Perfect Xbox 360 suddenly won't update: C000-0099 status error

captain_semtex · Feb 21, 2019

I have spotted a concerning trend in several posts where 10 year old Xbox 360's suddenly get bricked during an update or simply won't update. Is MSFT deliberately killing old machines?

I have an 10 year old original Xbox 360, an Xbox 360S and an Xbox ONE S. It's been 2 years since I last played the Xbox 360. When I turned it on recently I was immediately prompted with a system update from Xbox Live. This downloaded successfully, but failed
during installation with Status Code xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-C000-0099.

Researching this code revealed this is either a problem with my Xbox Live account or the update has detected my Xbox 360 has been modified or opened... except it has not... and MSFT Support also confirmed my account is "perfect".

I have tried the following:-

1) Formatted my hard drive

2) Cleared the system cache

3) Reset my network settings to factory defaults (I use a wired connection)

4) Went to System > Storage and press X LB RB X LB RB X to remove any previous updates

5) Installed the update via USB following https://support.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-360/console/system-updates-info

... but the result is always the same.

I have 2 other 20GB hard drives from previously owned Xbox 360's that have long since died and repeated the above steps with those but with the same results.

So I now have a perfectly good Xbox 360 which cannot connect to Xbox Live and cannot retrieve cloud saved games info or any Xbox GOLD games. I can now only play offline the handful of physical Xbox 360 games that I have.

I know my Xbox is not opened or modified, and as the USB offline update also failed immediately with the same status code, this suggests the update is performing some hardware checks and is incorrectly determining my Xbox has been modified possibly because
the hardware is so old (my Xbox doesn't even have an HDMI port!)

(Aside: I also visited https://enforcement.xbox.com/en-US/home/consolecheck to check if my console had been banned but I got the message "Unable to detect the state of this serial number at this time, please connect this device to Xbox LIVE"... which of
course I cannot!! I also tried the serial number for my working Xbox 360S which was connect to Xbox LIVE but got the same message!)

Any ideas what else I can try or who at MSFT I can contact? Support have been quite good but ultimately I have reached a dead-end.

Thank you in advance for your help.

:)

Cloud Gear 13

Error C000-0099 occurs when you try to download an update to your Xbox 360 console

ArminatorX

Thanks for the novel idea. Does the full code give any more clues?

Well, in the past there had been posts about older consoles failing the update, because they were already updated, but the storage drive got corrupted, and the system software therefore seemed "different" from the actual update.

So the console tried to look for newer software.

The first set of numbers is the current version of the console software, and the second set is the version the console is trying to download. If the console had a corrupted system on it's storage, you would see the most up to date version code in the beginning
(4476), and all zeroes as the second code (0000) followed by the other numbers.

Unfortunately for my limited knowledge, your console has an intact system software, and is really trying to download a newer system software.

However as for the C000-0099 code, I also only have what the Xbox support website offers, meaning that the update sees the console as being manipulated or that there is an issue with your Live account.

If it's about the Live account, you could try the following experiment (be aware, that if that doesn't work, there is a chance you won't have access to your Xbox 360 savegames unless you find a way to restore your profile to the console).

First of all, prepare an USB drive as storage, and move your profile off the console's drive to your USB drive. Turn the console off, and wait for about 30 seconds, as the console still writes to the storage drives after it's turned "off", and if you remove
the USB drive too early, it'll become corrupted and all data will be lost.

With your profile safely stored on the USB drive, the console shouldn't see your profile anymore. Do your previous troubleshooting steps again (clearing the cache and removing the updates with the button combination). Disconnect the console from the network
and try to update the console offline with another USB drive (not the one with your profile).

Cross your fingers that the console can now be updated.

If you still get the error message, I'm afraid something inside the console is broken, so the update mistakenly sees the console as being modified, or you bought the console used, and the previous owner modified it, or you gave it away for repairs at a non-Microsoft
repair center, and they "repaired" it wrong, and now the console is considered modified.

In all these cases there is nothing you can do than to get a different Xbox 360, transfer your data over to that other (working) console.

As for the theory of Microsoft killing off older consoles: I still have an older "fat" Xbox 360 console, which works perfectly fine. So I don't think that Microsoft is deliberately killing off old consoles. They'd shoot themselves in the foot if they did,
as people wouldn't be able to upload their old savegames to the cloud for the Xbox One to use it through it's backwards compatibility, should they want to upgrade.

And if people can't continue their games on the new Xbox One anyways, there'd be no reason to stay within the Xbox family, and they could just as well get a Switch, PS4 or PC as their next platform. Even more so, if it became known that Microsoft is actively
"breaking" other people's stuff for whatever reason.

ArminatorX

Can you please give me the first two segments of the error code? For example:

1234-5678-XXXX-C000-0099

Have you already tried completely removing the hard drives from the console, and using an empty USB drive that you let the console format as storage, and then trying to update again (be it via USB or online via Live)?

As for being modified: Has the console ever been repaired? And if so, has it been repaired by a videogame shop or repair service instead of Microsoft?

Dark Prince 95

Hi,

check this page: https://support.xbox.com/xbox-360/errors/error-code-c000-0099

captain_semtex

Thank you MissGeekness for your fast reply, but copying and pasting the very page I already researched is not very helpful.

As I said in my original post, "Researching this code revealed this is either a problem with my Xbox Live account or the update has detected my Xbox 360 has been modified or opened... except it has not... and MSFT Support
also confirmed my account is 'perfect'."

My old console has always connected to Xbox Live without problem... and did so when I last used it 2 years ago. Now it doesn't. I welcome any other ideas you may have but please do read what I have already done after spending a lot of time with MSFT Support.

Thank you.

Perfect Xbox 360 suddenly won't update: C000-0099 status error