How to ask technical questions the correct way.

To help save time and unecessary nonsense of others having to figure
out your problem, which eventually leads to you being flamed, here's
a guide to formulating your question on softmodding or troubleshooting
your xbox. This is primarily meant for posters on the #softmods IRC
channel on efnet, but could be useful for this forum too.

1. Don't ask to ask. Just ask. ie Don't come into the channel telling
us you need help (eg. "Help!", "Can someone help?"). We know you
do, just ask the damn question.

2. Don't ask if anyone is around. If there are ppl online who are
interested in helping, they will reply. Otherwise, be patient.

3. Don't give a problem description that's overly general or makes
sense only to yourself (eg. "My xbox won't boo't.", "The screen is
frozen"). Remember, we don't know you. We don't have a visual
clue of what your problem looks like. In short, whatever help we
can render all depends on how well you can describe the problem.
If you can't, don't blame anyone but yourself if the solution given
doesn't work or makes things worse.

4. Do give details. Things like error codes or messages are important.
Describe your xbox hardware as best as you can (your xbox version,
any upgraded hdd etc), your network setup (IP addresses,
whether or not your xbox is connected via a router etc),
software (the exploit/softmod you are using, dashboard etc).

5. Give an account of events that led up to the problem. for eg.
"xbox was working fine, until I ftp'ed the new version of evox, and
when I rebooted, I got a blank screen."

6. Search this forum before asking, especially if your question is
very generic in nature, eg "which is the best softmod package?"
"where do I start?" etc.