Problem, can someone help please?

Ok so heres the deal, my friend has a PS3 however, he has never been able to connect to the internet on his ps3 despite having a stable internet connection that works through a computer, we have tried countless amount of times to fix the problem. He has never updated his ps3 so i downloaded it for him.

I put the update on my harddrive and put the harddrive into my ps3, however my ps3 could not pick up the update, am i doing something wrong or missing something out? can someone please help. Also is there a way of fixing this problem if anyone has ever had to deal with it.

Thanks in advance for any suggestion, and will be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

What do you mean by pick up the update? As far as I know updates arnt stored on the hard drive.