System Link fails

Question

I recently bought a brand new Xbox 360 slim and have transferred all of my data to it. It also has an xbox live account that gets played quite frenquently. My old Xbox is still operable and in fact gets used by my brothers.

We both have copies of Call of Duty World at War and would like to system link to play zombies with 4 people. However when we system link via direct ethernet connection or via router connection, the the joining xbox never sees the games being hosted by the host Xbox.

• I have tried changing which xbox is the host.
• I have swapped out ethernet cables to see if any are bad.
• I have tried several different routers to see if that changes the connection.

The weird part is whenever we system link with Halo Reach we have no problems connecting and playing together. The only thing I can think of is that the newer xbox has been updated via xbox live and is not compatible with the version of WAW or the old xbox.

Does anyone know why this is happening or how to fix it?

Answer 1

Chances are good this has to do with the version of CoD: WAW you're both running - since you can link up to play Halo: Reach, it's not an issue with hardware or networking. This is especially likely if you connect regularly to XBox Live on the newer XBox 360, but the older XBox 360 has not connected in a while.

Your options at this point are to clear all the software updates off both Xboxes (not recommended - you have to clear everything), or to get the older XBox to update to the newest version.

The second option is likely less inconvenient. If you go with it, you can either connect that older XBox to XBox Live using a different Gamertag (either Gold or Silver should work), or go through the following steps (using a single Gamertag):

1. Plug the older XBox into a network
2. Recover your Gamertag (make sure you've connected to XBox Live with that Gamertag recently, as you'll lose all offline achievements that haven't been submitted yet).
3. Start up Call of Duty: World at War
4. Update to the newest version when prompted
5. At this point, the two XBoxes should be able to link up
6. Recover your Gamertag on your newer XBox, so that you can continue to use it as normal

Given the time investment it's probably easier to use a Silver Gamertag - it's free, and signing up from scratch (assuming you don't have one already) is probably less time-consuming that two Gamertag Recoveries.