- Freezes in the middle of games
- Freezes in the middle of Blu-Ray movies
- Controller stops responding
- Xbox Media Remote stops responding
- Even the main menu freezes
I resolve computer problems for a living, and one way to fix ANY software problem is to format the hard drive and reinstall. That's not usually the best method, or the first to try. Of course, on a computer there are tools that I can use to try to resolve the problem less destructively. Also, on a computer there's the concern of data loss.
On the Xbox One, there's no real concern for data loss, since all the game saves are in the cloud, and any purchased games can be re-downloaded for free. And on an Xbox One there's very little access to the "under the hood" software by the user (me).
So this is the fix I'm attempting this morning - I booted the Xbox One in "Safe Mode" by holding the pair & eject buttons and then hitting the power button, then I went to Settings > System and told it to restore factory defaults. I'm now watching a green bar progress slowly across the screen. If the system is more stable after this, then it was a software issue and all is right with the world. However, if the Xbox One remains unstable (or really, more like "unusable") then it's a hardware problem and I'll have to ship it off to Microsoft's service center.
UPDATE: The restore process FROZE at 60% and now I'm shipping it to them.:(
