PS3 Freezing

Jon Weaver

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I have a Slim PS3 in my bedroom which has only been used for a few hours, over several years.

Over the past year, I often find that when I turn it on, it freezes, but if I play around for a while I can get it stable and then it seems to work again, until I stop using it again for an extended time.

But last night I wanted to use it, and its now got into a state where it boots and then freezes in a matter of seconds and I can't get it stable. I also can't get a controller to sync wirelessly to it (it will work with a cable, but not via Bluetooth), which seems odd!

When its in this condition, its absolutely frozen.. What ever is on the screen stays there, and it won't respond to any of the buttons on the PS3.. They don't even beep.. The only option is a "Power down".

I have gone into Safe mode and tried the 2 restore/rebuild options.. And they havnt' had any effect.. BUT, one thing I have noticed which is interesting is that after I do a "Restore" the system boots and it stays stable.. But when I go into standby and back again the problems return.

Because its unstable, I can't even back it up.. But I am hoping that I can do a restore, then a backup.. And then try to reformat to see if that fixes it.

Does anyone have any other thoughts as to the cause? Or anything can try?

Jon
 
I just wanted to give an update incase anyone is following this, or reads about it in the future.

As I said above, if I turn the PS3 on, it will work for less than 30 seconds before freezing.. But last night I did a "restore" from safe mode and the subsequent reboot allows the PS3 to work with out crashing...

But if I switch it off and on again, it crashes.. So I don't know why, but it seems the first boot after a "restore" works.

So I did a restore again, and then whilst the PS3 was stable, did a backup.. It took 8 hours, but it completed and the PS3 didn't freeze.

I then formatted the HD (Quick), and when it finished, the PS3 boots and seems to work fine again.. The controller didn't sync, but after a few reboots I got it to work and now its back to normal again.

I then decided to do a "full" format, just to be sure there are no bad blocks, but this will take 14 hours.. So I kicked that off this morning, and tomorrow my plan is to do a 'restore' of the backup, to see if it stays stable.

If it doesn't, then my only choice is another "format" and I will have to rebuild it from scratch.. At the end of the day, I only use it as a streamer and occasional DVD player.. And I perhaps play games on it for a few hours a year.. So I don't see this as a major issue, assuming I can get it to stay stable.

It looks like the cause is a corrupted filesystem of some kind.. But if so, its odd that the extensive tools in "safe" mode don't fix it!

Jon
 

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