XBox live ID transfer fail

I wanted to watch an avi file on my XBox 360 this evening, as I do every now and again. The TV in the living room has no PC connected, and the XBox is the easiest way of playing video as it’s always hooked up. You’d think. XBox’s are supposed to play media.

Currently, my housemate’s XBox is in the custody of Microsoft after suffering the Red Ring Of Death, and as he plays more than I/has the 120gb HDD to my 20, we’ve had his HDD plugged into my XBox. Fail #1 of the story, I guess; if Microsoft could invent a console that didn’t habitually fail to work, there would have been less faffing in the first place.

As part of my watching such files each week, I get the joy of the XBox failing to decode them. I have no idea why, but each week the XBox delightfully informs me that it needs a media update to play the files. This, of course, despite me having installed it the previous week. This also involves logging into XBox live. Fail #2.

Unfortunately, said housemate transferred his gamertag to another XBox over the weekend. Grr. Ok, so fine, I’ll transfer mine over. So after (twice, I had to take 2 stabs to remember the info) typing in all my email and password details (fail #3 – god it’s painful typing on the onscreen keyboard. I don’t know the solution, but it can’t be this), I get told that new Live accounts can’t be created. Which is annoying for the following reasons.

• The obvious; the service is down
• It spits you back to the main menu, which if you want to try again means you have to type everything in again on the awful on-screen keyboard (see above)
• I’m not even trying to create an account

But ok, fair enough, I’ll just plug in the other HDD. Except no. Fail #who knows, I’ve lost count. My gamertag, though not added to the new HDD, is now ported away from the old one. It’s in limbo. And of course, I can’t pull it back to the old HDD, ’cause the service is down (I know, I tried).

ARG!

I’m not loving Microsoft tonight.