Yet more Xbox One power shut down problems - advice please?

Al-the-Al · Apr 7, 2022

I have a 1TB Xbox One from late 2015 era. Over the last year, I have being having power problems like so many others. Generally speaking, it will have "bad mood" days/weeks, but then sometimes work for very long periods without fault. It seems to be in a permanent bad mood now!

I've read dozens of threads on this over time, most of which come to nothing in terms of a permanent fix (except the visibly obvious bad capacitor ones). For me, most of the time, unplugging from the Xbox and the brick and the wall, followed by plugging back in in reverse order works (yellow light when brick only powered; white when Xbox attached for a few seconds, then yellow again). Sometimes the "half-in" shorting method on the brick seems to bring it back to life if it's otherwise having a "no lights" day.

I have taken the brick apart, cleaned it forensically including taking the fan fully apart. I have not removed any solder however. All of the capacitors (the troublesome 3 and every other visible one) appear to be normal looking with no sign of concave "popping out".

I have sprayed an air can into the actual Xbox vents too to ensure it's as clean as can be without dismantling. Nothing gets stupid hot, smells funny or makes horrible noises.

I can boot the Xbox sometimes and leave it doing nothing for hours .. load a game and a few minutes later it just turns off. I can also switch it on stone cold and load a game and again it will turn off (ie. without enough time to build any real heat).

Looking at other answers, I appear to have 3 main options:

1) Get a "new" OEM power brick on Amazon/eBay and cross my fingers it's the problem and that the one I'm getting isn't an identical problem.

2) Order new capacitors and replace the 3 normally faulty ones even though they look ok.

3) Partial or full reset of the Xbox itself (son is very against this in terms of losing save games/having to re-download hours/days worth of content!).

I've seen that 3rd one offered up a few times, usually by MS support, but it doesn't appear to make much sense with the symptoms. It's "free", but quite a bit of hassle.

I'm not much of an electrician, but I do have a multimeter at least. Is there some test that an idiot can do to confirm all of the capacitors are functioning as they should?

I doubt anything I've said here sounds unique, but on the off change, please let me know if this sounds like something you've fixed already! I am determined for this not to land up in landfill just because of a power supply issue ..

:)

Al-the-Al

Thanks both. Xbox is plugged directly into wall socket. It was originally surge protected for most of its life until this started happening and I saw it could cause problems in some cases, so I immediately stopped and tried several different actual wall sockets directly (and have done ever since).

Is there any possibility to buy a "new" OEM supply anymore from MS or any of their resellers? The ones on eBay, Amazon, etc. are all second hand, which carries the risk that someone has tampered with them or that they have the same problem (and checking requires actual game time to demonstrate .. even that's not always a good indicator as we can see with mine when it's in a good mood!).

Al-the-Al

Update on the above. I did a reset to see if it made a difference. Thankfully the power didn't give out while it was rebuilding. Signed back in and downloaded a few hundred GB of game data and small system updates. Must have been on for 3-4 hours without a problem.

Started up Elden Ring and it got 3/4 of the way through the loading screen before the power just went out. Brick black and won't turn back on. Reset at wall and it came back as normal. It seems to do this all the time now. Neither power brick nor system were particularly hot (just normally warm). Perhaps this is reflective of the system engaging additional power for the GPU in loading a game as opposed to downloading 0.5TB of data "quietly"!

Does this make sense from an electronics perspective if there are dodgy capacitors in the PS brick or does anyone still think this could be an Xbox problem rather than a brick problem?

Ricardo Lechuga

Hi Al-the-Al! My name is Ricardo an independent advisor ready to help you with this situation!

The best recommendations we can give you it's to take it to a specialist so he can check anything that needs to be checked and confirm the issue

Factory reset can help on some cases when the issue it's due to files(yes files can cause shut down) also it will reinstall all software and as a regular PC if the issue comes due to some hardware malfunction sometimes can help reinstalling it

For what you mentioned seems more a power issue and thats why the best thing to do it's having a professional to look it

Ricardo Lechuga

When you run games there's a bigger power request for the hardware, so it seems to be really a power issue

Here you won't get steps on how to repair or check the internal hardware as could result in bigger problems

Xbox doesn't have a log that you can access to get error reports

You could try to get the power brick replacement, but there's the possibility that it's not related and you will need to pay the repair for the console anyway

Al-the-Al

Hey Ricardo, thanks for the reply. I don't think the maths adds up well for taking it in to a repair shop sadly. £30 gamble on a MS OEM PS on Amazon is probably a better option for not too much money there.

In terms of checking the capacitors, it'd be great if anyone has any guidance there of course. Actually removing and re-soldering in new ones doesn't phase me at all.

I'm still surprised re the OS and factory reset. Do you mean only a *full* factory reset, or just the OS reset while keeping user data? Usually something shows a crash or locks up rather than cutting power - that's not really something I've seen on any operating system before. Is there a way of getting at the logs on the Xbox to see if something's unhappy? (yes I hate closed ecosystems!! ;o) )

Yet more Xbox One power shut down problems - advice please?