I tried the all powerful google.com but have yet to find a solution for the problem I am having. I decided to post here to see if anyone has had this problem before, or has even heard of it; in hopes that someone can tell me how to fix it.

Well I have not been on xbox live for a while and I went to sign on today(needed to download content to access my profile for forza2 *nissan car pack*). When I turn on the system it loaded my profile but did not connect to xbox live. When I went to 'connect to xbox live' it signed me out and I signed on again. After signing into xobx(and dling some patches) it lets me onto xbox and tells me that I have friends online but no dashboard comes up. The little loading icon of the 360 surrounded by circles just sits there spinning. It has not froze because I can still play games(not on xbox live though) and I can still move around the tabs. The only ones I can actually use though are Media and System, the rest just have the loading Icon. eventually after loading for so long I will be removed form xbox live.

Sorry that is so jumbled up there. Trying to post this before I have to go to work and I am tryign to give as much info about it as possible. I have never had any problems with xbox live before.

Basically- Tells me I have friends so it is connecting in some way...but does not let me browse, use, or see any online content. So it is partially connected, but will not fully connect.

your xbox gold might have expired and you got bumped down to silver. all u can do with silver is still chat to friends and everything else but play games online.

Im gonna go with your bumped down to silver since your gold probally expired

Being silver he would still be able to see all the menus. Sounds like something just got messed up while patching. I'd go into system and restore everything back to default and see if that helps if not you may have to wipe your HDD clean and start from scratch. You should be able to back up your saves onto a flash drive or memory card.

Well it is fixed now...Seems that doing nothing was the remedy to my problem. Now I can see everything and what not but now I only have a silver membership. :(

Live has been having some problems lately, probably due to the content update. Seems to be getting better now though.