I’ve had Sky Q for a couple of months now – one Sky Q Silver box and a Sky Q Mini box. The main Sky Q Silver box has been (relatively) problem free. The Sky Q Mini box however… less so…

The litany of woes that I’ve endured from the Sky Q Mini box have been:

• The box refusing to come out of standby
• The box coming out of standby fine but crashing straight away (no menu appears)
• The box appears to work correctly however when channel surfing or playing back recordings, the screen will go blank and it’ll freeze up

This isn’t an exhaustive list but covers the main issues

I went through several steps trying to resolve the issue but the only once which seems to have had a positive effect is doing a full reinstall of the box software. I got the details for this process from this help page (link), specifically the Your Sky Q Mini box has a message saying “To update the software on your Sky box, please go to Sky.com/softwareupdate and follow the instructions.” section.

My box is already connected via Ethernet (and to a TV) so I was able to modify the instructions slightly but to perform the reinstall/refresh, the basic steps are:

1. Put the box into standby and then unplug it.
2. Ensure the box is connected to the internet via an Ethernet (wired) cable. Test the cable by plugging it into your laptop first (remember to turn off wireless on the laptop for a proper test!). Optionally, you can connect the box to a TV too.
3. Press and hold the power button on the front of the Sky Q Mini box and while holding the button down, plug in the box.
4. If a TV is connected, keep the button pressed until a message indicating the software is being updated appears onscreen. If you don’t have TV connected, hold the button down for at least a minute after you plug it in (normally it shouldn’t take this long)
5. While the update is in progress, the light on the box will remain red, not amber.
6. When complete, the box will restart into the Sky software. When the reboot is complete, the light on the box will change to amber.
7. Move the box back to it’s previous location (if applicable).

NOTE: You should not unplug the box during the update, it’ll take a while so once it’s started, walk away and leave it run.

After following these steps, the Sky Q Mini box has only crashed once and has been stable since.

If this doesn’t work for you, I’d get in touch with Sky and get them to replace it.