Xbox 360 Ethernet works only with Hard Drive Removed

[Senseotech]

My just under 1 year old 360 Pro w/ 20 gig drive has been unable to connect to my wired network. I called MS support assuming it was a faulty port, and in the process of humoring them and the trail-and-error process they had me do, I discovered a fun little factoid: when I remove my hard drive from the 360, I can connect to Live. Putting it back results in no Live connectivity. Before I go and send my drive back to MS on my own dime for a "free" replacement, is there anything else I should try or do to see if it works?

Edited November 22, 2008 by Senseotech

[I am Reid]

Have you tried upgrading to the 360?

[Neo003]

Have you tried upgrading to the 360?

My thoughts exactly :rofl: :laugh:

Any try resetting the network connection in the the system blade.

[Senseotech]

Yes very funny, forgive my lack of counting skills while I was on the phone with tech support. Now though, I can't connect even with the hard drive out, so I don't think its that.

[Neo003]

Are you sure the problem isn't with your router.

[Senseotech]

Are you sure the problem isn't with your router.

Yes, I've tried 4 different cables of varying lengths, two different routers, and a direct connection to my modem. The thing is, I just spent 30 minutes with the drive off and got nothing, and the second I power down put it back on, and go try to sign in, it works and donwloaded the NXE. Only problem is, it rebooted and tried finish downloading the rest and can't connect now.

[P!P]

Have you tried upgrading to the 360?

Damn, I came here to say the exact same thing. Great minds think a like.

Onto the problem, that's a weird problem. Since it's under a 1 year old, I'd send that baby in.

[Neo003]

Actually I am on the same boat though there's little diffrence. I am on the road so I use motel's wireless internet access and they have that login thing I had to use my laptop to connect it to the internet and then hook up my 360 with the ethernet port.

I have to retry test xbox live 3 to 4 time to connect but eventually it does. But I see your problem since you're in the middle of downloading NXE. I would recommend downloading it thur one of the thread here had rapidshare link to it (like 7 MB) try that and see if you can install the NXE and then can connect to live.

[Senseotech]

Actually I am on the same boat though there's little diffrence. I am on the road so I use motel's wireless internet access and they have that login thing I had to use my laptop to connect it to the internet and then hook up my 360 with the ethernet port.

I have to retry test xbox live 3 to 4 time to connect but eventually it does. But I see your problem since you're in the middle of downloading NXE. I would recommend downloading it thur one of the thread here had rapidshare link to it (like 7 MB) try that and see if you can install the NXE and then can connect to live.

Thanks to whomever fixed my failure at spelling. I had planned to try that, then hope that I was magically able to connect reliably again. If not, I'll be seeing my 360 again in time to play some games from Christmas I guess.

[Kushan]

If you're having trouble connecting to live and resetting the connection settings to "automatic" doesn't help, try the following (in this order)

1) Go into the DNS settings and change primary and secondary to the following:

208.67.222.222

208.67.220.220

This is OpenDNS, it should pretty much ALWAYS work and be reliable, at least moreso than your ISP and when I'm having difficulty connecting to something, this tends to fix it a good 50% of the time.

2) If that doesn't work, assign your 360 a static IP. I can't tell you which is the best one to use as it depends on your router, but it's usually not hard to figure out. All you have to do is find the IP of your router (Using any computer connected to it, do start > run > "cmd" without quotes > "ipconfig" without quotes - your Router's IP is "Default Gateway", most likely it'll be 192.168.1.x). Once you know that, you can assign that IP as the "Default gateway" on the 360, then give the 360 a static IP similar to what your router has. I.E. if your router is 192.168.1.1, then a static IP of 192.168.1.10 or 192.168.1.40 will probably work fine (depending on the number of devices on your network).

[Senseotech]

If you're having trouble connecting to live and resetting the connection settings to "automatic" doesn't help, try the following (in this order)

1) Go into the DNS settings and change primary and secondary to the following:

208.67.222.222

208.67.220.220

This is OpenDNS, it should pretty much ALWAYS work and be reliable, at least moreso than your ISP and when I'm having difficulty connecting to something, this tends to fix it a good 50% of the time.

2) If that doesn't work, assign your 360 a static IP. I can't tell you which is the best one to use as it depends on your router, but it's usually not hard to figure out. All you have to do is find the IP of your router (Using any computer connected to it, do start > run > "cmd" without quotes > "ipconfig" without quotes - your Router's IP is "Default Gateway", most likely it'll be 192.168.1.x). Once you know that, you can assign that IP as the "Default gateway" on the 360, then give the 360 a static IP similar to what your router has. I.E. if your router is 192.168.1.1, then a static IP of 192.168.1.10 or 192.168.1.40 will probably work fine (depending on the number of devices on your network).

The thing is, its not a software issue imho. DNS wouldn't be an issue until I get an IP from my router, and I can't get to that point 90% of the time, and any issue with wonky DHCP stuff would be quickly fixed when I directly connected to my modem.

I managed to, through magic of just randomly trying a Live connection, get it to connect once more and finish the NXE update, but since then I haven't gotten another connection.

[Kushan]

Ok don't try it then...

[Senseotech]

Ok don't try it then...

I tried both of those things before going and buying another 25 foot cable 3 weeks ago, I'm not new to tech troubleshooting. A manual IP still fails at IP address, and while the link light is green, there is no activity and neither of the routers router report an attempt to even connect.