PS3 Update loop ?

So with the impending end of this generation and wanting to play the infamous series, uncharted and now the last of us I've decided to buy a PS3. My friend got a slim and so has an original for sale at about £50 although he says it is stuck in an update loop. Having not played a PS£ for more than a few hours at a time I'm wondering how this influences playing games and the overall use of the system?

Thanks for any help[ you guys can provide.

Ummm, what does he mean by update loop? Is it trying to install the same update every time he connects it to PSN?

If that's the case then it will be impossible for you to play any games online, and offline you won't be able to play any games released after whatever the latest firmware version is currently running on that PS3.

I don't really have the best sense of what the issue is from your post, but it seems like the update loop would actually be easy enough to fix. From what it sounds like, it would be a firmware related issue. If you were to format the hard drive and start completely fresh, it seems unlikely that the "update loop" issue would persist. That said, can you elaborate a bit on the update issue? Is it firmware updates, game updates, or both? If you don't update it you're basically buying an offline only console; if the console isn't up to date you can't go online at all, and if game's aren't up to date you can't play them online.

It really does sound like this issue could be resolved by just going into the recovery menu and using the "Restore Filesystem" and "Rebuild Database" options, or by simply just completely formatting the drive. If he's got nothing to lose, and since your a friend, maybe he'd let you try to fix it before you bought it?

@starvinggamer: Well it was described as being unable to complete an update and it kept retrying something similar to what is described here on this ebay item I was looking at.

And another thing I'd be using it as new so if I was to format it or restore settings wouldn't that make it work ?

Ok I'm now just looking at the ebay one I linked and I'm curious is there a fix for the red screen of death on PS3 which is apparently linked toto this update loop issue at least in this case.

You could probably get the thing to go into safe mode, and update it to latest firmware after that.

Just gotta hold down the power button til it makes 3 beeps. 1st beep is powering on, 2nd is resetting the video settings, 3rd goes into safe mode.