Call to support...

If you arrived at this page via a search engine you may want to start on the repairs page via the link on the left.  

This page seems to get indexed high by many engines but it was created at the beginning of my adventures so lacks any real useful information feel free to read on or check out the repair link to the left.

11/27/02  I am writing this while on hold with support.

A polite woman answered the phone and put me on hold several times...

The Xbox I was calling about we will call #2 for the purposes of this article.  Came to me used in broken condition displaying the "Your Xbox requires service, call customer support" error message the message is in multiple languages and that makes a difference.  So I figured what the heck lets see if support has any info, they asked me for the following information. 

Name
Address
E-Mail address
Phone (not required)
Xbox serial 

The were then able to move the Xbox by serial over to the account they setup for me.  It seems like they are now determining if I am entitled to warranty coverage.

Not entitled to warranty coverage.  The only option they offer is to send it in for service.  She kindly offered 25% off service which is the most she could offer.  This may be good information to shoot for when contacting them in need of their services.  $90 to repair any problem - 25% = $75 much better than any other deals out there.  If the Xbox has been opened or tampered with in any way they will not repair and will just send it back to you. 

So that idea is out, I really am not in the mood to spend time and money in that direction anyway.  I am buying broken ones and piecing them together.  Why would someone buy a broken Xbox anyway?  So they can have their own super computer  Huh? see what the heck I am talking about link

I have fully opened and tampered with mine so that option is out.  Lets focus on my theory:

I've been doing some researching on this. I have two broken xboxes I want to fix. The first has a smoked TSOP chip. I'll maybe try one of the mod chips later but I am most interested in fixing them and keeping them in factory condition.

Boot up, see Xbox splash screen followed by the multi language you need to contact customer support message. (My message does not include an error number in the upper left, or anywhere for that matter)

From reading some forums and mod sites I find that is the same message that you would get if you swapped in a new hard drive without the locking turned on. So I thought hey lets see what happens with a new drive, so took the other drive I had laying around and gave it a try. Same result. Next I tried putting back the old drive so I could capture the error message, to my surprise it came up!! Great, since many of the support articles I read said to delete saved games since this might be a corrupt file I tried deleting everything. I then threw in a CD and I could listen to music. Things were looking up. Next I got out a game but had to power down since it was in my working Xbox got the game powered up the now kind of working one and inserted the disk. Wham back to the call customer service screen (still no number of the error message)

This leads me to believe there is a software problem in the OS, I have heard the call customer service screen to be similar to the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) Can anyone back me up on my theories and has anyone had success in resolving this sort of problem? MAIL

Also does anyone know of a way to re-install the hard drive with the OS? (yes the Xbox does have an OS)

Since the one drive gave the same error screen and that this is the error one would expect to see if they were installing a larger hard drive I believe it is related to the files on the drive.  I will continue adding to this page as I dig deeper.

11/30/02 New information, that is the message that is displayed anytime the bios does not load properly.  This is not exactly pointing to a particular point of failure but it is a good start.  One option that is out there is to use a diagnostic bios.  The purpose of this bios is to check the hardware, it does not actually run an Xbox.  That will be the direction I am heading.  Now off to purchase the goods necessary to make some mod chips.