Installation

Installation

The fork builds the same two artefacts upstream Bad Storage does. For normal use you want the DLL, because XeUnshackle loads it automatically on every boot — no button press, no extra step.

Requirements

• Retail Xbox 360 on dashboard/kernel 17559
• Bad Update + XeUnshackle
• An internal drive. It does not matter what is on it — the console can format it once the bypass has mounted it, and FATXplorer's Xbox 360 hard disk format on a PC works too. Do not use SSD Maker or HDD Maker; nothing here needs them.

Which build

Two are published, from the same source. Take the normal one unless you are investigating something — see Two Builds.

Install

Copy BadStorage.xex.dll into the BadUpdatePayload folder on your Bad Update USB stick, replacing the one that is there.

That is the whole install. XeUnshackle loads it with LoadLibrary("GAME:\\BadStorage.xex.dll") — note this happens outside the launch.ini plugin list, so there is nothing to add there.

Keep a copy of the original BadStorage.xex.dll if you want to be able to go back.

What you should see

On the XeUnshackle screen, in the Bad Storage: line:

Text	Meaning
Applied	Worked. The disk is mounted.
Failed	Did not work — see below.
Missing	BadStorage.xex.dll is not in the BadUpdatePayload folder.

On success you also get the notification:

Bad Storage: Auth bypass active - internal disk mounted.

The internal drive then appears under Storage as usual, with no further action.

Preparing a drive with nothing usable on it

You do not need a PC. Put the drive in, run the exploit, and the bypass mounts it whatever state it is in. Then:

System Settings → Storage → Hard Drive → Format

The console writes a layout that is correct by construction. Confirmed on hardware from a drive that still had a Windows 7 install on it — see Two Builds for why this is preferred over formatting from the plugin.

It does not create the backward compatibility partition, so if you want original Xbox games you still need FATXplorer or mkfs.fatx for that one step. See Original Xbox Compatibility.

Original Xbox games

If you want backward compatibility, the emulator has to be put on the drive as well; it is not part of this project and not in this repository. See Original Xbox Compatibility.

If it says Failed

• No internal disk connected — the console did not identify a drive on the SATA bus at all. That is a lower-level problem than authentication and outside what this fixes; see Scope and Limitations.
• Could not initialise the internal disk — a drive was identified but its partition devices could not be completed. Check the drive is formatted as a plain Xbox 360 hard disk with FATXplorer, and that the console really is on kernel 17559.

The standalone XEX

src/BadStorage-XEX builds a normal title you can launch by hand, e.g. from a launch.ini button:

BUT_B = Usb:\BadUpdatePayload\BadStorage.xex

Useful for testing, since you can run it repeatedly without rebooting. The DLL is the better choice for everyday use.

Do not combine with the XL HDD patch

Do not apply the XL HDD patch from Xbox-360-Patch-Collection in RAM alongside this. It rewrites 52 live kernel sites, including NtReadFile/NtWriteFile dispatch, and upstream applies it by reflashing NAND so that it is in place before anything mounts. Patching it into an already-running system destabilises the filesystems that are already mounted.