XBox 360 Geeks -- Technical question -- HELP!

[erincon23]

We know nothing about the technical end of this -- my son went to play one of his games on his XBox this morning, and found that the majority of his saves were gone for several games. He's the only one who plays, and nobody else touches it (there are no little children around to screw with it). This includes content he purchased with points, things he got with special codes, etc. Any ideas? Anybody think there's a way to recover? Help! I have one very sad kid here.

 

[dawson5]

for the stuff he may have lost he can redownload it to his xbox from here: http://www.xbox.com/en-us/support/systemuse/xbox360/licensemigration/
(please note that he should not be logged into the xbox at the time of attempting this process, for it to work)

to use that link please read the page, and then click the link labeled "Start the license transfer process now." that will take you to a page where you have to log in with the exact credentials of your xbox live account (email for live and password for live) (NOT A PHISHING WEBSITE ITS MICROSOFT) then he should see a page listing his console IDs (ex. 030000000000 ) its 12 digits long, in the next column over it should have the number of game and/or video Licenses once he has reached this page click next at the bottom. (Note: This process will only work on one console, and can only be performed once every 12 months. Rental licenses will not be transferred.)

and from there he should login to his xbox within a time limit but i dont remember the exact limit.

and the missing data could be from updating the xbox, and/or from files having become corrupted.

best of luck

(This is from my son, I pulled and had him respond as he knows all about these things. If there are any questions, I'll try and pull him back in if needed.)

 

[Scurvy]

Anything he downloaded from the Marketplace can be redownloaded back onto the same 360 without going through the License Transfer process. The tranfer is intended for people who are switching to a new 360, and since you can only use that process once each year, it would be a mistake to do it if he doesn't need to.

The loss of save files is worse, because I don't know of a way to restore those. It is possible he did have corrupted files. It would probably be good to check out some of the XBox 360 forums to see if there is a known issue that causes this. Until he finds out the cause, it might be worth it to buy a memory stick to keep his save files on so they won't be lost again. Good luck - I hope he can get it sorted out!

 

[erincon23]

Thank you both! We spent an hour on the phone with the Microsoft help and came to the conclusion that "it's not saved on our server, too bad, so sad." The only thing he's really upset about is an item he got with a pre-order code, and we're contacting that game manufacturer. I'll have to tell him about the procedure you detailed, Dawson, and see if that will be helpful to him. I appreciate the help!

 

[SandrA9810]

gamefaqs.com is another very helpful gaming community. You should be able to get very knowledgeable response from them. Of course you have to get past the rudeness of some teens and their "ha ha you have an xbox" comments. There's some that like to troll for the heck of it. But they've never steered me wrong when it comes to fixing a gaming problem.

 

[SandrA9810]

I would also look into getting a new harddrive for the machine. Cause if you're harddrive died, it's possible for it to happen again. Or you can use a thumb drive for secondary save option. Just don't install the games onto the thumb drive.