PS3 just died - YLOD

Zero-Cool

After 4 years, my 60gb PS3 just died. It powered off in the middle of a game. i left it a while and when I went to power it on again, the power light goes green once, then yellow once and then starts flashing red. Won't power on at all.

I saw a fix on youtube that showed this is caused by components being seperated from the motherboard and to use a heat gun to put them back in place.

Anyone have any advice for me on this or a link to a thread where this might have been discussed more?

Sickened :mad:

Clover

Sorry to hear about your console , hope you had your game saves backed up especially your mass effect 2 insanity run.

Myrddin

Have it diagnosed & reballed if possible. Reflowing isn't worth the time/effort, reballing is the proper fix.

Zero-Cool

Thanks Clover but u just reminded me about my saves :(:(:(

Thanks Enternow, What is reballing and reflowing?

Myrddin

sheehy83 wrote: »

Thanks Clover but u just reminded me about my saves :(:(:(

Thanks Enternow, What is reballing and reflowing?

Reflowing is the process used to repair broken solder joins by heating up the solder to its melting point, & letting it 'reflow' and rejoin again. Its rarely a permenent fix as the rejoined solder will generally be weaker than before, & even more succeptable to thermal stress caused by on/off operation.

Reballing is the process used to replace the solder balls used in LGA type cpu/gpu's altogether. It's generally replaced with leaded solder which will have a much higher tolerance to thermal stress, & will be far more of a potential permanent fix than reballing.

Reflowing is generally known to cause more problems than it solves, & can be a good last ditched effort to retrieve a game disc or run a backup of your saves etc. Have it diagnosed first though if you wish to save it, not all consoles can be repaired by reballing but its worth investigating.

Zero-Cool

Thanks for the explanation man, Ah reballing sounds a lot more complicated first things first, gonna open it up and get my NBA 2K11 out of it. Tried that holding the power and eject button and then switching it on from the back but didn't work.

Can anyone tell me if i get the hard drive out of it, can i connect it to my desktop ide or sata to get my saves and game data from it?

Gonna follow this vid to open it anyway, looks pretty good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_Ic1_TY-GU

Myrddin

sheehy83 wrote: »

Thanks for the explanation man, Ah reballing sounds a lot more complicated first things first, gonna open it up and get my NBA 2K11 out of it. Tried that holding the power and eject button and then switching it on from the back but didn't work.

Can anyone tell me if i get the hard drive out of it, can i connect it to my desktop ide or sata to get my saves and game data from it?

Gonna follow this vid to open it anyway, looks pretty good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_Ic1_TY-GU

Aye, reballing requires some proper specialised equiptment. There are people offering the service, & it usually comes with a longer warranty that that offered by Sony after a refurb.

Your hdd data will be encrypted & unreadable by your pc afaik.

RangeR

sheehy83 wrote: »

Can anyone tell me if i get the hard drive out of it, can i connect it to my desktop ide or sata to get my saves and game data from it?

Absolutely not.

Fix : Don't. Buy a new PS3. It's the ONLY way to guarantee you have a PS3. NO fix is guaranteed to have you up and running for long. You are going to pay about 50% of the new purchase price for any sort of fix.

Saves : Purchase PSPlus. It includes Cloud Save. Saves untold hassles. All my saves are now in the cloud. I sync it up weekly.

Myrddin

RangeR wrote: »

Absolutely not.

Fix : Don't. Buy a new PS3. It's the ONLY way to guarantee you have a PS3. NO fix is guaranteed to have you up and running for long. You are going to pay about 50% of the new purchase price for any sort of fix.

Saves : Purchase PSPlus. It includes Cloud Save. Saves untold hassles. All my saves are now in the cloud. I sync it up weekly.

Normally I'd agree, but it's a 60GB. If any model is worth trying to save its that one.

How do you define 'long' when fixing a PS3? I've known reballed consoles to outlast brand new models. There's no exact science to it really, so while I'd be inclined to have this one reballed, RangeR advice is probably the most practical & headache free. The benefit of a successful reball is all your data will be salvageable, you will retain PS2 compatability, & all the other features long removed on newer models.

Can't you backup your saves to portable media on the PS3?

Zero-Cool

man im broke at the moment, just booked a holiday last week, bad timing! Ya, I know getting a new one is the best way to go, wouldn't touch a 2nd hand one. Even if I could get my HDD backed up so could move the stuff onto the new ps3 (when ever that will be)

I saw Argos are selling a 320gb slim with black ops for 320. I was hoping to spend 200 at the most (size not important ) but the cheapest im seeing is a 160gb for 299.

RangeR

EnterNow wrote: »

Normally I'd agree, but it's a 60GB. If any model is worth trying to save its that one.

I would tend to agree but it would heavily depend on disposable income and what you could potentially afford to "lose"

How do you define 'long' when fixing a PS3? I've known reballed consoles to outlast brand new models.

Ooooooh, how long is a piece of string? What percentage of your known reballed machines lasted more than 3 years? I'd hazard a guess that it would be low. Anecdotally, I've heard that 6 months to a year is the average.

Can't you backup your saves to portable media on the PS3?

I'm sure most, but not all, can be backed up this way.

sheehy83 wrote: »

I saw Argos are selling a 320gb slim with black ops for 320. I was hoping to spend 200 at the most (size not important ) but the cheapest im seeing is a 160gb for 299.

Put that €200 to one side and save more. I know it will be hard but give it a month or two and you will be back on track.

SERIOUSLY, for cloud storage alone, PS+ is worth the money.My PS3 "database" became corrupt a few months ago. I hadn't uploaded all my saves. It broke my heart, the thoughts of having to play all those games again, just to get one or two more trophies.

I don't have those worries anymore.

Piece of mind is priceless, to a point

sgb

Happened to my son 10 days ago, the old 60gb yellow light of death, bit the bullet got a new 160gb PS3 from Game Stop 300 euros

Myrddin

RangeR wrote: »

Ooooooh, how long is a piece of string? What percentage of your known reballed machines lasted more than 3 years? I'd hazard a guess that it would be low. Anecdotally, I've heard that 6 months to a year is the average

6 months for a reball? A reflow yes if the owner is lucky...but a proper reball done properly (assuming the fault didn't hinder reballing) will last a lot longer than six months.

There really is no way this can be formulated properly, as RangeR suggested the only surefire way is to replace the console. I'm not sold on paying for Sony to mind my save games, especially when portable media can be used but thats a different debate.

If you value the 60GB model for its features (ie you don't own a PS2 & replacing it would mean buying a PS2 also) then look into reballing it. Console pro's were offering a 1 year warranty after reballing last time I checked. If a PS3 is a PS3 to you, then the sensibe thing is to just replace it with a new one.

lancerwall

the YLOD happened to my playstation the other day was told this crowd are good, just wondering if any of you have tried them before, if so are they any good.
http://www.consolepros.ie/console-repairs/

nursextreme

Mine died about 2 weeks ago, a 60GB model bought the first week they came out, it had a good innings to be fair. I have the hard drive in a sata docking station hoping to retrieve and backup the data to my laptop - the drive spins but wont show as a drive beginning to wonder is the hard drive corrupt and the cause of the YLOD

nursextreme

EnterNow wrote: »

Your hdd data will be encrypted & unreadable by your pc afaik.

That may answer my hard drive not reading , but should it still not show as an external drive when sitting in the usb docking station.

RangeR

nursextreme wrote: »

Mine died about 2 weeks ago, a 60GB model bought the first week they came out, it had a good innings to be fair. I have the hard drive in a sata docking station hoping to retrieve and backup the data to my laptop - the drive spins but wont show as a drive beginning to wonder is the hard drive corrupt and the cause of the YLOD

The HDD is encrypted. It will ONLY work in the PS3 that formatted it.
Your data is gone unless you fix your existing PS3.

RangeR

nursextreme wrote: »

but should it still not show as an external drive when sitting in the usb docking station.

You should be able to format it but that's all.

Somnus

I got this exact same problem a few days ago. Weird that there's a few cases of it here at the same time

Anyway, as it's the old 60GB model I'd probably go for the reball.

Can someone clarify for me though... is the data on my HDD safe? I understand I need a working ps3 to recover it, but it's not destroyed by this fault is it?

RangeR

Dr.Poca wrote: »

Can someone clarify for me though... is the data on my HDD safe? I understand I need a working ps3 to recover it, but it's not destroyed by this fault is it?

It's been clarified many times just tonight on this thread. You're data is only safe if you fix your PS3. A PS3 hard disk can ONLY be used on the OS3 it was formatted in. If you put the HDD in ANY other PS3 you will have to format it again.

eddhorse

R.I.P Sorry to hear the bad news

Zero-Cool

Cheers man.

Some good news anyway, found out that one of the lads fixes ps3's on the side. He's gonnna take mine next week and use a heat gun on the cpu/gpu see if that works. He said he did one a few months ago and the ps3 is still running fine. At least now, I can back up my data and save a few quid to buy a new one. Plus he's doing it for free so nothing to lose!

I'm craving a game of NBA 2K11 right now tho!

tonydude

Sorry to hear about your station hope you can save your data, speaking from experience its a complete balls to lose your save data

nursextreme

RangeR wrote: »

The HDD is encrypted. It will ONLY work in the PS3 that formatted it.
Your data is gone unless you fix your existing PS3.

That's a bit of a balls, I'm lucky I don't have anything irreplaceable on it. I can live without the game saves and trophies, clean start if I decide to replace, maybe replay some of my old favourites.

nursextreme

Dr.Poca wrote: »

I got this exact same problem a few days ago. Weird that there's a few cases of it here at the same time

A lot of cases recently - going by this thread alone we have 4 separate cases in the space of a fortnight.

F1ngers

sheehy83 wrote: »

He's gonnna take mine next week and use a heat gun on the cpu/gpu see if that works. He said he did one a few months ago and the ps3 is still running fine.

He obviously doesn't "fix" them if all he is using is a heat gun.

Don't get your hopes up.
If you get your saves backed up, you'll be doing well.

Myrddin

F1ngers wrote: »

He obviously doesn't "fix" them if all he is using is a heat gun.

Don't get your hopes up.
If you get your saves backed up, you'll be doing well.

Indeed, thats a reflow of sorts. This method traditionally causes more problems than it fixes, as the mainboard usually flexes under the heat levels. It may fix it for a month, an hour, a minute or not at all. The problem with this is after this, it may take away your option to reball. Think about it before proceeding.

Zero-Cool

Oh ya, not expecting much at all, really doing it just to backup my hard drive and save in the mean time for a new one. I'll be saving a few quid a week so that when it does go, i can take a trip to the shops to buy a new one.

Consolepros

lancerwall wrote: »

the YLOD happened to my playstation the other day was told this crowd are good, just wondering if any of you have tried them before, if so are they any good.
http://www.consolepros.ie/console-repairs/

I heard they were ok, lol

A good reflow will last a long time!! You have to have the modified bga rework station, the whole process needs to be over in around 4 minutes.

You can't buy a Chinese system able to do this out of the box!

If anyone on here can tell me why a correct reflow is short term I am all ears!

But I have to agree the better repair is the reball, but I know people who reball with not much success! So even this can be messed up.

When Sony reflow the solder at the factory the peak temp is around 245c if your equipment can't handle this 0c to 245c in 240 seconds, then its NOT a real reflow.

Same for a reball 0c to 210c in 210 seconds, checkout any reflow profile and you will see.

As a test I reflowed an Xbox 360 console 5 times to see if the solder would degrade to the point were a reball was necessary, that system was on 24/7 for months without a problem.

I would honestly recommend a repair over buying another system, as we are seeing more and more slim YLOD's. When it comes to repairs ask questions, ask about fluxes ask to see the equipment ect.

Zero-Cool

Reflow done and some thermal paste added. Working fine again! Ya, no guarantees but at least I can back up my data and play some games again while saving a bit of cash for a rainy day.

nursextreme

sheehy83 wrote: »

Reflow done and some thermal paste added. Working fine again! Ya, no guarantees but at least I can back up my data and play some games again while saving a bit of cash for a rainy day.

Good stuff! At least your data can be salvaged, all those hours of gaming have not been wasted Keep us updated with how long a reprieve you get.

Zero-Cool

nursextreme wrote: »

Good stuff! At least your data can be salvaged, all those hours of gaming have not been wasted Keep us updated with how long a reprieve you get.

thanks man, Will do!

Zero-Cool

Balls anyway! Got it back tonight, turns onf fine but won't detect either of my wireless joypads. Once I connect USB cable, it connects okay. I managed to backup all my data but not sure what to do now. As soon as I pull out usb cable, joypad goes dead, same on the other one. I can't use the usb cable cuz its really short and I use my ps3 in the sitting room, sitting about 8 feet back. sickner.

F1ngers

sheehy83 wrote: »

Balls anyway! Got it back tonight, turns onf fine but won't detect either of my wireless joypads. Once I connect USB cable, it connects okay. I managed to backup all my data but not sure what to do now. As soon as I pull out usb cable, joypad goes dead, same on the other one. I can't use the usb cable cuz its really short and I use my ps3 in the sitting room, sitting about 8 feet back. sickner.

There is a pinhole in your controller used to reset it.
Worth a try.

Balfie

sheehy83 wrote: »

Balls anyway! Got it back tonight, turns onf fine but won't detect either of my wireless joypads. Once I connect USB cable, it connects okay. I managed to backup all my data but not sure what to do now. As soon as I pull out usb cable, joypad goes dead, same on the other one. I can't use the usb cable cuz its really short and I use my ps3 in the sitting room, sitting about 8 feet back. sickner.

Or go to xtravision an get a 3 meter cable for a tenner, that's what I have, so much easier since I only have 1 controller an charge it while I play. Its handy.

nursextreme

sheehy83 wrote: »

Balls anyway! Got it back tonight, turns onf fine but won't detect either of my wireless joypads. Once I connect USB cable, it connects okay. I managed to backup all my data but not sure what to do now. As soon as I pull out usb cable, joypad goes dead, same on the other one. I can't use the usb cable cuz its really short and I use my ps3 in the sitting room, sitting about 8 feet back. sickner.

It looks like your Wifi/Bluetooth Board! Did you have Wireless Internet Connection. Could be as simple as reassembly error!

Zero-Cool

I'll try that pinhole thing later after work. It looks like the bluetooth of the PS3 just stopped working so I figured it might have been a reassembly issue alright. Gonna look up where the bluetooth card is on the PS3. The WIFI connected fine when it booted up.

All fails, i'll go for that 3 metre cable. Sound lads.

Zero-Cool

After some Googling, I find this can happen after opening a PS3 as the ribbon that connects the Bluetooth board to the motherboard can be finicky. Hope thats all thats wrong with it, gonna open it up tonight and have a look.

nursextreme

Just got my PS3 working again,YLOD solved! See how long it survives, it was nearly in the bin last week so happy days, can at least back up my data

Zero-Cool

congrats man! this should be called the ps3 resurrection thread!

Zero-Cool

Right well after an hour of messing round with it, still no BT. I watched a reassembly vid on youtube and he said if BT doesn't working after taking it apart, then 99% of the time, a ribbon was forgotten to be connected to the motherboard from the daughterboard, and so it was. I connected it securely but BT still not working. Opened it a few more times to check all connections and everything is secure but no luck.

WIFI is working fine tho. So can anyone tell me if the daughterboard runs the WIFI and Bluetooth? and if so, would that mean its not the board at fault since its just the BT not working?

Head wrecked tonight, will give another go in the morning.

Tony10

Hey peeps, my ps3 got the YLOD a week and a half ago.I brought it to Console pros last tuesday.The guy said he'd have it fixed that evening. Then i got a text from him saying that the first attempt of a fix failed.I called him and he said he'd try again which he was half way through last time i was talking to him.He told me he'd call when he had news, but i didn't hear from him on friday, so I'm now waiting until monday for some (hopefully good) news.I'll let you know how it goes.75€ for the fix(haven't paid him yet btw).So it will definitely be worth it as opposed to the €130 sony want to give you a refurb!!

Zero-Cool

Ok well fixed the Bluetooth, black lock wasn't fully closed on the ribbon. Then found the blu ray drive wouldn't accept any disks. Opened it again and saw the power cable for the drive was shredded a bit. Looks like it was under a screw hole and a screw shredded the cables. Absolutely sick of it so I bought a 320gb Slim with Black Ops bundle in HMV today for 309 euro (a 120gb with no game was 299) Anyway, I traded my black ops, la noire and they let me trade in the bundled black ops as well and i got nearly 90 euro off so at least that was something.

Just in the process of transferring data directly from the old ps3 to the new one by ethernet (very handy feature added in one of the updates)

Gonna keep the old one for spare parts (if they can be used in the slim or sell them on ebay or something.

Such a pity after the ylod was fixed (temporarily or not) for me to damage a power cable but at least i have some peace and mind with the new system.

Thanks for all the advice given lads, was much appreciated!

F1ngers

sheehy83 wrote: »

Gonna keep the old one for spare parts

Get a caddy and make the 60GB hdd an external one once you've transferred your data over.

Glico Man

Did that for my 120 GB when I subbed it out to make way for a 320 GB. Will do the same when I upgrade to a 1TB when I eventually have to upgrade. Am 23GBs off at this stage

It's a great way of keeping data though. But I've so many external HDD at this stage I have no idea what's on what... although I do have one dedicated to backing up the PS3.

nursextreme

sheehy83 wrote: »

Such a pity after the ylod was fixed (temporarily or not) for me to damage a power cable but at least i have some peace and mind with the new system.

That will keep you going until the PS4 or the next YLOD Enjoy!

FunkeeFresh

Just got YLOD yesterday on a second hand 60GB that I've had for a year. Playing Infamous 2, glitch happened in the game, then..... BEEP-BEEP-BEEP

Sickened at this stage! No money for a new one, so I'm going for a DIY Reflow and Repaste of thermal compound. Should be doing it this week once the parts arrive...

I'm moving away in 6 months anyway, so if I got a decent reflow done to last me til then, I'd be happy.

Still, it's the 3rd PS3 that's broken on me but the first YLOD.

theangrypotato

Same happened here with 60GB model that I've had since launch, was playing Infamous that I downloaded as part of the PSN Welcome Back offer on the weekend and it died mid game

sheehy83 wrote: »

Reflow done and some thermal paste added. Working fine again! Ya, no guarantees but at least I can back up my data and play some games again while saving a bit of cash for a rainy day.

Did you do this yourself or send it off to be repaired? If yourself then what steps did you follow? Is it simply a case of removing the heatsink and holding a heatgun over the motherboard so the chips can re-seat themselves in their sockets?

Tbh, I'd be happy enough to get it back to a state where I can backup the HDD onto an external drive. Luckily my media is elsewhere and it's only game saves! It was handy for streaming vids too but luckily there's a guy I know selling a WD TV Live that can take over that function.

nursextreme

theangrypotato wrote: »

Did you do this yourself or send it off to be repaired? If yourself then what steps did you follow? Is it simply a case of removing the heatsink and holding a heatgun over the motherboard so the chips can re-seat themselves in their sockets?

I used the Gilksy method, using the heat gun and it worked just fine. The PS3 has been working for over a week at normal use and i got my data backed up so anything more is a bonus really.

FunkeeFresh

Just used the gilsky method too and it worked!!! Got a rented game out of the drive so I'm delighted as it is!

Going to start putting money away too for a new one, but I'd be happy if it lasted til the end of summer at least.

Zero-Cool

theangrypotato wrote: »

Did you do this yourself or send it off to be repaired?

One of the lads I know fixes them. He was working on 2 of them in the same night. He fixed my YLOD but the other one still wouldn't work so it's not a definite fix by any means.

If you are gonna try yourself, check out youtube and searc 'ps3 ylod fix' A great 3 part video on their.