I've owned my PS3 for like three weeks and it's malfunctioning. HELP?
 

So I turn the PS3 on. The loading screen pops up with the PS3 logo and the swirling thing with the sparkling lights is glittering in the background. And it never disappears. For some reason, the hard drive (with my personal background, etc.) never loads up. The swirling strand of light and the glittering stars just dance around for all eternity.

The PS3 still recognizes my controller, but pressing the controller accomplishes nothing. The PS3 still reacts when I input a game into the DVD drive, but again, this accomplishes nothing (at least I can take the game out.) Strangest thing: I try turning the PS3 off via the button. Three beeps. *BEEP BEEP BEEP*. The PS3 will not turn off unless I manually unplug it. Simply pressing the button apparently does not accomplish this task.

Any advice, guys? Is this an issue Sony has dealt with before? If so, keep in mind I'm a neophyte PS3 user and this is all arcane to me.

EDIT: For what it's worth, the PS3 worked fine just yesterday -- I played Red Dead Redemption for a nice long time without any problems.

Call Sony tech support. Failing all else it should still be under warranty so that's a much quicker way of getting things resolved than any other method.

Did you have it on for a long while before this/is it in an enclosed/tight space/was it warm to the touch?

If so you may want to try just turning it off for a half hour or so, and maybe turning on the AC.

The PS3, like the 360, can overheat occasionally. The difference is mainly in that the 360 gets red rings of your internal components are fucked for eternity, and the PS3 gets "Not gonna work until you let me cool off".

Is there a Yellow light in your console during this whole process? Also, did you check the usual suspects, like Dust and removing the HD and turning it on, or removing it and putting it back to so if there is anything to it?

I mean, yeah. Your PS3 is almost brand new, so you should call Sony... but it doesn't hurt to give it a check. I've mistaken my Wii for Broken when in fact it was just Dust

Nope -- hadn't had the PS3 on all day before the issue arose. It's not in an enclosed place, either, and I didn't have the TV next door on.

Also: The yellow light simply isn't flashing at all. I don't know why that is.

Solid Snake. Listen to me carefully, and do exactly what I say here.


from being off, hold down your power button. Do not lift it at all.
It will beep once. Then it will beep again. Then it will beep and power off.
Lift your finger.
Now put your finger down and hold it again. Wait for it to go "Ba-beep" or produce a double beep. Lift your finger.
You will be in the Sony Maintainance mode.

You can run pretty much everything on this screen without damaging your system- if the issue is ANYWHERE you can repair yourself, doing these things will repair your console. Rebuilding the tables is probably where to start for you. (You'll understand what I mean when you reach that point in this.)

If you need any more help, my MSN is alexmacneil@parkercomics.com and while I'm rarely on my other contact info, it's all available on the forum. I should be able to talk you through anything you don't feel comfortable with.


Edit: And the 3-beep code indicates System Hardlock. Similar to the Blue Screen of death, it's -software inflicted- a vast majority of the time, which means rebooting your PS3 through these steps should be all you need.

Edit 2: Actually, for everyone who owns a PS3, back up your save information regularly and run the table rebuild at least once a month. It's good for keeping glitches from ruining your gaming experience.

Edit 3: Joshelplex paid me $65 when I told him about this and talked him through it. D: I need a tip jar somewhere, if this works.

Man, I feel bad because Nikose just gave me an awesome step-by-step explanation for my old PS3 problem, but since then a new problem has taken the old one's place.

I tried turning the PS3 on today and it actually worked -- the hard drive booted up normally, so I didn't have to run Nikose's fix. I was able to play RDR and Resident Evil 5 (those are the two games I tried.)

But both games have seemed somewhat more...problematic. The hard drive may be working but the problem doesn't seem completely fixed. With RDR, I noticed significantly more noise from the machine (and considerably more yellow lights -- the hard drive seemed to be working "harder.") A few cutscenes in particular sounded atrocious with the noise in the background, and having played the PS3 for a few solid weeks now, I can tell it's abnormal. It seemed there was also more pop-in, particularly when traveling on horseback -- like everything wasn't loading quite on time. Most notably, when I attempt to load my saved games in RDR, it occasionally and selectively wouldn't work. It'd tell me the save data was corrupted. Then I'd try loading the same exact save file again, and it'd actually work. Why it wouldn't work one time and would the second is utterly beyond me.

I haven't tested RE5 quite as much and I didn't have any problem with the save file data there (yet.) But I'm definitely still noticing considerably more noise and yellow-light flashing from the machine as it operates. I'm not sure exactly what that means. My initial thought was that it was similar to how my PC reacts when it's been on a long time and it's overheating and needs to cool down. But my PS3 had been off all night (and I only tested these games the past ninety minutes.)

It's not in an enclosed space, it's in my room -- and though my room has been kept several degrees above average room temperature lately (when I'm not around, the air's not on, and it's been scorching hot outside) it's still well below, say, 75* F.

Do I still need to implement Nikose's fix? And if so, won't that delete all my saved game files? Is there any way I can spare these files from destruction? Like, a way I could upload the save file data online via the PS3 and download it back again once the PS3 is reformatted, or whatever?

Sony has a media thing on their site that you can download. I use it to store some of my PSP saves and download their games when I don't feel like downloading via the PSP. I assume it works with the PS3 as well. Use that.

Also: Why haven't you contacted Sony tech support yet? Am I missing something where contacting the people who made your system while it is still under warranty is somehow a terrible atrocious awful idea?

Actually, I know a couple people who used Sony Tech Support and they have said great things about them. So, NonCon's right on this one, use em!

The problem with the Sony Tech Support notion is 1: It's Memorial Day, and 2: I have absolutely no idea how to even describe this problem. Every time I think I have a handle on the symptoms, the symptoms seem to completely change. First the hard drive wasn't loading up at all -- now it's working too hard and non-corrupted saves occasionally are erroneously reported as corrupted? ...Yeah, it makes no damned sense.

I don't hold out much hope for Tech Support to make any more sense of this than I can. They'd probably assume I was just making symptoms up for grins and giggles, that's how random this has been.