«
»

XBox Live Connection Bug – Live won't automatically connect until you perform a network test

I’m not sure if the XBox live team have an official bug reporting mechanism, so I’ll put this post here in the interim and hopefully a search engine or two will pick up on it.

This has no bearing on the NXE that launched today, I’ve just coincidentally solved the problem.

Symptoms

XBox 360 fails to automatically connect to xbox live after power on.  If you then go and perform a network test, it’ll succeed.  Following this, live will connect fine until you power off the xbox for a time greater than a minute or two.

Cause

There appears to be a bug in the code that deals with manual network configuration of the xbox 360.  If you manually assign the console an IP address and then manually assign a DNS server but leave the DNS server discovery setting to automatic, the xbox fails to do a DNS lookup, either automatically or manually, on system startup.

Solution

If you manually assign an IP address and DNS server, ensure that the DNS lookup mode is also set to manual.

I have no idea why the console lets you configure a DNS server and then gives you the choice to use it or not, I’d have thought it’d be one or the other, and it’s a very easy mistake to make and quite tricky to diagnose.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 19th, 2008 at 9:37 pm and is filed under games, geek. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

12 Responses to “XBox Live Connection Bug – Live won't automatically connect until you perform a network test”

  1. joe Says:
    February 3rd, 2009 at 4:53 am

    Dude, thanks! I’ve been banging my head against this issue all weekend.

  2. Matt Says:
    May 23rd, 2009 at 6:12 pm

    Many thanks–same here–I bet there are many others in search of this bit of information!

  3. Jete Says:
    June 14th, 2009 at 4:48 pm

    Thanks for this man, been bugging me for a while but was too lazy to troubleshoot. Finally did a quick google and found your solution! :)

  4. Peter Says:
    September 1st, 2009 at 4:29 pm

    Brilliant, thanks.

    For me, I needed to enter the DNS settings manually from my router config page, rather than leaving it to Auto.
    1 reboot later, all fixed.

    Cheers!

  5. Billy Says:
    November 22nd, 2009 at 6:31 pm

    Thanks! Very helpful, worked like a charm :)

  6. Percy Says:
    February 24th, 2010 at 5:17 pm

    Thanks alot, I messed about with my DMZ and xbox and got this problem….. all fixed now with manual DNS. Phew!!

  7. Bobby Says:
    March 29th, 2010 at 6:35 am

    Yep, this works. I had entered my preferred DNS servers before, but it somehow got switched to auto. Of course, when I switched to manual, it remembered my DNS IPs from last time. If anyone needs some, my favorite are OpenDNS (google it, you really should know what DNS does and how it works before you go entering them in). 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220

  8. Jeremy Says:
    May 28th, 2010 at 6:46 am

    I’ve been trying to resolve this off and on for months now man, I can’t believe it was something so simple and stupid. But it’s solved!! …I …I think I love you.

  9. Barry Says:
    June 23rd, 2010 at 9:29 pm

    just another guy thankful for this post. I knew it was something stupid, but it’s hard to anticipate stupid bugs like this. Thanks again.

  10. Liam Says:
    May 28th, 2011 at 11:07 am

    I know I’m a few years late but either way thanks.

  11. Chat Says:
    June 10th, 2011 at 10:03 pm

    Thanks. Works here

  12. Josh Says:
    July 26th, 2011 at 4:20 pm

    I wasn’t for sure it had something to do with auto DNS but this confirms it… can’t wait to get home and correct the issue.

Leave a Reply