Xbox Voodoo

Everyone knows that troubleshooting computer problems is little more than black magic and voodoo.  This has never been more apparent to me than when I am trying to figure out what's gone wrong with a sealed "black box" system such as my Xbox 360.  I know what all the pieces do right up until they connect to the console itself, then they disappear inside and I've got no clue what's happening.  And I can't look, of course, as that would void my warranty.

Such was tonight's issue.  About a week ago, my Xbox 360 suddenly stopped being able to see the memory unit I use to store my profile.  I went ahead and recovered my gamertag to the hard drive while I waited to be able to test my memory unit in someone else's console.  It turned out the memory unit was fine, but I hadn't had much time to troubleshoot since then.  Today I discovered that my Xbox 360 also could no longer sync up to either of my controllers.  That meant something was pretty seriously wrong, and I was probably going to have to call Microsoft support.

Fortunately, I called Dustin first.  As I described my issues, he dredged up from both memory and an online forum a similar problem he'd had a while back.  He'd called Microsoft, and been walked through a weird set of tasks that shouldn't have had any effect, but evidently took care of the problem:

• Power on the console
• Hold down the little sync button (normally pushed to sync a new controller to the console) for 30 seconds.
• Power down and disconnect everything, including removing the hard drive
• Wait for a full minute
• Hook everything back up, and power up as normal

I followed those instructions, admittedly skeptical of the outcome.  But sure enough, when I finished, I was able to immediately sync a controller.  And when I plugged in my memory card, it recognized it immediately.  I have no idea why it worked, but it did.

Dustin's JUJU is strong.

Technorati Tags: troubleshooting voodoo Xbox 360