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HOWTO: Make Avalaunch your dashboard without flashing your BIOS!
or: "Help, how do I switch from EvolutionX to Avalaunch and still keep EvoX??"

Some of you like to know why you are doing things... others want to just do it, and don't care about what makes it work. Because of those differences, I have made 2 sections to this explanation, a quick way and a detailed way. Both will get you there, and contain the same instructions, the first just does not tell you WHY you are doing anything.

[ The QUICK way ]

--be very careful! If you are using a much older BIOS, and you incorrectly rename your avalaunch.xbe, your xbox will not boot. If you have any doubts, open your BIOS with XBTool and check the boot order, so you know what to name it. You have been warned. If you have any doubts, flash your BIOS to 4981 before doing this, and it WILL work fine--

1. extract avalaunchXXXX.rar to your PC
2. edit the avalaunch.xml that you extracted to suit your settings
3. rename default.xbe to avalaunch.xbe
4. upload the contents of your avalaunch directory to c: on your xbox
5. reboot your XBOX, it should come up with Avalaunch now

(optional steps to keep evox as well)
6. on your PC, edit avalaunch.xml again, and go down to the quickstart settings
7. edit your righttrigger settings to look like this:

<righttrigger enabled="1">
<path>
c:
</path>
<filename>
evox.xbe
</filename>
</righttrigger>


8. ftp your newly updated avalaunch.xml back over to your XBOX
9. reboot and hold down the right trigger. This is a little bit tricky because avalaunch is very finnicky about WHEN you hold down that trigger. Try it a few times, and you will get the hang of it. Then, anytime you need/want to boot into EvolutionX, just use the right trigger at boot, and you are all set!


[ The DETAILED way ]

Firstly, it is strongly suggested that you have the latest BIOS already. I know I said in the title that you don't have to flash your bios, and this is true, however you are going to experience better results if you use the latest bios. But, like I said, it is just suggested, and not a requirement. These instructions do assume that you are using an Xecuter2 BIOS, though.

As of the time of this writing, the latest BIOS is Xecuter2 v4981 (Multi). Get this from the "usual places". Do not ask us.

The Xecuter bios checks 5 files to determine what dashboard to launch, in this order:

(I) avalaunch.xbe
(II) evoxdash.xbe
(III) mxmdash.xbe
(IV) unleashx.xbe
(V) xboxdash.xbe

The simplest way to replace evox with avalaunch is to simply move everything from Avalaunch into your C: drive. It is ok for you to mix these in with you EvolutionX files, as they use different file structures and will not interfere with eachother. You will need to (of course) rename avalaunch's default.xbe to avalaunch.xbe. Then, you should rename your evoXdash.xbe to evox.xbe. Now assuming that you ARE in fact running the Xecuter BIOS like I told you, you can reboot and it will come up with Avalaunch as your dashboard. Pretty easy, right?

Now you probably want to know how you can continue to use EvoX on demand. That is VERY easy, thanks to the ingenius QUICKSTART settings in Avalaunch. Just go back to your PC and edit your avalaunch.xml file, and scroll down to the quickstart settings. Edit your righttrigger setting so that it looks like this (matching what you changed your evoXdash.xbe to above):

<righttrigger enabled="1">
<path>
c:
</path>
<filename>
evox.xbe
</filename>
</righttrigger>


Then FTP this avalaunch.xml back over to your C: drive on your XBOX and reboot. Play with holding down the right trigger as it boots, pulling and holding it at different times until you find the "sweet spot" that catches the quickstart, and boots your evolutionX dash. It will take you a few times to get used to it, but I can assure you that it does in fact work.