By now you should have a CDROM with ldots' xboxhdm with the UDE package on it. If not, click here to find out how to make such a cd.

Your XBOX will need to be rather close to your PC, hopefully within a few inches. Turn off your PC and take off the cover. Most likely (and hopefully) there will be 2 IDE cables in your system. IDE cables are wide, usually greyish looking, and they plug into the back of your CD-ROM and hard drives. Unplug the cable from your hard drives, but do not unplug it from the main board in your PC. Your PC should now not have an IDE cable going to the hard drives, instead it should be hanging out of the side of your PC. It needs to reach your xbox.

Next step is to dissasemble your XBOX. You can find a good tutorial for doing this here. All you need to do is remove the cover, don't worry about taking the drives out or anything.

If it isn't already, connect your XBOX to power, and your television and turn it on. Ensure there is no game disk or DVD in the drive so your box boots directly to the dashboard. Wait until the dashboard appears before continuing.

The next step is to boot your machine and let it boot from the CD. ldots' xboxhdm should boot, and when you see this screen:


You will quickly want to take the IDE cable out of the back of the XBOX HDD


and plug the loose one from the PC into it, making sure the fit is snug. There usually is a notch on your IDE cable connector on the side. When connected the cable to the xbox, you will want this notch to point UP.


After this, the rest of the xboxhdm disk should load. You should be at a prompt.


Type in (without the quotes, and in all capital letters) "UDE" and press enter. The UDE install application will then check to see if your XBOX hard drive is connected correctly.


If xboxhdm reports that it cannot find your hard drive or partition information, you will need to try the hot-swap again. Turn off everything plug the XBOX IDE cable back into its hard drive and start the hot-swap process again.

If successful, you will now be ready to install UDE2. At the prompt type "UDE -UDE2" - again without the quote and in all capital letters.


xboxhdm should now make a backup of your XBOX hard drive. This may take a few minutes.


After the backup, xboxhdm should try to find your eeprom file but since your XBOX is virgin, it won't find one. Thats ok. It will search for compatible update.xbe files to turn into a exploited executable. No user intervention is usually required here.


After creating the new update.xbe it will prepare to install the UDE2 package. xboxhdm will ask you to confirm that your XBOX is of NTSC region (Canada/USA) and not PAL. UDE2 will not work on anything but an REGION 1 XBOX (by editing the eeprom you can change your region, but thats a different tutorial all together).


After replying "y" to the region confirmation, xboxhdm should now ask if you would like to install a bios loader / kernel patcher. Type Y and press enter.


It should then ask you which you would like to install. Usually the best option is #3, PBL Metoo as it is compatible with all kernel versions.


After selecting option 3, it will then ask you which bios you want the loader to install. Again, the most compatible option is #2, it supports all XBOX versions up to 1.6.


After the bios and bios loader, xboxhdm should ask which dash you would like to install. This is completely up to you as it is personal preference. I like EVOX better than MXM but thats just me.


After installing a dasboard, xboxhdm should then attempt to copy the exploited font files and BoxPlorer to your XBOX hard drive. It will then ask if you would like to install a patched copy of the original dasboard. This is useful if you have a DVD remote and dongle and would like playback ability of the original XBOX dashboard. Also useful if you use the dashboard to copy music.


If everything goes well you should see this message:


If so, then turn off your PC, turn off your XBOX, unplug the drive from the PC and plug the XBOX IDE cable back into its hard drive. After powering on your XBOX again, instead of the original dash, you should see the dashboard of your choice appear.

Congratulations, you have succesfully modded your XBOX!

Writers Note:

I have hotswapped my XBOX hard drive to my PC over 30 times without problems. For further information about hotswapping, please read Grospolina's FAQ on hotswapping.