HELP! My PS3 does everything BUT play games X-( ...oh the irony?

Im having a problem with my 40GB PS3.



It just started last night. Ive had it for about a 2 years and have played it frequently with no problems whatsoever until this. Basically, whenever I insert a game disc it rarely ever loads. I get the loading bubble at the top of the screen, but no disc icon shows up under the game menu. This happens with every game I own (I have about 15 and checked them all, theyre all in mint condition and most of them dont even have a speck of dust on them) Every now and then (id guess every 20 or so tries), the game will actually load, go through the install process if necessary, and play perfectly fine. I get a similar problem with other kinds of discs like bluray movies and regular dvds, but with them it works every other time i try instead of every 20 for some reason.



Also, that entire day it was working just fine until I had done these things: Deleted some BD data for games i hadnt played in a while to make room for a couple of newer games i got, also erased the data being used by Playstation Home (to make more room, plus i didnt really care for it). Then i installed Dragon Age, Bioshock, and Spiderman: Web of shadows. It was when I was trying to install Spiderman that i first noticed this problem.



I did some research online and got a wide array of ideas of what might be wrong. But to be honest, i dont think my problem is a burnt-out bluray player OR a bug due to firmware 3.15. I say this because i belive that i already had 3.15 on my system before this started to happen (not 100% sure though), and also the bluray reader doesnt seem to be showing any other symptoms of being burned out or damaged. It does take an obscene amount of tries for the game to actually be detected by the system, but once detected it plays flawlessly with no freezes for extended amounts of time (in fact, i just stopped playing a game that i had been playing for the last 5 hours). The problem only occurs when i take a game out of the console and insert another one or turn the system off and turn it back on again (the game i may have been playing for hours moments before i turned it off simply dissapears from the menu). I even considered that i might have a virus on my PS3, but i ruled it out because the last time i connected online with it was about a month ago, and ive been playing it since then with no plroblems. If anyone has any ideas of what the problem might be or how to fix it, please let me know!HELP! My PS3 does everything BUT play games X-( ...oh the irony?
It is the Blu-Ray laser. It might work every 20 tries but, it will get to the point where nothing will work. DVD, CD, PS3 game ect. It burns out after a while. You can do this job yourself.



IF you dont have a warranty you can fix it yourself. It is not too hard. here is a chart of the laser you need.



http://www.gamerepairworld.com/ps3_laser鈥?/a>



Here is a tutorial on how to do it. He is working on a 40GB system.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lc_-Z6-HF鈥?/a>
Wow thats really odd but usually if you email the Playstation people at the Playstation website they are extremely helpful and friendly.HELP! My PS3 does everything BUT play games X-( ...oh the irony?
Probably your laser got messed up? Take it to the professionals.
I had this problem, and strangly it "fixed its self". That being said, I only had to put in my disc 2-3 times to get it to work. It doesnt look like yours is gonna fix on its own. What the other guy said about replacing the laser is good advice, but before you spend money on a laser you could try cleaning it.

Here's a tutorial:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7O-8NzYHr鈥?/a>HELP! My PS3 does everything BUT play games X-( ...oh the irony?
Had this exact same problem with my 60GB, the laser's worn and is slowly ceasing reading discs. Unfortunately because you've had it for so long you probably won't have warranty and you'll either have to pay to get it professionally repaired by Sony or do some old-fashioned DIY work. Because mine was under warranty I unfortunately do not know the cost of either of these methods but hopefully it is not too much. Good luck.