PS3 is dying or is it dusty?

[Kuja9001]

So my PS3 has been shutting off on its own for the past couple of days. I took a vacuum and tried sucking out the dust and it still shuts off.

It always shuts off at the exact same spot in FFX(when I start operation Mi'ihen).

It's a fatboy 80GB PS3.

 

[Lex]

If it's happening at the exact same spot then it sounds more like a crash. Does it do this with other games? Are the fans noticeably noisy?

 

[Kuja9001]

If it's happening at the exact same spot then it sounds more like a crash. Does it do this with other games? Are the fans noticeably noisy?

I played Jak 3 and it works just fine. It wasn't happening at that spot until yesterday or friday(I was about to save at Djose when it turned off) and I've been unable to get pass the operation mi'ihen cutscene ever since then.

The fan has been the same(not noisy) since I got it back in 08.

 

[Channy]

We had this issue with our old one... it was play most games fine but would constantly die/corrupt on the same time of Dark Souls, preventing further playing. Eventually we reformatted and drive and erased that game data but it still experienced some issues. Boiled down I think to just being old.

 

[Cthulhu]

In theory, age itself shouldn't really affect it . Could be a number of things:

* b0rken hard drive (sectors); not sure how to fix those, does the ps3 have a hard drive check tool?
* b0rken disk, given that it takes place in the same location in the game - is the disk clean and shit?
* b0rken laser. It should give moar errors though.
* b0rken memory, although it should be a bit more random and in other games as well then.
* b0rken solderings somewhere - solderings tend to get brittle in time, and resoldering all the components is one possibility. Probably not likely.

But, I know nothing of electronics, and chances are it'll be more expensive to have it fixed than to buy something new/different.

 

[Kuja9001]

I tried to play earlier and it didn't even get to the menu. I'm upgrading to a PS4 in a few days so what do you guys recommend?

 

[Lex]

Is the game installed to the hard drive? If it's the disc and it's not working I'm not sure there's anything you can do. If it's installed to the hard drive just delete and reinstall.

One thing that sometimes works is switching the position. So stand it up if it's laying flat, lay it flat if it's standing up and see if it works better either way.

If you want to shell out for X/X-2 for PS4 you can use the same save data I think. I know that was the case for the PS3/ Vita.

 

[Kuja9001]

I put it on its side and now its working(haven't tried ffx though).

 

[Lex]

This suggests a disc-read issue (maybe the laser or mechanism is failing) rather than say an overheating problem, which is good because even if it completely stops working you can still play games from the PSN without issue. It's bad if you're totally reliant on disc-based games.

 

[Kuja9001]

Tried FFX and it worked fine.

 

[Kaneki]

Had a similar issue with my old ps3 before it finally died on me. Ended up sending it off for repair and they said it was the motherboard that was at fault.