Bought my son a second hand Xbox one – seems to power up OK but it wants to do a software update (gives no other options, other than switch off), which take ages and seems to fail at around 80% complete – the thing just switches itself off, then you switch it back on and it does the same thing again.

I tried it at 5am this morning whne I though our broadband speed might be better – it was, but it still failed the upload, just did it faster!

I’m a bit clueless with these things, so any help greatly appreciated!

Sounds a bit like the 360 I had – was banned from Xbox Live, so couldn’t contact MS websites to do the updates. You may well have been sold a dud.
Get onto the Xbox help forums and see if you can find out how to get an error code.

Is the Xbox linked to your/your sons MS account – if not you’ll need to do that. As a second hand box it may still be linked to the previous owner’s account – maybe need to do some sort of reset, but I would hesitate to suggest that without understanding what else it may lose. I got mine from new and so I can’t remember the exact sequence of updates and linking to accounts etc I’m afraid.

If you have an MS account and an xbox live account you could try phoning the help line – they may be able to help, as every xbox one customer is a customer for lots of lovely expensive games and other content

Xbox 360s were banned when they were chipped I think? Not a problem with Xbox One yet??

Xbox 360s were banned when they were chipped I think?

there were quite a few reasons they were banned – including “cheating”! I’m not saying his One is banned, just you probably need to get the error codes to know what is wrong. The error codes were what told me mine was banned.

Fair enough. I had a run around with error codes and updates on my 360, despite what the codes said it was because the wifi wasn’t fast enough (although fast enough to stream HD through the 360), when I plugged in a cable it was fine.

OP – are you using wifi or have you plugged in an ethernet cable – the updates are huge! I have a feeling that switching off and restarting is part of the these big system updates – it certainly was part of the first mega update when I got my box

Hmm – problem with directing it towards our account or finding error codes is that we can’t get access to any of the menus – it’s either update of switch off.

I did wonder about the broadbank speed – ours is shite, but I can’t get a screen into the same room at the router to try the ethernet cable option (without taking one off the wall… which I might finish up doing!)

… I really would try the cable option – it solved no end of problems with my 360. I got a really long Ethernet cable made up in Maplin to run from the router to the 360 in a different room. I swapped for broadband over powerline after Mrs OD complained about bloody cables everywhere, worked just as well.

Can you save it to a USB stick to update it?

I swapped for broadband over powerline

That’s how I have the 360 connected.

My lads box was falling over last week. It was fixed by deleting the cache from the HD and reloading the profile.

Have you tried to reset the box? While it’s coming on hold the Y button and the right trigger. Hold them for long enough and it should reset to factory settings.