But, before you go spending money on a new laser, check to make sure you have a valid dvd drive key. Open your orig.bin with 360 firmware toolbox and check the key in the textbox of the program. It should be a 32-character fairly unique hexadecimal key. There should not be any repeating characters, like FF or 00 or anything that looks like it resembles a pattern at all.

If your key looks random, I'd say go ahead and get a new laser and try it out.

Thanks to all who replied.... TEXTBOOK, as usual you were SPOT ON!~ New HD63 Laser fixed my drive. There is one very strange thing though. I cannot read my firmware anymore, the system just hangs when I run Samread. It appears to find the xtreme drive , I hit 1 for that drive and it says somthing like A 0 on the screen and just hangs up. I read this drive and flashed with xtreme5.2 and all said ok, now I cannot read flash. I followed the TUT EXPLICITLY! All drives discon. SATA cable hooked up. Here is one footnote though, the first time I attempted to read flash after succesful flashing, I used the conectivity kit instead of the actual xbox to power the drive. I accidently had the mode b button pressed, which i assume is for the hitatchi drives only, anyway could that have messed up my ability to read the drive at all? I have not tried to insert a backed up game only orig. and it works fine. I am going to burn a back up and see if it works. But Somehow I seem to have lost the ability to read the firmware off of this drive. HELP!!I hope I did not mess up my drive.

Your drive should be fine. All hacked firmwares version 4.x or higher include FirmGuard. FirmGuard is a protection to prevent reading/writing to the drive. It was meant as a way to keep Microsoft from reading or writing to our drives.

In order to disable FirmGuard (so that you can read/write to the drive again) you will need to use the 0800 disc. Refer to the tutorial where it mentions upgrading the firmware.

Text, you are the MAN! I just burned my 1st flash backup with complete sucess! I have done the nme360 chip a few times and burned lots of backups in the nme format, but this is the first flash method I have done. One last question that has gone unanswered, what are all of the other .bin files contained within the xtreme package used for. I know the xtreme a, b, c, and d. I get that but what about all of the other versions i.e. ms25, ht and so fourth?

They are manually spoofed firmware versions for those interested in flashing a Samsung drive and installing that drive in a system that originally contained a different drive.

With the Fall Update, if you were to install a drive containing a different drive version, it would display Error Code 66 and fail to boot. To bypass this, you need to make your firmware report that it is that drive (even though it isn't). This is called firmware spoofing.

For example, if I had a Hitachi 47 drive and it died, and let's say I got a replacement Samsung MS25 drive. I would need to first inject the Hitachi 47 drive key into my Samsung firmware as well as spoof the firmware to report as a Hitachi 47 drive.

I see. I have read virtually all of the tut's and they all kind of mention some of the things you have said but it never really all came together for me until you explained a little further. Seems as though flashing a drive is a little more complex than the chip mod method, but that's just me. I am not at all intimidated by elec. circuits and a soldering iron in my hand. Code on the other hand is a bit of a mystery to me. Thank you so much for the help. I will hopefully be able to pass it forward as I go further into this hobby! You are a big asset to this community! Keep up the good work!

GamerJoe

ok.im gonna buy one drive from ebay cgi.ebay.com/NEW-XBOX-...dZViewItem can i just flash this drive normal with firmware 5.2 without injecting or having the original key?it was the same drive i had before so i think it should work.

AloneWolf, you will need the original key from your stock drive. Otherwise, it won't work at all, even with original games.

ok then i extract the original key from my old drive,i read the tutorial but i dont get it.what do i have to do to extract the key?simply reflash and it stores the orig in the floppy disc then go to windows and make ready new floopy with extreme bootmaker with the orig.bin?can you make a long story short textbook so i get it you know

thanks for your help

read text's latest flashing tut. Read it ALL then Read it again. Hell, I had to read it three times before I found the info. TRUST ME it is ALL IN THERE. Print it out, all 48 pages. The key is automatically extracted when you run samread. Saved on usb drive or floppy whichever you have when you ran xtreme bootmaker. samread and samhack do all the work for you. Just follow the directions. After you run samread xxxxx xxxxxxx you will find 2 files in your backups directory on the boot disc one is called orig.bin and the other is your xtreme bin. You really dont even need to know this though. After you run samread, just re boot to your boot disk a0ain and run samhack xxxxx xxxxxxx replace the "x" with your serial number (like the tutorial says). That's it. Dont read alot into it, just follow the tutorial EXPLICITLY. Textbook has done alot of work and 99.999% of all these questions asked here (including some that I've asked) are in that tutorial. BE SURE TO SAVE YOUR ORIG.BIN before you run the Xtreme bootmaker again on that disc. (ask me how I know) otherwise, your orig.bin is gone! Oh, and guess what, it says that in the tutorial too!

Just my 2 cents

GamerJoe

personally gamerjoe with xtreme bootmaker i think that flashing is easier than breaking out the ol soldering iron like on xbox 1 hardmods it cost me $16 compared to $50