Windows 10 build 2004 vs. The China Xbox 360 receiver.

Or should it be "Windows 10 vs. the world?!?" build 2004 edition?

Back in April 2014, we published a little blog about this cheap Chinese receiver and how we managed to get it back online. Now, back then we were completely aware there were videos on YouTube, Forums, and other sources so such an article was nothing new even back then. As end-user, we found ourselves downloading from garbage share sites that only lead to either misleading links or infected files. It was at this time we used our blogging capabilities and power to make an official tutorial along with all software sources in one place. 190k downloads later, Yeah, we call it a success.

Fast forward to May of 2020, suddenly we were getting rained upon by users who were a part of the Microsoft partner program saying that the build 2004 version of Windows 10 disables their China Receiver. Common sense would be to direct those energies towards Microsoft and maybe they would fix the issue.

It appears that's simply not the case. Read on if you wish to listen to my diatribe of corporate hate.

"Note: If you get a black screen but the audio is playing. Or you got a potato PC and it's studdering. We have fallback Links below."

betamax video tape - S-Config.Com

Video tutorial fallback mirrors:

In case you have no-script enabled or for some reason cannot see the title video on this website. We have provided direct links for these videos. For more information about the standards we use on this site click here if you would like to know more.

AV1       - Link
WebM VP9  - Link
OGV       - Link
MP4/.h264 - Link

And so the 2004 build update trashes my China Xbox Receiver drivers!

I originally thought the worst. That Microsoft was basically doing everything it could to kick the Xbox 360 product line. A line that is not old enough to get a learner permit and drive in certain parts of the United States at 15 years of age. Brutally put it into the dirt with the hardest planned obsolescence program that was only seen by Microsoft during the Original Xbox. However, if you start googling "Windows 10 build 2004 unknown device" you suddenly find yourself in the company of other users than just a cheap-ass Chinese knock-off product. Users with wi-fi adapters, and video cards are all getting the same issue.

At this point of realization, it may not be Malice that Microsoft was going for but straight-up incompetence. That instead of including the entire driver tree into their kernel they simply 'skipped' a few libraries.  Especially if you have to choose which driver to use! Or perhaps it's not incompetence. That Microsoft views older hardware as a security threat and must be eliminated. To wipe the playing field as it were of hardware so they don't have to constantly see a report from it similar to how Microsoft made a fake ADB driver for the Ouya console.

Combine this with Microsoft discontinuing support for Windows 7 and it does feel like they're corralling all of their end-users into a miserable situation. Where else would you go for the latest gaming experience? Linux? Mac? I suppose if everyone had a backbone and left for one of those operating systems then yes. The gaming community just doesn't have that kind of fortitude.

The problem.

Windows Build 2004 complete.

As of June 02, 2020, most of my PCs have not gone to build since 2004, most are still sitting at 1908. However, the problem is a lot of people are making the jump by joining the Microsoft partner program and getting the latest build of Windows 10 thinking it will be bigger and better than before. Because of 5, 10, and 40 responses all of the screaming that my tutorial does not work. I went to work by making a garbage account on Microsoft and giving them all of the information of a computer that has nothing in order to get build 2004 installed.

The problem.

Unknown device hell.

It came as a shock to a lot of people who owned the Chinese adapter that their device is now rendered as an unknown device. That even though the Hardware ID still shows present. Their driver is completely blown away.

reinstall the driver.. easy peasy right?

A lot of users simply went through my tutorial again on the Xbox 360 adapter driver installation. By choosing which driver to use for this unknown device.

Did it install?

Windows even gives you the rare fleeting hope that it was installed successfully just like Build 1908.

Failure of Windows build 2004

Then at the very end windows, 10 build 2004 kicks you in the face and not only does not install the driver. but renders the entire device useless by loading nothing. which we suppose is ONE way to get Windows to stop complaining about device issues! Simply render the device useless!

This is bullshit. Because Windows gives the user an option to go out and find the driver yourself. It in fact does not complain if it's a different driver so long as it has its EV cert digital certificate valid. If device selection is now useless is Windows 2004 what the hell is the point Microsoft? This is a flat-out bad OS design.

The fix.

The problem is actually Microsoft's own security. To get our controller back online we need to get rid of that security Microsoft has put in place between us the end-user and the OS. Now, we're no Microsoft experts but it's generally a bad idea to remove security features from your OS. But if it cripples the way you enjoy your computer then what's the point of even having said computer or hardware? The Xbox 360 may be an old joystick but it's still a very capable joystick where if someone whips one into a wall we would be more angry about the plaster hole in the wall than losing a few bucks on a controller.

Windows power shell.

The first thing we are going to do is go into the Windows power shell. Or you can type CMD to get to the command prompt so long as in both cases you are in this command prompt as an administrator. Otherwise, these commands will not work.

type in the following.

bcdedit /set nointegritychecks on

it will respond with:

The operation was completed successfully

bcdedit /set testsigning on

Note: If the test signing command responds with:

an error occured setting element data
The value protected Secure Boot policy cannot by modified or deleted.

Then that means you may have to go into the BIOS of your motherboard and disable such as feature in order for you to proceed any further in disabling test signing so that we can re-install the controller.Disabling Secure Boot within BIOS

The screen above is the ASRock BIOS that is on the test-station motherboard we have. Your BIOS screen may look very different but newer BIOS screens with UEFI functionality will have a "Security" tab and probably underneath that will be the "Secure Boot" flag that you will need to disable. After reboot a warning screen may come up asking the user to input a code to confirm disabling Secure Boot.

If the safe boot is disabled then this command too shall respond with:

The operation completed successfully.

Finally, the last thing you wish to type into the shell is the following:

shutdown /r /o

Reboot into the Windows recovery screen.

To undo the fix.

Simply type in the following:

bcdedit /set nointegritychecks off
bcdedit /set testsigning off

and reboot your windows so that integrity checking and test signing are restored.

Just a note: There is a good possibility that by re-enabling the test signing and integrity checking that your OS will detect the unsigned driver and kick it right back out of your system.

Disable that watermark:

What we've done in the past with XBCD for getting old-school XBOX controllers working also applies here. I'll often just leave my OS in test signing mode. Because fuck it I know what kind of drivers we're loading on our OS. To get rid of that pesky splash screen at the bottom you can simply run the uwd.exe file that we just included into the chinaxbox.7z file as of 06/11/2020. That should remove the splash screen and keep test signing disabled indefinitely.

Now I'm sure I will get some Microsoft fanboy saying that we shouldn't be keeping our OS'es in test signing mode to which I would have to respond with:

What choice to you leave us? You've locked the user out from selecting their own software! -S

Windows recovery.

As this isn't our first blog article talking about removing security in order to get legacy hardware going we'll take the documentation for the XBCD and just place it here.

Windows 10 - Advanced - Choose Options. If you held down the shift key and pressed that restart button correctly you will be presented with a menu of something like what is above. Select Troubleshoot. Windows 10 - Advanced - Choose Advanced Options. Select Advanced options. Windows 10 - Advanced - Choose startup settings. Select Start-Up Settings. Windows 10 - Advanced - Restart the Computer. Finally Select the "Restart" button and the computer will go into boot selection mode. Windows 10 - Advanced - Disable Signature Enforcement. You will not have a mouse in this mode. simply pressing the 7 key will be enough for the OS to reboot once more allowing you to finally be in the mode that we want to install the driver. It should also be noted that manually disabling driver signature enforcement is only good for one reboot versus the script or command-line method which is a more permanent approach towards disabling signature enforcement. If you only choose the manual method of disabling integrity checking then the next time you need to install a driver you will have to go through the manual process again.

Reboot the OS.

Now would be a good time to go grab some software.

Direct download:

This site prides itself on being the one-stop blog for everything you could need in a guide. However, as our usual disclaimer, you should always run a virus checker over any executable you get from a third party site including my own. Do not trust anything unless it comes from the source manufacturer. We will keep things clean as long as the site owner is alive but you may never know! Also, note that to preserve file space and for simplicity's sake, all versions have been compressed into a single solid 7-Zip file. You may use WinRAR or 7-Zip to extract the files in this archive: Download softwareThis archive which is approximately 8Mb in size contains both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the Xbox 360 receiver driver. Click here to download the archive or click on the icon to the right of this paragraph to begin. Links will continue to be provided here in the event the company discontinues support.

Extract files:

7-zip extraction and folders.The first thing you will want to do is get a copy of WinRAR or 7-Zip. Any package that is capable of extracting 7-zip files. In this tutorial, we shall extract it to C:\chinaxbox\. You can extract it anywhere you like just keep a note as to where you extracted these files while reading this tutorial.

Notes about the archive:

In the following example above we will be extracting everything in the C:\chinaxbox\ folder. This archive contains the following files:

  • Xbox360_32Eng - This is the 32-bit version of the Xbox Driver for those working with Windows 7 32-bit, Windows 8 32-bit, and finally Windows 10 32-bit.
  • Xbox360_64Eng - This is the 64-bit version of the Xbox Driver for those working with Windows 7 64-bit, Windows 8 64-bit, and finally Windows 10 64-bit.
  • Xbox360_Mod_XP - This version is made specifically for Windows XP 32/64 bit and Windows 7 32/64. Windows XP Tutorial is listed here.
  • uwd.exe - this executable is copied over from the XBCD article. It's responsible for disabling the watermarks so you can keep your Windows box in test signing mode without showing it.

Let's begin.

The directory we're going to focus on in this for the Windows 10 build 2004 problem is the Xbox360_Mod_XP because Windows XP cannot have drivers forced onto the operating system. The drivers needed the .inf file changed to the exact device number in order for the driver to install. Well, that's exactly what is happening in Windows 10 build 2004! When we try to specify a driver it fails. but if the inf already has the device ID (like the original Microsoft gaming receiver dongle) it succeeds. Unfortunately, since we have changed the information in that INF file. The certification is lost which is why we had to disable test signing.

Browse for drivers in device manager.

Let's dive back into the device manager. Right-click on our unknown device which is our China Xbox receiver and click on update driver. Then, click the box for "Browse my computer for drivers."

let me pick the driver to install.

Although we're in the right folder you may not. so click on "let me pick from a list of available drivers on my computer."

All devices and click next.

Show all devices are fine. Click the Next button to proceed.

Have disk button is important.

We really don't care what it loads because we're going to click on Have Disk...

Windows XP mod folder.

Now, we're NOT going to go into the regular Xbox folder. we're going to go into the Xbox360_Mod_XP folder, then into Windows 7, and finally press the Open button.

Xbox XP Mod full path.

If you extracted the 7-zip folder onto your C: drive the path should look something like this. Diving into the XP-Mod folder with the altered INF file. Click OK to proceed.

Driver Found.

Since the INF file is locked onto the driver, there is no selection here unlike the original Xbox 360 China receiver tutorial. so click next to continue.

Windows Securiy Warning.

If you get a Windows security warning like this one. Then this is actually a very good sign. It means that since signature enforcement is disabled and test signing is on this window is the final precaution to keep you the end-user from installing a driver that could cripple your OS. Since we know what we're doing... Kinda... Click Install this driver software anyway.

Manual XP MOD installation successful.

If everything goes according to plan you should have a non-digitally signed Xbox receiver driver installed into Windows 10 build 2004 and can now resume your gaming experience.

tampered device.

If you get an error "The has for the file is not present in the specified catalog file. The files are likely to corrupt or victim of tampering"

That's true! WE tampered with the INF file to make sure the vendor and product ID point to the Chinese receiver! But this error is due to test signing not being turned on and further diagnostics must be done to your Windows 10 build 2004 SO to determine why you cannot enable test signing and disable integrity checking. This could be due to your PC being stuck in a Secure Boot policy. Or an advanced firewall and/or sandbox software preventing direct access to the OS in this manner.

Final thoughts.

Xbox redirected.

As time marches onward. Microsoft tries to replace webpage after webpage with Xbox One promotion items to entice legacy owners to give up and buy a controller. That your 15-year-old controller that you've used to beat countless games is somehow useless in 2020 and that you MUST buy something new or get destroyed in a random Windows update. While we find this attitude to be annoying as hell. It's still not going to let us give up on the 10+ Xbox controllers that we have in a case within our house.

They are still valid to play upon and they make excellent party controllers. Given the cost of an Xbox 360 controller where you can find them at a thrift store for a few bucks. You don't even feel bad if it gets dropped or crushed unlike the 60+ dollar controllers above. Because of the 2.4 GHz system, the latency for us was almost non-existent which helped during our days playing with Android set-top boxes which it still does with the Nvidia Shield.

Microsoft like many of the megacorps loves to spout out this idealistic image that they are a green energy company while in the same breath throwing generations of plastic right into the landfill. plastic which if given to the right gamers will still enjoy despite the fact that these things are going on 15+ years old.

Anyhow, we hope that you found this updated article about Windows 10 builds 2004 useful.

11/03/2020 - P.S. If you leave a comment about Forza Horizon or Forza Motorsport. You're talking to the wrong person. Instead, you need to jump on their forums and tell them to support general DirectX inputs instead of being a bunch of elitist fucks that validate official Microsoft hardware as the only means of input support for their game. They should fix their game as they're the ones making millions off of it. Not us. Any future comments about Forza will get straight-up deleted. We don't even own the game and given how pushy users of that community are we don't even WANT the game! We're done.

Until next time.

May server protect you.

+++END OF LINE.

215 thoughts on “Windows 10 build 2004 vs. The China Xbox 360 receiver.

  1. HI can u help me i only I have tried everything before and every time is wrong

    This device cannot be started. (Code 10)
    The request is not supported.
    pls help me

    Reply
    • Code 10 errors are generally thrown as a result of SecureBoot or a virus checker preventing the driver from being completely installed as it feels unsigned drivers are a threat to the operating system.

      Check to make sure your secureboot is disabled. any virus checker action is stopped.. and completely uninstall the driver and reboot until you get the unknown device again in device manager and try again.

      - S

      Reply
  2. Hi I have a problem with my drivers, I installed them but they don't work. My receiver lights up but it doesn't detect my controller. The weird thing is that a few days ago it was working perfectly, but yesterday the controller was not connecting so I reinstalled the drivers and since then it stopped working. The device works on other computers so the problem is on my pc. What could it be?

    Reply
  3. Thanks for the info, but I felt like enabling testing mode is a bad solution as it's more insecure and hiding the watermark feels kinda janky. Alternatively what you can do is to sign the certificate yourself. There's plenty info on how to do that in google. It requires just a little bit more work, but it's worth it because you don't need to enable testing mode and can simply install your self-signed certificate and driver on all machines where you're using the reciever.

    Reply
    • Thank you for the reply. However, we did check into doing a signing of the drivers ourselves and after considerable reading the only way Windows 10 accepts a self-signed certificate on a public level is if you purchase a EV-SSL certificate, bind it to a website like this one and have Microsoft reference the certificate a valid from there.

      Big problem with that.

      EV-Certs are expensive. looking at about a grand to do something like that which over a game controller i'm not really willing to do.

      But hey! We would love to be proven wrong on this. Send over your link for self signing without disabling any of windows security features and i'll certainly take a look at it!

      - S

      Reply
      • I get your point, but the fact is you don't need to purchase a certificate for it to go public, you just need to create your own certificate and install it locally on the machines where you need to use the driver. Basically, the steps are:
        1. Create self-signed certificate.
        2. Sign the driver with it.
        3. Import created certificate in the Trusted Publishers and Trusted Root Certification Authorities stores of the local machine.
        4. Install the driver.

        I used this guide with my own knowledge of windows os, as it's a bit outdated:
        http://woshub.com/how-to-sign-an-unsigned-driver-for-windows-7-x64/

        Also, here's my driver and self-signed certificate:
        https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hl6YfxsN1jhIYZj_yMlhSeP41Znodfti/view?usp=sharing
        Password for the certificate - "ThisSucks" (inspired by buying the reciever and finding out that it won't just work)
        I advise you though that you make your own, as there's a slim chance that installing self-signed certificates by people from the internet may be a bad idea.

        Reply
        • Hello,

          That makes a lot of sense. Instead of lowering the security standards of the OS globally that you just self-sign and then use certmgr to add an exception into your OS while keeping the existing security in place for other drivers. Thank you for sharing that. I'll have to write up something about that as a cleaner alternative to what i've been doing not only for xbox 360 controllers but also the classic xbox controllers with XBCD.

          Thank you very much for that info!

          - S

          Reply
  4. Hello my friend. Congrats for the tutorial. Your job it's amazing dude!

    My windows doed not recognize the receiver. When I look to "Device Manager", the "unknown device" not appear in "other devices".
    I follow all your steps and when I restar my PC and insert the receiver on USB, nothing happens.

    Can you help me with this? I'm really looking for a answer but I can't find in anywhere!

    Reply
    • Hello, and thank you for checking out this blog.

      If you can audible hear the USB device connect in windows then the next place i would check would be to see if there's an unknown device in the Universal Serial Bus controllers catagory of device manager. every once and a while you get a microcontroller from china that isn't even programmed properly and as a result just shows up as a generic USB device. You will see it easier if you keep that tab open as you unplug and replug the adapter. If this is the case, contact your seller for a refund.

      - S

      Reply
      • I can't hear audible USB device connect. When I plug the USB, nothing happens. No audio, no device unknown. I will contact a seller for a refound.

        Thanks my friend!

        Reply
  5. I did everything as written, but when I try to install the driver, I get a Code 10 error. I did a bit of research and it seems that other people have gotten that switching from USB 3 to USB 2 or viseversa tends to help. But my laptop only has USB 3 ports and USB dongles don't seem to help. Any ideas?

    Reply
    • I actually had this issue on an older IBM laptop. Turns out depending on the USB bus configuration it simply will not give the adapter any power what so ever. Thus, you error 10 out. This also explains why people switching from USB 3.x to USB 2.x works. by changing bus that provides power to the adapter more widely. it works.

      For your laptop a work-around could be getting a travel USB hub that has its own power injector port. That way the only thing your laptop has to worry about is data. Or, if it has USB-C ports you can downconvert off of that with a cheaper adapter then a Bulky USB hub.

      Hope it works for you.

      - S

      Reply
  6. Tried following the steps, but on the "Have Disk…" step when you choose the file path, after choosing that folder I get and error:

    The folder you specified doesn't contain a compatible software driver for your device. If the folder contains a driver, make sure it is designed to work with Windows for x64-based systems.

    Reply
    • It sounds like you traversed down one of the wrong paths within my archive that goes off to the 32 bit version instead of the 64 bit version.

      What's the path within the archive that you are going to? is it the same as the tutorial?

      Reply

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