Xbox One number 3

Secondhand fluff anyone?

So Xbox One number 3 finally arrived today. It was scheduled to arrive a couple of days ago but in the current climate I am not complaining at a slight delay. I've bought a few second hand consoles in my time and have learnt that the best thing to do is open them up and clean them out as soon as you receive them. Invariably consoles are full of dust that can inhibit cooling and cause issues with the optical drive. A quick inspection behind the side panel on this machine revealed that it was no exception. 

When removing the side panel I noticed it came off with almost no effort. Then I heard the distinctive rattle of small pieces of plastic inside the machine that suggested someone else had already been inside it. Almost every console I have bought from eBay has shown signs of being opened up previously. Whilst the warranty sticker on this device appeared to be in place, it had obviously been removed at some stage.

Undaunted I got to work with the torx drivers and removed the shell to see what I was up against. Happily there were no obvious signs of fault repair and the unit looked pretty good. The rattling noise was coming from a few small pieces of black plastic that were floating around in the case. Two of these pieces were clearly the legs holing one side of the internal speaker in place and another from the easily removed side panel. I wondered if someone had previously opened up the unit, failed to remove the side panel or speaker properly and abandoned their efforts before they caused even more damage.

Dirty One

The next step was to remove the shell and rinse it with soap and water. I then set about removing the terrible sticker that read "Supreme" on top of the case. When I saw the listing for this machine I was suspicious this sticker was hiding a horrendous scratch or even worse, a crack. However as I set to work with my wife's hair dryer and peeled back the sticker, I realised there were no defects and this was simply a previous owners idea of a cool decoration. Who sticks stickers to their Xbox? Why? And why something as lame as this?

Inside the Xbox I vacuumed around and cleaned down the motherboard with isopropyl alcohol. I then detached the fan and gave it a good scrub before checking the optical drive for dust before beginning to put everything back together. 

When it comes to reassembling an Xbox One I have a nemesis: the antenna. For some reason I find it really difficult to attach the antenna back to the Wifi/Bluetooth board on top of the inner case. I just can't do it. I can attach the ultra fiddly ribbon cable for the soft touch buttons on the front panel with relative ease, but the round fastenings for the antenna always spell my doom. Having huffed and cursed for a few minutes I finally go the whole machine back together and set it running. 

The restored Xbox One

Invariably, this is the point that I run into issues and so it proved on this occasion. I pressed the power button and nothing happened. I had tested the console before stripping it down so I knew it should be working. Clearly I had done something wrong. After a great deal of tinkering with the ribbon cable and re-fitting of the front panel I gave up. 

I decided to say that the broken power button was actually a safety feature designed to prevent the accidental power switching most Xbox One owners will be familiar with.

Having turned the unit on through repeated presses of the eject button. I set it off downloading updates and all of the usual stuff you have to do when setting up a new console. After about an hour or so I accidentally pressed the front panel and, yes, you guessed it, the unit powered off. My theory is that there was some moisture remaining on the button or ribbon controller after the cleaning and once it dried out the problem went away.

When it comes to reassembly of your Xbox One I can recommend this guide as a useful starting point. For teardown you might want to look at this video.