Xbox Live error 80150003:0

[Artheas]

I get this error when trying to recover my gamertag.
Has anyone else had this problem before?

Oddly, it coincides with my subscription expiring today.

I've tried clearing cache, formatting the HDD, and neither helps.

Phoned them earlier, and it had to be "escalated". Should be receiving a call back from them within 24 hrs.

Plenty of others seemed to have had this problem before, but i can't find a solution

 

[zmanu]

Oddly, it coincides with my subscription expiring today.

The exact same thing happened to me! And only a few days earlier, on the 21st (at least, that's when I noticed the breakage, when I wanted to download Limbo). My gold membership expired around that time. While I was in Gold, everything was fine, and the web interface told me I'd reverted to silver when I checked. Oddly, the web interface is still fully functional for me.

Unfortunately, XBox Live Support couldn't help me so far. Twice already, it has been escalated to overseas (I live in Germany, probably the database guys in the US were asked to do some tweaking) and came back as 'fixed', unfortunately, it wasn't. And each time, it took them about 4 weeks. How was your luck?

Maybe we can find other similarities in our cases. I never did anything really wrong with my box; the 'worst' thing is that I got my Gold subscription and MS points cheap on eBay, where I assume they are just bought in other countries, but AFAIK, the codes are not region aware. Also, I had a XNA Creators Club Trial membership for about the same time I had Gold, it expired about a month earlier. I used that to try running some code on the XBox. And I downloaded a lot of demos and trials. That's about it. Oh, and the gamertag is not only broken on XBox Live, but can't be used to sign into the abomination known as Games for Windows Live.

 

[sja360]

i know MS live subs are regioned locked and i think points are too. however it surely would have denied use of them??

 

[zmanu]

If they are supposed to be region locked, they should check that when the code is entered and deny its use. Not, you know, break things obscurely when the subscription runs out, causing support costs What is region locked are the Live accounts themselves, that's for sure; they're only fully usable while your XBox is in the region you registered in and you can only buy points using a credit card from the same region. There are quite some horror stories around from people who just moved. Or let the Live ID part of their gamertag expire. But that's not the case here, not with me at least.

By the way, is there some way to get Artheas' attention here? Casual evidence suggests he just created a new gamertag. The one in his signature hasn't been used before the incident he reported, and there's a plain "Artheas" gamertag that hasn't been used after the incident. Which would be a bummer.

 

[Artheas]

Hello

My gold subscription (the one that expired on the same day as the error) was the 1 month for £1. I signed up for it, and immediately cancelled the auto-renewal by phoning up. I have no other info regarding the subscription that might be useful.

About the 'help' from MS support:
1st time i phoned, got escalated, they rang back after a few days.
2nd call, pretty much the same again.
3rd call, they said they fixed it, but it was the same as before. Said they'd call back. They never did, or i missed the call.
4th call, was when i called them a few weeks later. They said the case was going to be closed in a few days time, and they'd call me back then.
5th call, they called back as they said they would. Said it was fixed. I told them i had a new tag that i was happy with, and wasnt going to risk anything happening to it by trying to recover the old tag.

There is one way to check if it your tag still has that problem, which is to log into xbox.com, and try to upgrade your sub. You'll get some mention of a server error.
..
I just checked it.. and it works fine! So it's looking good for you.
The main thing i told the support guys was that it happening just as my gold sub expired.

Gl

 

[zmanu]

There is one way to check if it your tag still has that problem, which is to log into xbox.com, and try to upgrade your sub. You'll get some mention of a server error.

Yes, that's also precisely what I noticed today. Well, yesterday, but then I thought it was a real server outage and didn't think much of it, but today I checked with the alternative silver accounts, where the error does not happen. But it's there with my main tag. So yeah, no luck, mine is still broken.

But! Maybe you can really help me there. If you tell me your country and the support request ticket ID you got, I can call them and tell them to do exactly what they did for your tag to mine, too. zmanu is my gamertag, I can still read messages sent to it. Or send them to [email protected], without the _spambegone, of course. You're my last hope, etc.

Well, to be honest, I don't care much about the gamertag itself. They already offered to transfer the purchased games and point balance to another account, I'll just may have to take that offer. There are still savegames attached to the old gamertag, of course; I can get to them offline. So no biggie if this doesn't work out in the end. But it's a puzzle, and I don't like to abandon those just because there is a way around them

 

[Artheas]

How are you able to access your save files when offline?
When i got the error, i was told to recover my gamertag (which overwrites what you have). I ended up with a corrupted half-recovered tag, and at that point, i had no way to access my saves etc.

I can just tell you the info here.
Country - UK
Ref - 1135898741

(btw, did you sign up just to talk about this problem? )

 

[zmanu]

Thanks!

How are you able to access your save files when offline?

I moved the tag to a memory unit and unplugged that before I tried the recovery. It's not in a perfect state, it tries to log in to Live whenever I try to use it and that fails fatally; I have to unplug the network cable, then the failure is ignored.

(btw, did you sign up just to talk about this problem? )

Yeah I had to, it sounded just too similar to my problem, and mysteries need to be resolved whenever possible. It's unlikely I'll stick around, but I'll remember here as a friendly place. And of course, I'll post how it goes.

 

[zmanu]

I passed MS support the URL to this thread (along with the info), so... Hi Microsoft Support! Let's see how things go.

The friendly support guy I was talking to last said they can't transfer my MS points to another gamertag before they're not absolutely sure they can't revive my main one. Bummer. I guess that means I have to buy that Lara Croft arcade game and Super Meat Boy on the other platforms </subtle hint>.

 

[zmanu]

That was quick this time. They declared the gamertag for corrupt and unrecoverable today and sent me codes for slightly more MS points than I previously had, plus one year of Gold. I'm certainly not complaining about that.

Now, on to hacking the backed up gamertag or its save games so I can use them without unplugging the network.