My fat 40GB PS3 has started to play up. Today it crashed whilst playing CoD - the screen froze, went blank and the PS3 turned itself off with a flashing/blinking red light.

Turned it on again and it reoccurred 2 mins later. Took the cover off and used an air blaster/duster to clean any crap out and retried. Managed two maps before it crashed again.

Can it be repaired or time for a new console? I was hoping it'd last until the new ones came out.

There is a procedure for rebuilding the hard drive's database - effectively booting into a kind of safe mode.

Mine was becoming unsteady - but since I rebuilt it it seems OK.

http://community.us.playstation.com/t5/ ... -p/5812274

What happens with other games? COD's notorious for crashing older systems.

Dunno if it makes any difference, but PSN is undergoing maintenance too.

There's an internal fan trick that gives it a good blasting but you'd need to Google it as I can't remember the sequence

With my old 60Gb system, and I only did this once I'd bought a new Slim, I used an old credit card to keep the slot open and blasted the drive with an air duster. Worked as far as I could see, but hardly ideal...

Not convinced it's a purely overheating issue. Loaded up BLOPS2, got into a lobby, into a map and as soon as I moved forwards, it shut down. This took all of 3 mins max IMO.

Time for new PS3 slim. Will get the 12GB model. Hope the current PS3 holds out long enough to get data off it.

are you gonna drop a drive in it?

Have you tried other games? And simple [LIFTED] like making sure it's not the disc?

Current PS3 was a 40GB where I upgraded the HDD to 250GB. I'll just take the HDD and put it in the new one. Will try diff disc now and see what happens.

Well it now seems like it's turned into the YLOD.

EDIT: Thankfully I've managed to get the COD disc out using the fan trick.

Is it worth leaving it in to get it pasted or whatever? PS4 at the end of the year I'm thinking, though it likely won't play your PS3 games...

I've read about repairing and reflowing the solder joints but IMO it's too much effort and cost for something that may only work a few months. I don't plan on getting a nextgen console until at least 2nd gen release.

Just before it crashed, my mate reminded me how much time I've spent on CoD and PS3. Given that I bought it just over five years ago and played it intensively most nights over the past three years, it's more than made up for its cost at the time. I reckon it's cost me 30-40p/night in terms of gameplay and that's just playing CoD. Also used it for films and streaming downloaded shows.

£150 is nothing compared to the £400 I bought it for!

Make sure you do a good search online for the 12gb; the prices are up and down all the time. And retailers have started discounting the Wii U which won't do your chances any harm

In all honesty, not too bothered about cost. I see from hotukdeals that the 12GB has been low as £130. It's on Amazon for £150 and even with next day delivery making it £157, it wouldn't arrive till Thursday. Meanwhile I can pick it up from Argos for £160 on the way home tomorrow.

Tesco for the points and any vouchers you might have?

Had a few spare mins as I was superefficient at work today. Looked into swapping 250GB HDD into the 12GB one. Turns out the PS3 super slim doesn't have a hard drive at all! It uses flash memory. The lack of a HDD means there's no HDD caddy to hold the HDD. More searching reveals Sony have produced a HDD caddy for the Super Slim for £8. Argos and Tesco don't do it. Hence, if I wanted to fit my "old" 250GB HDD, I'd need to order a caddy.

Thought "sod it" and ordered it from Amazon - PS3 + caddy + dishonoured (PC version) for next day delivery by 1pm (I'm off in the afternoon to get the car fixed!).

Nice one