Worst Nightmare: PS3 blinking red light of death! - Page 15

What happened with the slims? At least they were under warranty.

I'd much rather have a manufacturing defect and having a system go out while under warranty quickly, than having my old unit kick the bucket cause of engineering flaws that eventually beat it down.

Got my PS3 back, put my HDD back in it, and it is working again.

Was able to backup my data on my 60gb PS3 (with 120gb 7200rpm drive) and transfer it to the 320gb slim PS3.

Now I have the slim PS3 in my family room and the launch system in the bonus room.

With shipping to and back plus the service, I spent about $150. Which would have been the same amount to have Sony send me a referb or replace the motherboard (thereby wiping all of my data before I could do a backup).

Whole process took about a week.

Very satisfied and would highly recommend reballing your video card (if that is the source of the problem).

If the video card itself was burnt out, some of the places providing reballing services might be able to replace the GPU (at an additional cost, of course). But I'm just glad that I was able to recover my data. I ended up getting the PS+ subscription as well, so I can store my backups in the cloud.

My 40GB Phat got the red blinking light last night. I was able to start it back up for about 30 seconds and got my Mass Effect 3 disc out, at least. Now at best it will boot up for a few seconds before turning off.

Sony says they'll fix it for $100 but I'll lose all my saves. But I found a local game shop that says they can repair it for $80 and will leave all my data intact, so uh, I think I'll try that. The Sony rep was pretty nice but apologetically stammered when I asked if they'd be able to recover my saves. My favorite part was how at the end of the call tried to sell me a Vita. A little respect for the dead, please!

Realize that the re-flow is only a temporary fix at best. The only semi-permanent fix is a reball as the user above did.

I'd try the hairdryer trick, or if you're electronics savvy the YLOD heatgun fix and back up your saves to a thumb drive / PS+.

Then buy a slim.

Sorry if it's explained earlier in this thread, but what exactly is the hairdryer trick doing? Could it possibly damage the PS3?

I probably will end up transferring everything to a Slim regardless of how I get my data back, but then, there are rumors of a new "Even Slimmer" model this fall, aren't there? Maybe I'll try to hold out.

Hair dryer essentially remelts the solder points, particularly the ones that broke/cracked/separated.

Apparently, the solder points are lead-less, which also has a lower melting point.

I believe reballing still uses really hot air. But, you're putting in new metal balls to solder on again.

If you're going to go with a new PS3, and just need this PS3 to be up as possible, you could just go with a reflow. But, it's not that much more for the reballing process, and most places will give you a warranty on the work.

I found out that doing a backup and restoring to the new PS3 isn't the best method, as copy-protected content will not carry over. If you want everything to copy over, you need to use the PS3 data transfer utility. I believe this process is actually shorter than doing a backup.

Unfortunately I just experienced this problem. It went from green, to yellow, to then blinking red. I tried holding down the power button and removing the hard drive. No luck.

I can't see returning this thing again, but I am so annoyed at myself for not backing up the files for a few months.

If I get a new system and put in the old hard drive, is there a way to save my files or are they now gone?

How did the slims fail? Same YLOD scenario or was it the optical drive?

If you put the HDD into another PS3, it's going to format it.

Have you tried to find a local shop that can try and diagnose the problem? They may be able to do a reflow, which should be able to get your PS3 up and running long enough for you to do a backup.

Run a hairdryer on the hottest setting for 15 minutes into the back vents of the PS3 60GB. moving the hairdryer the entire time. It will remelt the soder and give you some additional time to get your disc out and backup your data. This has worked for me twice and failed zero times. I saw the idea on a youtube video. The unit will get too hot to touch during the hair drier session. let it cool down nicely before you fire it up. You can actually melt the back with the hair drier if you let it sit too long so don't just set it down and walk away - just take your time and slowly move the hot air through the vents left to right. Actually do it for the full 15 minutes. Wait an hour or two and then fire it up. I've gotten multiple hours out of it at minimum in the attempts I've done. The first time I hoped it would last. it didn't - I got about 20 hours out of it. it red blinked again recently and I just did the hair drier trick again to transfer my data to a new PS3 slim. I'll sell this one on ebay and disclose the sure destined problem to the potential buyers.

I bought my 60GB phat in Nov 2007. it is a launch unit with an A01 code. Lasted till late 2012. That's not as long as I expected, but I've fared worse with electronics. I've had a couple XBox 360's fail on me - so I guess that's just the modern console way. My wii has been rock solid since day 1 though.