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Xbox 360 Fall Dashboard Update appears to have completely broken my Xboxes

Dec. 10, 2007 Paul Thurrott | Paul Thurrott's Supersite for Windows

At the risk of sounding dramatic, is the  2007 Xbox 360 Fall Dashboard Update a complete  nightmare for anyone else, or is it just me? I've installed it now on three Xbox 360s, and the results are the same: All three now perform horribly, with frequent pauses in games and in the blade UI. On the Xbox 360 in the living room, which we use as a TV interface via Media Center Extender, it's even more exasperating: You click on something and then just have to wait, often for up to a minute. This is particularly bad when you want to do something like rewind TV just a few seconds because you missed something. It just freezes up.

Surely I'm not alone on this one. Is anyone else having these issues? Why haven't I seen anything about this??

Discuss this Article 16

pmcgrath
on Dec 10, 2007
I did it this weekend, and I have seen no ill effects. (still won't play .mpg video files though>:-( ) I'm wondering since all the 3 of your xboxes are hosed if it's not some sort of network problem. You might want to pull one off the network, unplug the power (just to make sure nothing is cached), then power it up and see if it still acting slow.
sisaupm
on Dec 10, 2007
It's about the same on my side. After the first reboot of my xbox 360 after the update, my xbox has frozen trying to connect to Xbox Live. The dashboard is much slower. Switching between blades is a pain...
brandon.pope
on Dec 10, 2007
I have to report the exact opposite. I am running a release day 360 and as soon as the update hit I was excited to see a huge increase in the performance of the dashboard, media center extender, and especially the center button menu (the one with friends and messages and stuff, as well as signout and shutdown performance).
bkvalheim
on Dec 10, 2007
Myself, including everyone I have talked to, have had zero issues with the update. In fact, the update has significantly (and I mean by a huge margin) improved the performance and stability of the 360. It's probably their first update that they did properly right out of the gate.
CyBrett
on Dec 10, 2007
I'm encountering problems with my 360 after the update. Basically when I go to anything that requires going out to xbox live to retrieve data (i.e. scrolling through movies/trailers etc.) I get the xbox 360 with the circle loading screen for about 30+ seconds.
Cavorter
on Dec 10, 2007
I am also not having any issues with the update. The dashboard is faster than it ever was and Media Center Extender seems a touch faster as well.
roblightbody
on Dec 10, 2007
Not having any problems and I really like the updated featureset.
ketwyld
on Dec 10, 2007
I have had no problems after the update, and I have to agree that the interface is much more responsive now. Although, I am not using the Media Center Extender function though, I just play .avi DivX files from my USB flash drive or DVD-Rs. Like pmcgrath, I am also disappointed that .mpg files still do not work. I would like to be able to connect to a Windows file share and play files from the share, without having to stream them. Also, I would like to be able to copy files onto the 360 itself. Maybe these will get addressed in the Spring update. Paul, are the 360s hard-wired to your network, or are they connected wirelessly? Sounds almost like you are getting network lag or dropouts. Have you tried disconnecting the 360s from your media computers, in the 360 interface? Are you using WMP11 or something else to stream to the 360s? A little more info about your setup might help us to help you. ;-)
murdocdv
on Dec 10, 2007
The dashboard is much faster for me, but like CyBrett said going out to Xbox Live can be a pain now, it's like russian roulette. Sometimes it finishes quickly, most times it takes ages to return any content. The Xbox has hung 3-4 times during this extended retrieve session, it wouldn't accept any input and had to be powered down.
pthurrott
on Dec 10, 2007
Thanks everyone. Given how all over the map these responses are, I'm even more curious than before. I'll hunt around and see if I can find out anything else about this. Thanks! --Paul
Rasken
on Dec 10, 2007
Do you have Vista SP1 installed? I've had issues running SP1 and Media Center Extender functionality since the Beta version they made available on Connect. Uninstalling SP1 vastly improved the MCE component. I've filed a bug on connect and they've come back today with a message that is saying that it's fixed in a future build. As for your other Xboxes, I can't say that I've run into a similar issue. I've seen some slowness the first day or two after the update since the service was getting slammed but it's stabilized nicely now.
matt.brown
on Dec 10, 2007
My xbox has actually sped up quite up a bit, especially with the blades. I'm about to install a tv tuner tonight and use the pvr function with MCE. I'll let you know if I have any problems.
daveinla
on Dec 10, 2007
It looks like the people having problem are the ones using as media extender no ??? Maybe it's having slow-down because it's constantly looking on the network... just a thought
mdsharpe
on Dec 10, 2007
I got Orange Box at the same time as the update. I've had Half Life 2 freezing on me quite often, but I don't know if its the game's fault or the disc's fault or the update's fault. I also don't like having to wait for the thing to spin round for ages after i log in to xbox live.
whoiskb
on Dec 11, 2007
I had some problems early on when I first installed the update. As someone mentioned above, when ever I went to the market place blade I got the icon that shows that the blade is working. All I had to do to resolve this was go to the system blade and go into the memory section and clear out the marketplace cache. Not sure if that would help you or not, but it may be worth a shot.
pthurrott
on Dec 12, 2007
Regarding SP1: I have installed Vista SP1 on three machines here, but the Media Center PC is not one of them. Also, I've experienced the slowdowns on three different Xboxes, only one of which is used as a Media Center Extender. (And this happened before Vista SP1.) The slowdowns (outright freezes, actually) occur in Media Center Extender (where you click on something and it just hangs, sometimes for as long as a minute), in games (which pause every several minutes, but briefly), and in the blade UI. This is consistent across each of the machines, in that they're all used for different reasons. I did notice last night using the MCX-based Xbox to stream a movie from the PC via Windows Media Connect that there were no performance issues, however. But then I wasn't really doing much other than watching and that's not been an issue in MCX either. Anyway, this whole thing is rather odd and perplexing. As my son noted the other day, "the TV is totally broken now." It really is. Thanks again to all, Paul

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