What you need:
· An Xbox 360 with a DVD drive that is flashed with ixtreme LT
· A torrent down loader such as BitLord http://www.bitlord.com/BitLord_1.01.exe, or access to www.megashares.com.
· WinRAR - http://www.rarlab.com/rar/wrar390.exe
· A program to burn your .iso to a DVD such as CloneCD -http://static.slysoft.com/SetupCloneCD.exe or ImgBurn - The Official ImgBurn Website
· abgx360 - http://rapidshare.com/files/305516657/abgx360_v1.0.2_setup.exe
· A dual layer DVD burner and dual layer DVDs. They should be DVD+R DL
· If you have AnyDVD it should be disabled, it has the potential to mess things up. So just close it if you have it.
Flashing your Xbox
OK, I'm not going to go over how to flash your Xbox, there are a ton of guides on how to do that. If you're a noob, I would recommend having someone else do it for you. Personally, I just looked on www.craigslist.com for someone in my area that flashes Xboxes. I found somebody 5 minutes away, he did it for $20, and it took 45 minutes. Much less hassle than doing it yourself in my opinion. There are also people on this site that will do it for you as well.
Downloading Games
For downloading games I either use torrents or Megashares. Using torrents is very similar to using a file sharing program like Limewire. I use BitLord, it works well. However there are a ton of different programs like BitLord, so you can use whatever you want. You'll need to search the internet for the torrent you want to download, and to do that you'll need a torrent search engine. I use www.isohunt.com. Be aware that every so often isohunt has this pop-up that takes you to this site/window that says your computer is infected, and it wants to install some anti-virus program. If this happens, just close the windows and your browser and load isohunt back up. Like I said, it only happens every once-in-a-while, and the rewards far outweigh the hassle of closing your browser and opening it again. Once you have BitLord installed and set up, search for what you want on isohunt. Click the link for it, then click on Download .torrent. Click open, and then BitLord should come up and look like this:
Click OK and it will start downloading. The download can take up to several days depending on how many people are sharing the torrent, and your internet speed. I have downloaded games in as little as a few hours, ranging up to a few days. Once everything is downloaded you need to unrar all the files to turn them into the .iso and .dvd files. Go to the folder you downloaded the game to and double-click one of the rar files, it doesn't matter which one. WinRAR will open and look like this:
Click Extract To, and select where you want the files to go and click OK. WinRAR will extract the files to the directory you specified. This will take about 15-20 minutes. Once WinRAR is done, you should have a .iso file and a .dvd file. We will get to stealth checking in a minute. If you don't want to wait days for your game to download, that's where Megashares comes in. Megashares is a file hosting site. You pay $30 for 6 months of unlimited downloads at super fast speeds. That's not too bad considering what you will be saving in game purchases. I average 800KB/s - 1300KB/s downloading from Megashares. On Megashares, you download the whole .iso instead of a bunch of rar files. Also when using Megashares, you will want to download the .dvd file with the same name as the .iso file. If there isn't a .dvd file then abgx will make one for you, and we'll get to that in a minute. Use the search at the top of the page to find what you want. This is what you will see when downloading from Megashares:
There may be multiple .iso and .dvd files, just remember to choose the .iso and .dvd with the same name as shown above. Then you click the files, decide where you want to save them, and you're off! OK, that pretty much covers downloading games.
Stealth Checking and Verifying Games
Now that we have downloaded the game, we need to verify its stealth so you don't get banned on Xbox Live. Open up abgx360. This may look complicated, but it really isn't. When abgx starts up it defaults to the Quickstart tab. There's a drop down box that says Welcome. This box will give you a bit of information about the program. Just click the drop down box to change to whatever topic you'd like to read about. I would suggest reading them all.
As far as changing settings, that's the easy part. You should only have to change one setting. Your startup window should look just like mine. Your options tab should look like this:
You can hover your mouse pointer over each blue and white i for more information. I would suggest doing this. Your options tab should look like mine. There are two boxes in the newer version of abgx in the options tab that are not in my picture. They are "Show avatar awards" and "Include the CSV". Just leave them both blank. For the Manually Patch or Extract Files tab, all boxes should be unchecked and blank. On your AutoFix tab you will be making one change. Change AutoFix Threshold to Level 3. If you know that your version of ixtreme is earlier than 1.4, then you need to check the Adjust angle 359 box. If you are unsure you can check it, it won't hurt anything. But like I said, if your ixtreme is earlier than 1.4, YOU NEED THIS BOX CHECKED. There is a box in this section also that was not in the version I made the tut for. "Trust SS v2 angles" should be checked.
The Rebuilding tab should only have Default Method checked, and the on the Misc tab you shouldn't have to change anything. Your console's region code should be blank, SplitVid should be set to Leave it the way it is, and Images should be set to Extract images when using HTML output. Now that abgx is set up right, it is time to check our .iso to make sure it is safe to play on XBL. Click on the folder icon in the upper right and find the directory where you have your .iso and .dvd files. Your .dvd file won't show up, don't worry. Select your .iso and click open. Now click Launch at the bottom. For the next two pictures, click on them and then click in the bottom left of it to expand it to actual size. Once you click launch you will get something similar to this:
It will take 2-4 minutes to complete the process. When you click Launch, abgx checks for new versions of itself and for new game library files before it starts checking the game. While it's checking the game you will see text of different colors. Green means good. Blue means abgx is downloading or making changes to a file. Yellow means something is wrong, but don't worry, abgx will fix it. A lot of times you will see it say something in yellow like, so and so doesn't match, or something about an angle. Don't worry about that, because we already addressed that and it either doesn't matter or abgx will fix it. When it is done you should see this, which is similar to the other window, but at the bottom of this one it says it's good to go. If the .iso you downloaded did not have a .dvd file with it, abgx will create one for you, and tell you it did so.
Now, pretty much every time you run your .iso through abgx the first time, you'll see yellow text, blue text, and it will tell you it's fixed something. Once it's done, press any key to exit, and hit launch again. This time the only colored text should be green, with the exception of the angle 359 in yellow if you got it the first time. If abgx tells you that it can't verify the game, that's because it is probably a recently released game, and they need a few days to get their databases updated. I've seen it take as long as 2 weeks to get a new game verified, but that's rare. Now, some people swear that as long as it passes the stealth check, you're fine to play on XBL. That may be the case, I do not know for sure. Personally, I don't play a game until it has been completely verified just to be safe. Abgx has been updated to verify wave 4 games, so you shouldn't see any errors saying something about a wave not seen before. OK, that pretty much covers stealth checking and verifying.
Burning Your .iso to a DVD
CloneCD
As I said before, you need a dual layer dvd burner and DVD+R DL discs. I've had issues with CloneCD saying it can't get exclusive access to my drive, so just start CloneCD before you put in your DVD, and wait for it to prompt you to put your DVD in. Once you open CloneCD click the second button from the left, it has a pencil on it.
Then click browse and find the directory you put your .iso and .dvd in. Select the .dvd file and click open. Your .iso file won't show up, don't worry. Make sure that the Delete after a successful Write box is NOT checked. If it is, it will delete your .iso. Click next. If you have more than one drive it might ask you to select your DVD burner, if you only have one drive it will select it for you. I only have one drive, so it automatically does it for me and takes me to the next step. Now it should prompt you to put in your blank DVD. Now you have the option to select your write speed. I use max, I've never had any problems with that. Some people say you should use a slower speed, or the slowest speed. That's up to you. If the game won't load, freezes, etc., then try burning on a lower speed. If the game still has problems, make sure you're not using cheap, crappy DVDs. Click OK and it will start burning your DVD. Your drive will open and some music will play when it's done. It usually takes about 30 minutes on my drive, your times may vary. When it's done, bust out a Sharpie, label it, and play it!!
ImgBurn
When you open up ImgBurn, you will see two windows. The log is at the bottom, and it complains if you try to close it, so either leave it alone or minimize it. On the main screen you will see this:
Click on Write image file to disc. Now click on the icon with the folder and the magnifying glass to open the directory where your .iso and .dvd are.
Select your .dvd file and click open. If you do not have a DVD in your drive it will say at the bottom Device Not Ready, and the bottom left icon will be grayed out. Put in a DVD and the bottom left icon will no longer be grayed out and will be selectable. It will look like this:
The Destination drop down box should be set to your DVD burner. If you only have one drive, it will set itself. If you have two drives, select the one that is your DVD burner. Test mode should be unchecked and Verify should be checked. Don't worry about the two green arrows or the graph button. On the bottom right, you have the option to adjust your write speed. I use max, or AWS, which is Automatic Write Speed, which is by default set to max. Once again, some people say to set your write speed slower, but I don't have problems. If you do, just set your speed to a slower one. The Copies drop down box is how many copies you'd like to make. If you select more than one, it will prompt you to put in the next disc when it is ready. Don't worry about the three icons in the very bottom right. Now you can click the Write icon to start burning your DVD, it is the button circled in red in the picture above.
The red icon in the bottom right is if you want to cancel the process. The check boxes in the top right are options for you to select for ImgBurn to do when it is done burning your DVD. Only Verify should be checked, unless you really want ImgBurn to do one of those options. Once it is done writing, it will eject and close your drive so it can verify the disc. If you have a laptop, it will be unable to close your drive, and it will tell you so. Close your drive manually and click OK. Now it will verify the disc, which takes about as long as it took to write it. That's the main reason I prefer CloneCD over ImgBurn, CloneCD writes and verifies in about 2/3 to 1/2 the time. If you prefer not to verify, that's fine, you can uncheck the verify box. It is just another security measure to make sure the disc is burned properly and reduce your chances of getting in trouble on XBL. When it is done, it will play the same music that CloneCD plays and tell you that the operation is complete. Next step is to get your Sharpie at the ready, label your game, and play!!
One final note on burning the DVDs: You should not be doing other things on your computer while you are burning a DVD. That uses up processing power and may contribute to buffer under run errors, or it may cause the disc to be burned improperly, skip information it should have burned, etc. When you go to burn your DVD, just close any programs you have running. Background stuff like anti-virus is fine to leave open, I'm talking about down loading something, or using some program that is eating up significant processing power. Go have a snack and relax until it's done.
I hope you found this guide easy to follow. I did not go into detail about torrent down loading programs because there are so many of them, and you need to set it up for your connection, your preferences, where you want the files saved, etc. Good luck!!!
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