WipEout HD crashing regularly

[LightningRacer]

Hey guys.

I've been tackling this problem for at least 2 weeks and I've no wonder what has been causing it. I'll go on wipeout probably every night and there's a good chance it will freeze my PS3 completely every few races. I didn't have this problem earlier on it just seems to be the past 2 weeks or so... and it happened not 20 minutes ago when I was in the middle of hosting a pretty intense phantom tournament (GGs everyone in that room who may be reading this!)

It is becoming a bit of a nuisance, since it is probably making me look like a bit of a rage quitter online when really it is completely out of my hands xD

I've noticed it tends to happen moreso if I'm about to get hit by rockets or a quake (something explosive that takes up most of the screen), and it'll crash in the middle of me getting hit.

I was wondering if anyone out there experiences or has experienced the same issue and whether they can think of a fix or not...

If it helps, my PS3 is one of the fat fat original models, 60GB in size.

I appreciate any help that gets thrown my way.

Mark.

[AGSys]

Did you update your PS3 to the latest firmware? If you already have, then is your PS3 in quite a spacious area where dust can't easily enter the casing and also where the PS3 can't heat up? I've had friends with the kind of the same problem and they solved it by cleaning their PS3 and moving it to a more airy place so it won't heat up as much. There's no guarantee that this'll work for you in particular but it's worth giving a try.

[blackwiggle]

After suffering the death of a old FAT BC 60g PS3 myself, and having helped many people out at the technical section of the official Playstation forum, I'd say get prepared for your console to suddenly die on you, it's started showing the symptoms [momentary freezing] that start to happen before the Red or Yellow light of death suddenly appears.
What happens with the old FAT 60G versions of the PS3 is that they used a "Green" type of solder in manufacturing to connect the CPU and the GPU onto the motherboard, this solder Sony used when these consoles were made is notorious for suffering "Dry Solder Joints".
When the console heats up when turned on, these solder joints expand, when the console is turned off they contract again, eventually the solder gets cracks in it, and over time these cracks become so big that the electrical connection starts getting broken [which is where it appears your console is at now]
All of a sudden the cracks in the solder will be so big no electrical signals will be able to be passed at all, that's when your console will suddenly show either the Red or Yellow light of death and it won't turn on.
You won't be able to save any data if that happens, and if you send your console to Sony for repair they automatically wipe the contents of your HD as a security measure, so again you lose all data.
Believe me, you don't want that to happen.

Firstly, ASAP back up all your gave save data, with HD/FURY you will find a lot of small individual files, most of them will be your ghost save data for each track/speed class, you can easily fit all of them onto a 1G USB stick.
Same goes with all your other game save data, then if [more like, when] your console does die at least you can reinstall it, either when you get your console fixed or on a new console.
If you have Music & Photos/videos you want to keep, back them up to a external HD.

As it's a old PS3 it will probably be out of warranty.
Sony charge a arm and a leg to fix these old consoles, and they do a crap job of it as well
They reheat the solder with a heat gun so what little solder is left, remelts and reconnects the chips to the MB, then adjust the thermal prob so it firstly starts the fan running at top speed at a lower temp, making the console ridiculously loud, and also set the thermal overheating alert to tell you to shut the console down at a lot lower temp than what it used to[which if you live in a climate like Sydney's, the alert is telling you to shut down 290 days of the year, making the console useless] , plus as mentioned before they wipe your HD.
If you go to Sony they wil most likely offer you the choice of getting a refurbished unit...up to you...personally I wouldn't do it.

Your best bet is to Google for a "None Sony" console repair place near you and get them to fix the console, they will do exactly the same repair, charge less, and not wipe your HD
The result will be the same [a temporary fix, the console will probably last another couple of months at best, then fail again], then it's time to buy a new PS3.

[AGSys]

Oh my god that's detailed. Explains a whole lot. I guess I can now tell my friend that this is gonna happen to his PS3.

[Ragsus Maxima]

Recently, my PS3 sometimes has problems to start up. My model is the 40 GB version, circa 2008.

I'd like to say this doesn't always happen when I want to turn my PS3 on.
Once I do so, after a while, the LED changes to yellow and then to red quickly, with a triple beep. After that, the console won't start up while the red LED flashes continuously. In this situation, I have to press the On/Off button so the LED stops flashing (and thus, turning off the PS3) and later, I turn it on again.
After all this, my PS3 either repeats the same actions stated above, or start up normally, usually at the second attempt.

I've read the blackwiggle's post, and I don't know if the symptoms he described will be similar to my PS3 after several months, and later on, it'll be doomed to crash forever. Any advice or tips for my problem will be appreciated.

[LightningRacer]

Thanks for the very useful replies everyone!

I have just finished re-downloading and installing WipEout HD, I also moved my PS3 to a place where it is likely to be better ventilated. I am hoping this solves the problem (I'll let you know how it goes on), otherwise I fear I may be going PS3 shopping for christmas!

Not that I'm disappointed, this PS3 is very old (we got it pretty much within a month of release) so for it to have lasted this long with no problems whatsoever I'm quite happy about (even though my Wii has lasted longer and still has no problems , xbox is another story which we won't go into).

[​Ω​]

[Treasure trove of knowledge]

You are the reason forums exist. Thanks.

Since I found out that the BC is imperfect on these models anyway (3 frames of lag even when playing in 480i on an SD set), I'm going to eventually sell mine and grab the new model. I'm just hoping it lasts me until then.

I hope you'll be selling it for parts. Calling poorly refurbished/dying PS3s functional and selling them to people is pretty lame. I'm sure you're not happy the guy you bought it from might have done that to you.

[Pico de Goroh]

It's not crashing like the OP's PS3. It crashes at very specific points and not with any frequency.

Now that I know that it's likely it will go down the same road, I'll go ahead and sell it. Don't see a problem with that. A BC PS3 is a BC PS3. They have the emotion engine and bad solder. I don't feel obligated to tell anyone about the second part, Sony certainly did not.

[MyNameIsBom]

My PS3 Randomly freezes when I play WipEout... Its quite rare but I don't know why it only happens when I play Wipeout, Because when I play other games it never freezes the PS3.
BTW my PS3 is a slim 160GB, not the latest super super slim ones. Should I be worried that my PS3 freezes?