Posted: Wed Aug 24, 2005 3:19 am Post subject: Error 21 strangeness
ok... as usual I've managed to break my perfectly running Xbox again... I have a new fan which has a variable speed on it (little switch that I dremeled a hole for in the case). On high speed it is keeping things at 115FCPU/105FMB... pretty nice and cool... it's only at 120F/110F at medium and 130F/120F low speed.... a combination of much better heat sync compound (Arctic silver 5) and nice chunks hacked out of the HD tray to allow better ventilation of the HD heat. Of course none of this is a problem and everything has been working perfectly for the last couple of weeks until.... I do an IGR from XBMC to Unleash (default dash) and I get ERROR 21!!! arghhh.... :)
This is a funny error because there are lots of descriptions of why it happens but I think the general consensus seems to be a dash related issue....
This Xbox (a 1.3 upgraded to 300gig) not only won't boot off the HD (error 21) but gives the same error booting off a retail game disk (which is the only kind of game disk I have actually). That is it mostly won't boot of a game disk.... I find the every once in a while it will boot but never seems to get very far before crashing and then won't boot anything (error 21) for a while...
so.... here's what I do...
1) unlock my HD, disable security
2) restore a working C: with XboxHDM
3) relock my HD (which re-enables security)
4) try to boot
5) error 21? huh that was supposed to work.... I'm annoyed so I unplug it all and storm away...
6) I decide to try later... and ... yep... I'm back in business.
I think about posting but nah... everything is working ... chalk it up to weirdness.... until....
it happened again tonight but not as a result of an IGR. I shutdown the system this morning using unleash's Shutdown. This afternoon I turn things back on and - yep... error 21.
ok... I know this game.... I try booting up mech... oh look it boots - oh but only to the first images and then hangs up.... ok... unplug everything and walk away.....
I come back and try it.... it boots up to unleash. I browse a bit in the unleash menus and find that after a few minutes the graphics go wonky hard to describe but sort of ascii'ish versions of the menu with the sound but nothing is legible so I have no idea what I'm doing.... but I manage to get to the main menu and go to the bottom to what I think is shutdown - which it is.... oh good... except that when it turns on again.... yep...Error 21.
hmmmm... let's try booting off a game disc again - counterstrike - halo - anything.... nope... error 21.
ok... I can try to reinstall C but just for fun let's try to boot off my original HD. Cool... that works just fine. Switch back to the other one.... nope it's another Error 21 for me.
(sorry this is so long I'm almost done).
At any rate I'm going to re-reinstall C on the drive and try again but something is very very strange and wrong.
Any thoughts?
I'll report back what I find (in this lovely novella form).
boing!
forahobby Administrator
Joined: May 22, 2003 Posts: 23945 Location: NSW, Australia
Posted: Wed Aug 24, 2005 7:05 am Post subject:
yes.. very very strange.. It could be many things..
Overheating, faulty hdd, courrupt software but even i admit its a weird one.
Personally i would install my original retaill hdd back into the xbox and play hardcore for a couple of hrs to see if it is overheating etc.. I doubt it is overheating otherwise your xbox would reset itself and shutdown..
The E21 error your getting is related to software on your xbox hdd..
It cant seem to find the dashboard files..
Service Error 21:
Info: This error says that the machine was booted to display a error, basically someone told the machine to reboot (or launch a xbe) with this flag, and the error code just means its been rebooted by the flag. This error seems to show up more often when hacking/patching/customizing the original dashboard.
Solution: You probably are running the wrong dashboard for your xbox version. Use the 'HQ Auto Installer Deluxe' to reinstall your Retail M$ Dashboard.. It should fix this error no matter which xbox version you have.. If not try downloading another Retail M$ Dashboard.
Related topic(s) on Xbox-Hq.Com: none
Related link(s): http://aid.xbox-hq.com
ok... three days at the beach with the box unplugged... I thought maybe it needed a vacation as well...
Turn it on - same old error 21... ok... let's try some stuff to see what's going on....
1) unlock and disable security
2) xbrowser sees everything ok (that's a good sign). The only file on C that has changed since I reinstalled last time was items.xml. Let's delete it and let it rebuild.... relock - error 21... nope that isn't it...
3) I noticed on an 'inferior' forum that someone tried to tie 21 to a DVD issue... seems a far stretch but hey things are broken anyway so... I stick a known good DVD drive in there and reboot - error 21.
4) ok let's go back to the drawing board... unlock - I copy a known good C drive image onto the drive (Off the CD i've always used for these things so it really is a known good C drive). - relock (I'm getting very good at typing this long HD password at this point) I think I might even know it by heart....
5) You guessed it... error 21... I'll play some more and see what I find.... it's a hassle but I might also try this same drive in one of my 'virgin' xboxen.
One thought - another forum (also inferior but not really a big one) suggests that 21 can be a motherboard related error.... hmmm.. maybe but then why does the original but softmodded drive work?
ok.. back to the drawing board - At least something is broken enough to keep me busy for a while!
boing!
kilroytheguumba Xbox-HQ Member Xbox Version: 1.0 Modded: 007.AUF now, X3 HW soon
Joined: Jan 01, 2005 Posts: 77
Posted: Sat Aug 27, 2005 1:58 am Post subject:
The bad dash files could be related to a corrupt partition. Have you tried unlocking, FDISK'ing the drive, then running through the HDD creation process again?
Maybe I'm off target, but I know file corruption on large volumes happens from time to time in a PC environment, regardless of your OS. The most common solution from there is to backup, FDISK to dump the partition, FDISK /MBR, then reboot and recreate your drive.
I don't know if it'll work but it's worth a shot. At this point, what can you possibly lose? _________________ XBOX V 1.0 (softmod)
UnleashX dashboard
80GB ATA/133 Maxtor HDD
Phillips DVD drive (no tweak)
12V Fan bypass for full-speed fan action
It's a good thought... I actually have been thinking something like - hey what about a fragmentation of files on these xboxen? There isn't any way to defrag.... hmmmm.. though I doubt this is my problem.
I'll save a full partition build for when I give up.... I'm going to relock the drive to another box first and that will tell me a lot about whether the problem is the drive or the xbox. (of course I already know another drive works so likely it will just confuse me more....).
I did just try something interesting though -
swapped dvd rom power cables, and ide cables... no change.
I also saw a tutorial on the 'other' forum about removing certain dash directories... I figured - what the hell why not... so away went xodash and xboxdashdata.100 - yeah right... same problem...
what's really strange is that I can't consistently (if at all) boot from a game disc either... I really thought that should have worked....
More playing.... I'm coming to the conclusion it's the drive. It seems that I have a few bad sectors on the drive that give me some on again off again errors under linux. (Can't remember but something like seek error). I wonder if there is a way to map the partitions to avoid them? They seem to be quite discrete. I could normally figure this out (normally meaning not on an xbox fs) but I have no idea how the partition table is built. Anyone have any deep insights into the structure of the xbox partition table and how I could (prior to running anything on it) get into it to restructure it around the bad blocks? This would be easy in linux or even windoze but I'm not sure about this stuff....
At the moment I'm dd'ing a known good drive over the old one (smaller to larger so that's fine) to see what happens. If the files are in different orders on the C drive it might get things sorted out again...
Another thought is to make a C drive that has some big useless files in key places in the structure that can sit over the bad blocks... that will definately take some doing but seems promising.
update - I'm confident it's a drive problem.... Used XBoxHDM to do a dd from a good drive and after locking the drive again - yep... error 21...wtf!! it's not got ANY of the same files on it!
Ok.... I'm doing an atapwd erase (which should completely put the drive back into a virginal state.) Then I'll start from scratch and see what happens.
I'm still thinking that it's got 'some' bad sectors that I need to jump over in the partition table.... not sure quite how though.... The drive isn't that old so perhaps it needs to be exchanged...
Don't worry folks... I won't give up quite yet.... there is still to much to learn.
boing!
kilroytheguumba Xbox-HQ Member Xbox Version: 1.0 Modded: 007.AUF now, X3 HW soon
Joined: Jan 01, 2005 Posts: 77
Posted: Sat Aug 27, 2005 7:38 pm Post subject:
Hey boing, yould you possibly PM me a how to on atapwd erase? You'll have to forgive my ignorance in this, as I've been accustomed to using FDISK for such matters for quite a few years now. I'm quite interested in returning a few of my HDD's to a virgin state, since that's much easier to work with in certain situations.
As for mapping bad sectors, I thought SMART-compatable drives did this by design, which is why actual drive size is larger than advertised on the box.
As for the XBOX file system, I think it's a custom adaptation of the FAT file system. Maybe that'll help somewhere along the line if you ever got ahold of an XDK kit, but I'm not sure how at the moment. _________________ XBOX V 1.0 (softmod)
UnleashX dashboard
80GB ATA/133 Maxtor HDD
Phillips DVD drive (no tweak)
12V Fan bypass for full-speed fan action
|
All times are GMT |Page 1 of 1
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum You cannot attach files in this forum You can download files in this forum
HQ Network: 8,648 | 
Guests: 3283 | 
Members: 0 
Forums 
Check it here: 
