So basically, for a few days now I've been trying to join up parties or games with ANYONE, let alone friends, and I was unable to do so, it boots up fine - the Xbox live says that I sign into it. I can receive and send messages - just can't join parties/chats/games, my NAT settings are stated as open, I have gold membership like it says on both the Xbox and the official xbox website in bold letters "Gold Member" next to my disappointing points balance.

I missed out on the useless tech support as they've closed at 5 and have been trawling the internet alot - tried all the port forwarding just encase, didn't yield much result, cleared my memory cache, uninstalled my recently installed game (AC:R) seeing as that's when the problems started to roughly arise, but so far no results - nothing.

I can send messages, my NAT is open, on black ops it pretends to look for games for a few minutes then puts me in an empty lobby notifying me that it's finding three other people for me, when there are over 70k online.

Really annoying situation, happened to me before but not to this extent.

PS. I've also restarted the router, tried alternatives methods of connection etc - I currently use the plug socket ethernet connection thing - so it's practically the same as an ehternet connection, as I don't have a wireless router, I've also tried the bridge connection metod on my laptop, had the same results - came online, was able to send messages but can't join parties or play with ANYONE.

Damn dude, you tried it all. I sitting here reading and thinking to myself all of the things that I know of and you keep writing how you tried that. I hope you find a solution and if so, update here so we can see.

That happened to me for a day and nothing I did would work but after a couple of days it started working again so I'm not sure what to tell you other then you may have to just live it out :/

But if you do figure it out be sure to let us know.

I've spend about 2 hours with the online tech support from Xbox yesterday what we've tried;

Powerrecycling (switching everything off for few minutes)
Deleting my profile and recovering it
Clearing memory cache
Opening Ports to make sure that the NAT is open
Clearing the network settings back to factory settings
Switching xbox off separately for few minutes
Switching the router off separately for few minutes
Registering a new account with the month trial (I did it personally to see whether it was restricted to my account or Xbox in general) - It was the xbox, because the new account struggled too.
Trying various other games - BF3/COD/AC:R
Cleaning my hard drive of any faulty items (The ones with the exclamation mark)
Troubleshooting my connection about 5 times to make sure I am connected to live.

And that's what I just recall off the top of my head. Fucking ridiculous.

What's worse is people on the official Xbox forums are being assholes and ignoring my problem - even the staff themselves, I think it's because they're clueless as to what to do there anymore, as I listed practically every method of troubleshooting I've attempted.

Sorry that happened to you. I called Xbox tech support on a Saturday night because I couldn't do a license transfer back in January or February and they were super nice to me. In fact, there was an unexpected benefit that I won't mention for fear that they will see the mistake they made.

Anyway, the only thing I can think of is that your internet speed may be too slow. Contact your internet service provider and see if they slowed something down. If you have a way of testing your internet speed (someone posted a site that does this a while back) give it a shot. Hope it's something that simple.

Has your internet been unstable or particularly slow lately? because that has only ever happened to me when my internet has been playing up.

Alright as it turns out my internet had a small breakdown in service earlier last week - as a result something has gone haywire in my connection in particular - all the port forwarding that I've done before was PRESENT in the box menus but I had to delete all of them and reenter them manually again.

What's weird is in the Black Ops lobbies I was notified that my NAT was OPEN and same in the AC:R when it was most certainly not, only after deleting the old port forwards and reentering them anew was I able to open my NAT officially.

So end result : even if the NAT appears to be OPEN, delete all the previous port forwards and reforward them.. twice.

Pissed me off to no end after all the troubleshooting I had to do yesterday, it's like finding out that you were meant to take a train after a cavity search at an airport.

What the actual f**k, I am now being notified in game lobbies that my nat is strict when it's open!

yeah...that needs to be improved......

But is it working?