Im posting this on behalf of my girlfriends younger brother, who's been having trouble with his PS3 recently.
Basically, when he powers it up, the screen stays black for about 5 mins. When it finally loads up the "select user" screen, he selects an account, and the PS3 then sticks at the "waves" screen for anywhere between 5 and 10 mins, but the loading icon is displayed. When it loads up the XMB, he can move through the options (again very slowly). When he puts a game in the PS3, the game loads up and runs perfectly. The system only runs slow when loading up and using the XMB.
He has had the PS3 since Christmas, but for some reason (don't ask me why) he has removed his warranty sticker, and so the shop he bought it from won't touch it, and i'm sure Sony wont either.
To me, the problem seems like it may be caused by a bad firmware install (although i think it has worked since the latest update).
He does use the PS3 alot, but has never had any trouble with it before.
Anyone got any idea's what could be causing the problem and if it's possible to fix? i've google'd around and not found much about this type of thing.
As far as i know he has approx 5gb left on the HDD (40gb PAL model).
I had a look today for him and there is a "corrupted data" inside the game data utility that will not delete (it gives an error whenever we try). Could this be a possible problem?
take out the hdd buy a bigger one (theres a guide for upgrading your drive on afterdawn) put it in and if that fixes it congrats if not return the drive but you can put the olddrive in a enclosure and transfer everything.
