I was playing around with running my game in the two different modes from NXE (normal and trial mode). Sometimes (~10% chance) when I run my game in trial mode, it hangs my Xbox. I have tested this and my game does not even get to render a single frame before this hang occurs. Everything I do in my game up to and including the rendering of the first frame is deterministic and has always worked in the past.

I want to believe that there may be a bug in the trial mode launch in NXE, but how can I be sure? Note that I have run the game from XNA Game Studio Connect without any problems. It is just when I run the game directly in trial mode that I get the hang. Any suggestions?

I have been able to reproduce this issue by running my game in normal mode at least once, and then running my game in trial mode (from NXE) multiple times. The screen is completely black the entire time and no error code appears. My test program clears the screen to cornflower blue immediately but the screen never changes to that color when the launch fails.

I did some more tests. This problem happens in both non-trial mode and trial mode. I updated my code so that in my Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Game in my Update() call, all I do is call this.Exit(); So my program should just exit immediately (after being initialized and content loaded - this code is 100% deterministic and has always worked from the XNA Game Studio Connect launcher). I ran in normal mode, then ran in trial mode, then when I again ran in normal mode, my Xbox hanged. So my program did not receive a single Update() call before the hang.

Can anyone reproduce this so that I know I am not crazy?

Do you have threaded loading? Are you getting past the Initialize and LoadContent methods in the debugger?

This is the exact same problem I have been having, as reported in this thread: http://forums.xna.com/forums/t/21095.aspx

Update: I started a new Xbox 360 project - the default startup project that just clears the screen to CornflowerBlue. I deployed this app to my Xbox and tried to run from the NXE interface. It hung my Xbox the first time I tried to run it. In my mind, this pretty much confirms that this problem is on the NXE launching side.

Note that I have never had this problem when launching from XNA Game Studio Connect. That could just be a coincidence though. In other words, I cannot debug the problem because it only happens when I launch from the NXE interface (without starting XNA Game Studio Connect). I.e., the interface where you click on the game name and it takes you to the following three options: Play Game, Play Trial Game, and Delete Game.

Further update: I rebooted my Xbox 360 and tried to reproduce the issue again with the default CornflowerBlue app. It took me about 20 tries, flipping between Play Game and Play Trial Game before I got my Xbox to hang.

I just wanted to add that games could be peer reviewed and rejected based on the fact that they froze the Xbox system even though it was the launcher's fault. I am not sure if this has happened before, but it is a little worrisome.

Please post a description of this problem on Connect. That way, someone from the XNA team is guaranteed to look over it.

I added a Connect bug report.

Read http://forums.xna.com/forums/t/21180.aspx maybe you have the same problem, sadly for me that was one of the rejection reasons, but I think really was not my fault.

I think we can't use multi-thread for initial loading.

The default CornflowerBlue sample has no multi-threading and I can make my Xbox hang by running it from the NXE interface.

Here is the Connect bug report.

Am I supposed to do anything else or is this good enough? Thanks.

I see the connect issue for this bug is now closed, does this mean a fix is on the way?  If so, any idea when this could be?

The issue is happening depressingly frequently for me, and as such is really putting me off reviewing games.  My xbox just crashed as described 3 times out of 5 attempts.

richayrich:

I see the connect issue for this bug is now closed, does this mean a fix is on the way?

You must have missed the comment from MS:

"Importing this to our internal DB to continue tracking."