My beloved 360, is that really you?

I apologize once again for the extremely late update.. I've had a lot of things going on with wedding anniversaries, and the return of my 360! Though I'm not sure it is mine.. but more on that in a bit.

So as you may remember Thursday, February 4, 2010 I posted that my xbox was only 20 miles away.. I did in fact receive my xbox that day. Total it took less than 1 week from ship date to return date. I'm throughly impressed.

I was curious how that box I sent out would come back to me, but it didn't. They actually sent me a new box with proper Styrofoam holders in it for the 360. You can bet I am holding on to this box in case (heaven forbid) I should need it again.

Microsoft sent me the standard letter apologizing for the inconvenience and thanking me for being a member of the xbox community (aww). They also included a 1 month xbox gold subscription. I worried a bit that this may be a European redeem code being that I live in Europe. The only problem is that my xbox live account is American (as I'm American and had purchased the subscription in the US). The card however is written in English and Spanish, while typical in the US the standard in Europe is generally French and English so I have a smidgen of hope it is either not region specific or a US one.

After checking out the paper contents of the box (with no sign of that infamous pink slip saying they replaced my xbox with a refurbished one) I took out my xbox and checked the serial. Still the same. Good. Except the whole label was different. No longer did it have a manufacture date but a "service date". While it makes sense it meant that the ENTIRE label on the back of the xbox was not the original one and could indeed hide that it was replaced. I removed the xbox from it's box and put it back in its home in my entertainment center.


First thing I noticed was the faceplate. My old one was broken. The door that hid the USB ports when not in use had lost it's springy-ness ages ago and was always stuck in the down position. I didn't mind having a pretty new one, maybe they replaced my old broken one?

My suspicions about possibly receiving a refurbished 360 started to become more firm as I plugged in and turned on my xbox.

I had to update lots of things with my xbox as soon as I turned it on which had me more and more convinced this was not my xbox. I had a method to check easily if the console was considered as mine. All my DLC that I have for Rock Band is divided across 2 xbox live accounts. One my US one that is gold and I play on and my silver French account that I needed in order to buy more points since I could not put a French credit card on my US account. As I popped in Rock Band I noticed right away it was playing from the disc and not the HDD where I had it installed. As you can see in the message above I was told that this game could only be played on the HDD and console it was originally installed on. My heart sank.

However once I started Rock Band up all my DLC played normally without me having to log both my accounts to have access to all of it (as I had to do on my friend's console when I stuck my HDD on it). That meant that either it WAS my 360 (albeit "brainwashed") or that at least Microsoft had taken the liberty to handle my licenses.

That wasn't all though. I USED to be able to listen to the mp3s on my computer in another room on my xbox in the living room (which is connected to a stereo). I can no longer do that. I was forced to reinstall the windows media center and link my xbox to my computer but it never works, just freezes and every time I try to access my computer from my xbox I am told to verify I have registered my console on my computer (I have). This problem is still unresolved. I'm afraid I'm going to have to call someone and try to get some assistance, hopefully it is someone who speaks English clearly and fluently? ;)

For now I have an xbox, it works I can play my games.. but is it really the one I sent off earlier? I think I'll never know..