Question about soft-modding

[psychomonkey62]

I'm thinking of soft-modding my Xbox, and I have 2 questions. (I'm a complete noob to it)

 

1.) My local video game rental store has an original Agent Under Fire. If I rent it, then install the soft mod thing, do I ever need the disk again? Because I don't want to rent it more than once.

 

2.) Can I disable the softmod thing so that I can go on Halo 2 and not get banned? (I'd need to be able to re-enable it again without the disk. See question 1 for the reason)

 

If someone can answer these, I'd greatly appreciate it.

 

NOTE: I looked in the tutorials. They didn't answer these questions.

[RedHawke]

To do what you are attempting requires you to never go on to XBox Live again, I don't think you can turn it on and off.

 

From what I have read if you want to keep playing through XBox live then don't mod it.

 

Some people solve your dilemma by buying a used XBox on like Ebay and mod that one, keeping theirs so they can go online.

[psychomonkey62]

Really? Dang........I guess I won't mod it then......

[SithRevan]

Well if you were to get a modchip you would be able to turn it off and on or even get a second HDD installed in the xbox and you could just partition it so you could load either one when you turn on the xbox (though you would still need a chip for that). I also don't recommend doing a softmod as you can easily screw up the bios or the HDD that way, so your best bet would be to get a professional modding company to install a chip for you. I hope this helps and good luck!

 

P.S.: Also I just wanted to say that RH is right there is no way to switch the softmod off once you have done it.

[p2000]

If you use a decent installer package (ie. Krayzie's nDure) and enable dual-booting, you should be able to play on Live. If you boot up with a retail game in the drive, it should launch the game instead of loading the dashboard (which triggers the softmod), so there's not actually anything Live-unsafe running. However, as soon as you launch the dashboard under any circumstances, it will start the softmod and take you to your custom dash, from that point on it's NOT Live-safe, until you cold reboot. Also, with a good dual-boot setup, if you power on the Xbox with the tray open, it should load the MS dash, in that form the Xbox is theoretically Live safe. Cold booting with a game in the safest bet though. Note that you can only access Live with a retail game loaded from the original DVD.

 

Also, it's safest to have the game disc you used to install, as you can use it to access the basic softmod setting menu at any time, and as emergency FTP access if you manage to accidentally break anything important (the game disc boots without touching the MS dash or the softmod, and the savegame exploit launches its own FTP-enabled dash, so even if you've wiped your C drive it'll still work, as long as the gamesave is on E). It doesn't have to be in any great condition, it just needs to be able to load the main menu and start loading a savegame. I use Splinter Cell, found a second-hand copy for £3 and have never actually played it.

 

Third, you can't screw up the BIOS at all with a softmod. In fact, the only type of mod that can alter the BIOS at all is a TSOP (actually overwriting the BIOS). The only real risk is accidentally unlocking your HDD, but you have to find a program that does it, install it, then explicitly tell it to unlock, then turn the Xbox off without re-locking. The most recent softmod packages don't even let you unlock your HDD (but this causes some savegames signed to a specific Xbox, ie. Forza Motorsports, to stop working). I've done three softmods using Krayzie's nDure package, and it's a very stable and easy to understand setup, designed to be deliberately 'idiot-proof'. Softmods aren't half as dodgy as people make them out to be, they've improved a lot since the early days where even leaving your Xbox unplugged for 45 minutes would kill it.

 

I'm droning on a bit here, but basically:

-yes you can use Live on a softmodded Xbox, as long as it's set up correctly

-it's a very good idea to keep the game disc and savegame you used to softmod

 

 

edit: don't use Softmod Installer Deluxe (SID), it's got rather a reputation for being unreliable, and v2.0 is positively ancient. v4.0 is safe enough, but I strongly advocate using Krayzie's nDure instead. Also, check xbox-scene.com for a lot more indepth information than I've given.