I recently had a problem getting the XMB (Cross media bar AKA the menu) to show. The boot sound and the background with the smoke looking texture would be there and animated, but the XMB wouldn't ever show up.

After trying multiple things I finally got the XMB to show up again. But now neither of my controllers (nor rockband drumset or any other type of controller) will navigate through the XMB. The strange thing is that you can hold the PS button and bring up the menu to either turn off controller or turn off the console and easily navigate between the two, but you still can't navigate the XMB.

One other thing. Now when I power off the console, it beeps three times before actually turning off, which I don't remember it doing before. I do have the most recent updated, though I don't think that makes any difference either good or bad.

$50 via paypal to the first person who has a solution that fixes the problem.

Dude that sucks hardcore. I feel for you. Unfortunetly I haven't heard of this happening so I can't help. Hope you get it to work.

Yeah, same goes for me. I've looked all over the net and can't find anyone with a similar problem. I've already contacted Sony via e-mail... which'll take 48 hours before I hear anything.

The offer still stands though.

Sorry to hear that. I know that the 360 is notorious for breaking down but I haven't heard about this in the PS3.

Technology, you know I love it!

It's ridiculous that you have to even bother fixing something you paid so much money for and is so new. Sorry to rant. good luck.

It's not actually new... I just looked at my recipt for it last night... it's a year and seven months old, which is seven months past warranty.

...yay.

Sony sucks.

I'm starting to agree...

Sorry to hear that it is past warranty, but by "new" I mean that in this day and age, there should be all kinds of design and manufacturing data, methods and safeguards to prevent products from failing yet here we are...and it seems to be the norm, not the exception with the 360 and now the PS3?

Even if the warranty is only for one year, for the money we pay, these things should give us at least 5 years if not more.

Lantis:

Deeper suggested switching out the HDD for another one. A SATA notebook HDD, 2.5".

He said your problem might be related to the HDD and that's his suggestion.

And the correct answer?

Make sure the Playstation is off.

Press and hold the power button.
(you first hear the power on beep. But after a while you'll here a second beep. If you let go here, you reset video settings... but keep holding it)

After a second, the PS3 will shut its self off.

Let go of the power button and then press and hold it again.

You'll hear the power on beep and the reset video beep... but keep holding. After a second you'll hear two consecutive beeps. Let go.

You'll be asked to plug the controller in via USB.

Now you are in the PS3 Recovery Menu.

Here you have many options. A few are restore system to default, restore file system, rebuild database, and restore PS3 system.

Restore PS3 System is formating your PS3... which means you start with clean slate. I didn't want to do that. But after everything else didn't work, I didn't have a choise. So I formatted my PS3.

And that fixed the problem. But now I have a new one: all my sh*t is gone. And better yet, I don't remember my password to my online account which has all the games I've paid for. I also lost all my PS3 game saves and virtual memory cards (crap, and all my gold star'd songs on rock band).

Yay... what fun!

Well, I tried to recover my password but I couldn't get the security question (THAT I PICKED!) right. I'm such an idiot. After beating my head over it for hours, I tried to make a new account, and when creating a password it said I had to have at least one letter and one number. That's when it hit me. I typed in the password I always use plus a number... and that was it. So I set out to download all the games/demos/rockband songs/themes/ect that I have lost (btw I didn't go to bed all to early last night, if you haven't guessed yet).

Well, I got all my games like Megaman 9, Warhawk, Super Stardust, ect. And I got my PS3 look and settings back (stupid auto launch games). So I went to get back what I could of my virtual memory cards. I copied over my PS2 card (I know I had a second, but I'm not sure what happened to it), and like 4 or 5 PS1 memory cards that I had .gme files of on my computer from way back when.

It's around here that it struck me. Wait... my game saves are REALLY gone. Those painful hours of Dante Must Die mode in 4... gone. Hell and Hell mode completed... gone. *saddness*

Well, I had an idea... check this out:

http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/ps3/save/928376.html

PlayStation 3 Game Save Directory? Score! Granted, I didn't do it... but it's pretty damn close to what I have completed. But also, I lost that game of Star Ocean 3 I was so despirately trying to complete (and just recently having passed the part I gave up on last time too). Well...

http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/ps2/save/536705.html

Some guy had saves before every major scene. I downloaded them and just loaded the one right before the boss I just recently beat. And it worked too.

Lather rinse repeat for all games saves that I lost (PS2 and PS3) and I'm going to be close to where I was before all this mess happened. Still, this sucked... bad.

Ix, tell Deeper thanks for the suggestions. I really appriciated them. I actually tried to take my hard drive out and place it in an exteral hard drive case I have (luckly a desktop hard drive sata and power is the exact same for a ps3 [aka laptop] hard drive) but it was encripted in a PS proprietary format and wouldn't let me copy the data without formatting... ironic no?

Technology, you know I love it!

Sorry about your plight and losses.

I wouldn't be too upset about lossing your save files. At least your PS3 works again.

Though the loss of save files suck, it's workaroundable.
Congratulations on the non-brokedness of your PS3!