Can't boot XBMC after XBox was unplugged for years

[mad_tunes]

Hi Folks,

I've got an old crystal green XBox that I've previously soft modded (using 007 game save). It was happily running EvolutionX_M8plus_Bios and XBMC4XBOX-3.1-STABLE, until I left it unplugged in a box for the last few years.

I went to fire it back up last night and it wouldn't boot into XBMC, it got as far as the splash screen and just stopped.
Setting everything to default by holding buttons as it was booting made no difference.
I removed Everything from C:\ and started a-fresh. Reinstated the MS Dash using Slayers Evox Auto-Installer v2.6final.iso. It boots and does what it should, as does EvoX.

I've tried XBMC 3.5 and it does the same as 3.1 when I try to start it, just stops at the splash screen. XBMCs log stops at loading it's skin.

Can anyone suggest anything I could try to get XBMC (preferably 3.5) back up and running please?

Edit: I've just retried both 3.1 and 3.5, logs are
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/171 ... %203.1.log and
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/171 ... %203.5.log

Both stopped on a blank screen (which is slightly different to last night, I'm not sure what I changed to make it stop at a different point)

[mad_tunes]

I've just cracked it. Just in case this helps anyone else:

I'd done everything I could think of, right down to flashing BIOSes and repartitioning it's hard disk and starting again-multiple times
Nothing made much difference at all. Everything would run perfectly except for XBMC which wouldn't boot, it just stuck on the splash screen. Various builds of XBMC did exactly the same.

I was about set to give up on it, but thought I'd swap it's hard disk as its not difficult and I've got a few laying about.

When I opened the old girl up though, I noticed the clock and some of the power capacitors were well past it. Domed tops from them venting their corrosive guts all over the motherboard, spraying the underside of the hard disks controller board too. Joy.

10 minutes on eBay and a couple of days for delivery later, a handful of fresh capacitors and some alcohol arrived.
I've just pulled it apart, (carefully) scrubbed the motherboard and disk controller clean, let it dry and then replaced the clock capacitor and three capacitors from just under where the hard disk lives. There was a transistor near the clock cap that had one of its pads on the motherboard quite badly corroded, so I did the best I could at connecting it up while I had my soldering iron out.

Put it back together, plug it in and it booted up as usual. I let it sit for a couple of minutes so it could charge the clock cap, then turned it off and pulled the power-turn it back on and it kept the time! It hasn't done that for a long time.

I wasn't expecting success, but I tried XBMC and it booted!

I've never seen knackered caps cause such a specific issue before. Not starting at all, rubbish sound or dark display, yeh-but everything other than XBMC was running AOK.

Anyone got any theories about why XBMC was the only thing showing an issue?
(I'm not blaming XBMC in any way-it was a hardware issue all along. But why was only XBMC affected?!)

[Nextelhalo]

I've always thought that the clock cap simply lost it's time/energy due to being unplugged for so long and that's what can cause boot issues. In the past to get around this I've always hooked up the hard drive from the trouble xbox to another modded xbox that's is working fine. When you boot up that xbox and hard drive it should set the clock on the drive(i think, not sure) or at least allow you to boot properly and then you can put that drive back into your xbox.

Although this method could have worked for you it's a good thing that you replaced those caps, dont want one to rupture and ruin the board. Well done. As far as XBMC being the only thing that didnt boot, this all depends on how the xbox is setup. If the bios is set to look for XBMC as the default dash that's probably why you were not making it past the home screen, different builds of XBMC would not have made a difference. I honestly would have thought that using Slayers to rebuild the drive would have worked.

[mad_tunes]

It would make sense for them to lose their time if either the cap dropped below the min v needed as designed, or if the cap never holds enough charge because it's failed or failing. XBMC (or something it relies on) might not handle having an un-set clock, I'm not sure why it'd cause boot issues.

It seems like it might not be the time that was the issue though. If I booted into unleashx and set the time, then tried to start XBMC (clock still set because the power wasn't removed), it'd still lock up. I can't remember what version my Xbox is, but I'm sure it's pre 1.6 and I've read in quite a few places it's only the 1.6 that wont boot without the clock cap (I'm assuming a cap that has vented is the same as removed).

It's great my Xbox is back in good shape, but I'd like to understand what was going wrong.


(this looks like the same as my board, it's at least very close)

The caps I replaced have red dots. The clock cap (bottom left) seemed to have blown it's innards out the bottom. The three larger ones over to the right had all vented through the top, splattering the bottom of the plastic hard disk bracket thing and the controller board on the hard disk.

The box marks the transistor. I wasn't sure how bad the transistors leg and corresponding motherboard pad really were, but they did look a bit rough. Maybe it was well worth the crazy-small solering. The top leg in this pic is the one that looked badly corroded, and I may have re-connected.

Does anyone know what the cluster of components just above the clock cap all do please?

[mkalic]

If anyone has a similar problem, with just the clock capacitor blown and a time bootloop or hang, this is what i did. I removed the cap, just by wiggling it, carefully cleaned the surroundings with alcohol and cotton swabs and whoops, still bootlooping. So here's the trick, i just connected the xbox to an active internet connection and tada, I'm in.

Another thing i did was to update my softmod, which fixes the whole clock issue completely

[kingtiger01]

would of thrown some solid caps on there, to prevent that from happening (nearly) ever again.

what generation/model is your's, for the rest of us can keep a eye out for this possibility. I still use my Xbox almost exclusively for XBMC.

It gets warm from time to time(hdd was replaced with a 7200rpm quite a few years ago and case gets alot warmer as a result), so i have to be concerned if this is more common occurrence.