How to Solve Your Xbox 360 DRM Woes
Posted by Chris on Thursday, May 8th, 2008 at 7:00 pm under Microsoft, Gamer Life, Microsoft, Game Consoles, Game Platforms, Games, Game Companies
Tagged: drm, Microsoft, Xbox 360, Xbox live, xbox live arcade and xbox live marketplace
The unfortunate people who have had to send their Xbox 360 in for repairs have likely run into issues with DRM (digital rights management). If your DRM licenses weren’t moved, you’ll have to be logged into Live to access things like your Xbox Live Arcade games, downloaded TV shows, etc. There’s now a way to restore your licenses manually, so that anyone on the console can access the content — whether or not you’re signed into Live.
Prepare yourself, though, because it’s not going to be very easy.
- Attach your hard drive or memory unit.
- Turn on the console.
- Sign in to Xbox Live with the gamer profile that originally downloaded the content.
- Go to Xbox Live Marketplace and select Account Management, Download History.
- Select an item and then select Download Again.
- Repeat step 5 for each item in your download history.
It’s straightforward, don’t get me wrong, but if you own a lot of content, you’re going to spend a LOT of time trying to re-download all of it. Fast internet or not, you’re still going to have to deal with keeping an eye on your downloads so you can queue up more. That’s not going to be pretty.
This is far from a perfect solution, but it is, at least, a solution.
via Gamerscore Blog
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May 9th, 2008 at 7:38 am
I exchanged my 360 about a month ago. I just tried this, and my wife's account still couldn't access my old XBL games. This solution doesn't work, at least not 100% of the time.
May 9th, 2008 at 9:35 am
If you haven't deleted the old content, it doesn't seem to re-download the whole thing. A 100MB download was "re-downloaded" in about 3 seconds for example, so maybe there's a separate DRM file for the content I'm not sure.
That said, it didn't work for me either
Still can't access the re-downloaded content on my Elite which I just got back. Since they are only doing this for exchanged systems, what they are almost certainly doing is just updating their internal DRM database and switching out the serial number of the new console with the serial number of the old console. If this is the case, expect to have problems if you returned more than one system before they adopted this procedure, or if you (like me) updated to an Elite and have purchased content from your original system (since MS has no way to be 100% sure you really upgraded and moved over all your content to the new system).
BTW: Microsoft has REALLY shortened the repair process (at least in my case) I called them with the RROD problem last Monday. The Box arrived 3 days later, I sent it off and had my system back in my hands (replaced with a new system!) 5 days later. All in all a pretty painless experience.