Some PS3 Systems Still Bricked after 4.46
While a lot of people are reporting that PlayStation 3 firmware 4.46 fixes all of their 4.45 problems, some don’t seem to have been so lucky.
From the official PlayStation support forums:
My PS3 is still bricked even after the new update 4.46!! So **bleep** I waited a week for the fix and its still broken!! HELP SONY!Well.. I ended up reformating my drives on my pc. I was able to run the update after the reformat. Guess ill just have to redownload all my games 🙁 god this will take days..I have tried to update to 4.46 with my 750GB drive, but it’s been stuck “preparing” at 99% for 10 minutes now. Which… doesn’t sound good.When I press X on 6. System Update in safe mode…it just…freezes. Does nothing. Does anyone else have this problem and more importantly, did anyone else have this problem and fix it?
There are a couple of theories floating around as to why there may still be issues for people. The first is that it seems to mostly be occurring with people who have swapped in a new hard drive. Most of the complaints are coming from people who had 500+GB drives, and the only way many of them are accessing the XMB is by reformatting at a PC. Note that this isn’t working for everybody, so use this as an absolute last resort. Formatting your drive will result in a total loss of data.
The second is that it may end up being a problem for people who went into safe mode and tried fixing their PS3 ahead of the 4.46 firmware update. If you did this, don’t feel too bad – Sony Support was advising people to do just that.
It’ll take some time before we know if this is a fault of 4.46, or if it’s just some natural fallout from upgrading (albeit, fallout from a subset of people who had already seen problems with the last update). For the time being, presume that this firmware release will fix your bricked console. At the very worst, your PlayStation 3 will simply continue not to display the XMB and another solution will likely be around the corner.
Article By Mat Growcott
Mat Growcott has been a long-time member of the gaming press. He's written two books and a web series, and doesn't have nearly enough time to play the games he writes about.
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