as soon as i turn the power on it will stay on for about 5 secs and turn off and the light will flash red, any ideas on what this is? can i fix this myself or does it have to be taken to a shop?
It is fixable. Flashing red light is 1 of 2 problems 1st try to remove the hard drive from the side of the console put it back in and try powering it back on if the same thing happens try to swap hard drives if you have easy access to one from a laptop that has SATA not IDE. I have seen someone force a IDE hd into a PS3 console(wont work). If that don't work its an overheating issue which means you now have to take your console apart because of the factory thermal paste is no good or solder joints under your CPU,GPU chips are loose which you have to in some cases reflow the motherboard's CPU,GPU chips with liquid solder flux and a heatgun. I would try to heat chips up first without the flux because motherboards are coated with this flux from the factory but sometimes the chips don't have enough flux under them to reset the solder points. There are many videos you can watch on the net that will guide you through this and if you have a warranty on the PS3 well you should send it in to be fixed. depending on where you live there might be a repair person around you. If your not comfortable fixing this yourself and have no warranty then take or send it in to be fixed. Hope this helps...Good luck
