i got a 360 xbox from a friend without a hard drive can i still reset it to factory default

Without a hard drive there is no data to reformat or reset. You can reset the network settings though. How to reset or reformat your Xbox 360 to factory default settings | Xbox Support

Does it have no hard drive at all or does it have internal storage?

There is one of two ways of doing this.

1. You can send it to Xbox and they can reset it for you. Or...

2. You can factory reset it.

I would recommend that you place all files from your Xbox 360 to a removable hard-drive and then factory restore it (AFTER YOU REMOVE THE HARD-DRIVE). For more information on Restoring your Xbox to factory defaults please reply for that information.

Thanks,

TMG GrantDufuq

I'm Samy an independent advisor. Welcome to the Xbox community. How are you?

Do you use a hard drive with the console? If yes, have you tried to install the update without the hard drive connected? Or tried to reset the console to factory defaults?

The cause of this problem could be a bad system update or a number of other causes:

If this keeps happening I would suggest you do the reset keeping games and apps (requires account redownload).

If that doesn't stop this from happening please do the reset erasing everything.

And if you still have the problem I would suggest the USB factory reset:
https://support.xbox.com/xbox-one/console/reset-factory-defaults-using-usb-flash-drive

If it still goes to the troubleshooting screen after all of that you will need a repair as the hard drive may be corrupted or you have a hardware problem.

Hello Japester,

Sorry for the issue with game updates. You can try a
soft factory reset If this is multiple games though we recommend a full factory reset where you wipe everything off the console. When doing this make sure to unplug the external hard drive from the console. When the reset is done install one game that been
having issues to the internal hard drive see if still has the issue.

Thanks,

Brad