Lepus Lepidus

When I joined OXM, I was never actually issued a 360; I’ve been using I one I bought for myself as a regular gamer for both work and personal stuff. That’s okay. I never really asked for another one because I didn’t really care. Now that my red ring thing is over, I’m kind of happy to have weathered that storm. I also like the white hardware. I think the black console is a tired cliche at this point, so I always opt for non-black hardware when given a choice.

However, when a few consoles arrive from Microsoft and Fran says “This one’s yours for work,” well, I don’t say no.

What, you thought I’d get a new faceplate? Hell no. But it’s nice to know that if anything happens to the hardware, it’s on the company’s dime. That’s cool.

I did transfer my existing data over to the Elite, and I put Kat’s Gamertag on the white one. Now we have a 360 downstairs, in preparation for Rock Band. However, this means I cannot play my XBLA titles unless I’m connected to the internet, due to the DRM issue inherent in switching consoles. I’m not thrilled about that and I don’t think they will ever fix that issue, but I accepted it in exchange for less wear and tear on the Xbox I bought personally. I suppose I can always pop the 120GB drive onto my white system and everything would be peachy, but then anything I download from this point on will be tied to this Elite box. My XBLA library has two mommies.

And amazingly…this solved my Halo 3 problem. I can access the same save file now that it has been copied to a new hard drive. Could different drives (or different revisions of drives) be the culprit, as Paul suggested a few days ago (and I kind of ignored)? Unless MS plans to give out free transfer kits and new hard drives to every affected owner, the solution that worked for me is not an acceptible solution. I just got lucky but I still don’t have what I would consider to be an answer or an explanation.

Bungie has now acknowledged the problem in its FAQ. It’s little more than “we are working to figure it out” but, when you’re otherwise hopeless, this is good news.

However, Corey at work started getting disc read errors too, and his were on a freshly-transferred Elite system, right outta the box. Paul found him a simple workaround that seems to be holding for him, and it’s working so far for me: Don’t continue your game using the “Resume Solo Campaign” option at the main menu. Instead, load up the game from the Campaign menu, as if you were going into a co-op mission. Just play from the beginning of the chapter you’re stuck at (in my case, “The Ark”). The load was very slow, but it load worked. I am watching the opening cinema to that chapter now and I’m able to play a little bit, but if I die, I get a DRE when it tries to reload. Also, I get a DRE next time it tries to load new content, after my first battle area.

Yes, I feel stupid for not trying this option before, but even though I can only get about five minutes further into the game, it gives me greater hope that this problem can be completely eradicated with a title update/patch file. This is a fine manual workaround in the meantime. If you have this problem and Paul’s advice works for you too — or doesn’t! — comment and let me know.

I played up through the fifth mission on the system I borrowed from GamesRadar before Halo 3 gave me the disc read error — the one most other people are getting, right before The Ark. So no, let’s change that list entry from the previous post:

• Radar’s console, my hard drive, my disc = yes…but only for five levels

Stranger still…now the brand-new console doesn’t seem to want to read any discs. Maybe it’s just overheated, but I tried four or five known good games and nothing. So another update:

• Radar’s console, Radar’s hard drive, any disc = no

I am afraid I killed a Halo 3 console by playing Halo 3. I am not kidding.I am also not crazy and I am not alone. Reading those threads is very interesting. People are trying different discs on different consoles and getting the same bad results — including “now my 360 won’t read any discs” — so there’s clearly something up. Those threads offer some theories, including corrupt hard drive data — which would explain my save file being valid yet invalid at the same time. But I step back from this, and I see the 360 apocalypse. If the biggest game of the year is responsible for damaging user data or worse, user hardware…well, to coin a Kaz phrase, the console wars is over.

Meanwhile, at Paul’s suggestion, I have tried moving my save file and my profile to a memory card and running the game without a hard drive plugged in; it still refuses to run.

• My console, no hard drive, my save file, my disc = no

I don’t know what to do now, except wait. If it turns out that I have to delete my save file and start again, I will — a small hardship, and maybe I’ll find some darned skulls on the second lap. But I don’t want to buy new hardware and I don’t want to start a new gamertag. I have done absolutely nothing wrong as a consumer; I have not tried to make the game or system do something it was not designed to do. I just wanted to play Halo 3. And since I cannot fix the problem, my only hope at this point is that Bungie — which has addressed the whole “Halo 3 doesn’t run at 720p” kerfuffle, but not the “Halo 3 reports disc read errors” issue — is secretly working on a title update to fix it for me and for everyone else who is similarly affected. Blind faith is all I have at this point, because neither Bungie nor Microsoft has made any public statement about this, despite two very lengthy threads at xbox.com and bungie.net.

I don’t think getting upset about a problem ever solves a problem, but even I am running out of patience. I literally had problems with Halo 3 from the moment I turned it on — I started out with the save bug on the very first level and had to delete the file to start again. I didn’t know it was going to be a harbinger of doom. It just wasn’t supposed to be this way.

This much I know: What’s happened to me has happened to other people. The question is, when will it happen to you?

So…I’ve had trouble with Halo 3. First, the scratched disc, which led to disc read errors. Then after some testing, the disc read errors seemed to be more about my machine than anything else; the disc played fine in other 360s. So that’s good news. I got a pristine copy of Halo 3 Legendary and…I still got disc errors. So I tried my hard drive on another 360 — a brand new Halo 3 360, no less — and got the same disc read problem. And then I tried ANOTHER 360, this time a new Halo 3 360 that belonged to GamesRadar, and THAT worked. So the only way I can play campaign right now is by borrowing Radar‘s 360, which is very kind of them but utterly fucking ridiculous.

The thing that bothers me the most — more than not being able to play! — is that I cannot figure out why it works on some machines but not others. Using different discs, consoles, and hard drives has provided wildly different but repeatable results. Check this out:

• My console, my hard drive (my save file), my disc = no
• OXM’s console, my hard drive (my save file), my disc = no
• Radar’s console, my hard drive (my save file), my disc = yes
• OXM’s console, OXM’s hard drive (no save file), my disc = yes
• Radar’s console, Radar’s hard drive (no save file), my disc = yes

The only difference between the OXM and Radar consoles — both are Halo 3 editions, and they arrived the same day — is the DVD drives. The OXM unit has a BenQ and the Radar unit has a Toshiba. But…my console also has a Toshiba, albeit with firmware two years older. And BenQ is supposed to be the “best” of the drives currently being used. And it’s not corrupt save data, because the Radar console has no trouble with it.

I’m not the only one reporting read errors, so I think it might be a combination of two elements: how the data is arranged on the disc (are they using compression? Is there an error in layout? What makes this disc fail during reading?) and the tolerance of the different DVD drives Microsoft uses. That is, some drives can read this disc and some can’t (Dead Rising had similar problems, but I was unaffected by them…and I don’t believe there was a fix). I have tried different discs but it hasn’t made any difference, so it’s not necessarily my copy of the game. But every other game runs fine on my system, so it’s not necessarily my drive — and even Halo 3 lets me play multiplayer without troubles, which means it’s something with the single-player data and how it’s arranged on the disc, or how the drive is reading that part of the disc. That’s why I think it’s got to be a combination of the two…and without knowing for certain where the fault lies, there’s no way to fix it. Even buying a new console and popping my hard drive onto it doesn’t seem like it will do the trick — though maybe if I bought an Elite and copied the data with the Transfer Kit that comes with the Elite…?

No, screw that. Buying a new console hardly seems like a rational response to one game misbehaving. I like my freshly red-ring-repaired system and I see no real reason to give it up. BioShock ran wonderfully (after I cleared the cache). So has everything else. This is just a Halo 3 issue. And Halo 3, despite what some folks may think, is just one game.

I have won some sort of reverse lottery.

I have a nice pristine copy of Halo 3 now (thank you, Edelman!). But the same problem occurs — on the first loading point, the disc says it’s unreadable, yet multiplayer works fine. Guess that means it’s my 360’s drive going fritzy.

Maybe it’s time to give up and buy another console. I have never had to do that. I still have my launch PlayStation, my launch PS2, my launch Xbox, and pretty much my original hardware from every console I’ve ever owned. I am clearly due for some bad luck.