i'd really like bethesda to answer this did playing skyrim pre patch damage my ps3 someone said something about thrashing and damaging your HDD or something, because i've been getting skipping and issues in other games not huge issues but concerning non the less. if its not update 4.0 than its skyrim.
also can formating your playstation help if skyrim hurt your playstation i've done it once but downloaded 1.2 and played a bit

thing is for me and i have this firmware i dont have crashes in other games at all not even lag, however my situation is a bit odd as after all the crashing started with skyrim i had a break and was just flicking through my XMB when the playstation crashed and because of skyrims crashing and corrupting save files i instantly panicked and thought skyrims crashes may have corrupted an OS file within the PS3s system files, so i restored my ps3 back to factory settings after backing it all up (took 12 hours in total) since then skyrim is the only game to crash the rest work fine
the only exception iv had is hunted crashed twice yesterday (i only got it yesterday so was brand new to me) but after realizing it was bethesda game, did a bit of searching on the forums to find this game had reported crashes in the areas it crashed for me so have chalked that up to its a bethesda game they crash....so i dunno but for me i dont think its 4.00 firmware as all my other games work fine and dandy with the firmware....

as a reply to the post above me yes it helped me loads did reformatting as the crashing stopped for a little while but then slowly came back but this time its only on skyrim and the beginning of hunted nothing else on the ps3 thats why i think skyrim may have [censored] with a OS file when it crashes while accessing the HDD

I have now put skyrim away untill its fixed for fear of any more potential software damage

Since the 4.0 update I have played Rage for more than 10 hours and also finished Lord of the Rings War in the North without a single freeze or slowdown.
So, I don't blame the update.

Maybe its certain model PS3's. I have had no freezes since 4.0

Since my Skyrim suffers the framerate drops and is generally unplayable I've been on a COD kick. I have an old, first gen PS3 with an upgraded 320GB WD blue 5400rpm drive. More than 220GB free. I also have the 4.0 software.

I've been playing COD for 5-7 hours a night, non stop without issue. No freezes, no hard resets, nothing, smooth as butter. If I toss Skyrim in I get maybe an hour before it lags to the point of unplayability. I have never had Skyrim freeze or crash the PS3 though.

It should also be noted that I only played for 6 hours after patch 1.2 came out. I noticed the magic issues, dragons flying backwards and got fed up with the lag so I stopped playing it and won't be playing it again until Bethesda releases a patch that addresses and corrects the frame drops.

Not here to gloat, just saying, it's not likely the 4.0 software by itself.

Played MW3 most of the afternoon today and no freezes. This was after Skyrim froze three times in less than an hour.

I think Skyrim's a mess which causes freezes, but I'm still not sold that 4.0 doesn't have its own problems too which resulted in some of the trouble.

I never noticed an issue with Skyrim UNTIL that 4.0 update but the big problem is it was the EXACT same day I downloaded 1.2.

You guys are crazy, the game is broken... that's all.

No one is saying that skyrim isnt a broken game? Yes it is BUT: A lot of gamers have more freezes since the firmware 4.0- its a fact.

On topic: Yes, i noticed freezes since 4.0 in other games too. (sidenote: I never had freezes in Skyrim but since 4.0 I got one)
Few days ago I played some little big planet 2. It froze aswell. Very strange.
(sidenote II: I played cod3 aswell with no freezes)

Can anyone tell me how to fix the freezing problem. It just started happening to my PS3 since the new patch.
Thanks

There isn't a known way to fix it. All we can do right now is wait for updates from both Sony and Bethesda to see what happens moving forward. Though courtesy of the holidays I don't expect to see any action from either company until mid-January at the earliest.

I found restoring my system to factory settings prolonged the crashing in skyrim allowing you play it longer but after about 10-20 hours of game play it started sneaking back to a crash and hour. i know this worked for me so it may help you but its only a band aid it doesn't fix it permanently, it should also be a bit of a last resort as if you dont have anything to back your system up onto (i did i have an external 300 gig drive sat in mine) you loose all your save data and game data and accounts the lot

Only Skyrim that freezes for me.

Bro everybody is complaining about it. But it's completely relative.Sometimes it freezes in the very moment I turn on the ps3 and begin playing Skyrim. Sometimes it takes a while before finally happens.

Either way I keep my game saved everytime something happens. this way I keep myself out of troubles and my PS3 far away from my bedroom's wall =p

Best things I've found that work are turning off auto saves (You have to get real avid about your own hard saves) and turning off the internet.

Those two things worked well enough to get me to 195 hours, but it's getting worse.

I played Skyrim for three hours last night with a few framerate skips but no freezing, turned the PS3 off for a while, then turned it on to watch Neflix and five minutes later it locked up. Just awesome work there Sony.

Because this is exactly what we need. A discussion about a firmware updated from sony. It's not their fault, I have no freezing problems with any other freaking games except Skyrim. It's really badly coded and we're svckers.

Did you try reading the linked pages from earlier in the discussion? Sony's firmware update is causing freezes and it came out the same day as Skyrim's 1.2 patch, so it's just as likely the freezing is Sony's fault as Bethesda's. That's why the discussion is happening.

I just bought the game before reading all of this.

Time to test it for myself!

BAH!

although today has been good just one freeze

I actually just re-installed Sony's 4.0 update early yesterday morning by putting it on a flash drive and manually re-installing it on my system and haven't had a freeze or that file check thingy run for any game since. I've played probably 8 hours of Skyrim since then, a few hours of BF3 online with some friends, watched a DVD movie, and let my kids go ape on Netflix for most of the day today already. So far so good - ever since the 4.0 update they haven't been able to watch Netflix using the PS3 for more than 30-40 minutes tops before it would lock up, and today they've been watching cartoons for a few hours with no problems.

I have no basis for saying that re-installing that patch would be helpful for anybody else at all, but it does at least "seem" to have worked for me.

There is definitely a correlation between the 4.00 firmware update and being connected to the internet. When playing while the PS3 is online, I get lockups every 10-30 mins. When its not online, I have found that I can go for several hours without a lockup. But either way...Skyrim is broken. I reckon that Bethesda coders may have got stuck into the eggnog a bit to early when working on Skyrim!

thing is with this especially for those that have been experiencing Skyrim locks up before firmware update 4.00 and this is my theory on all this my opinion based on the knowledge of computers and how software and OS's work so i may be wrong in some of this but,
4.00 firmware update was what gave us those corrupt file messages after crashes that corrupted files on the Playstation so chances are the before the firmware update those having crashes were still corrupting files on the Playstation 3 but due to no firmware update at that time we were kept in the dark about it (nothing there to tell us this or rebuild the database so any damage caused pre firmware update wasn't being fixed).
now if these crashes are corrupting files then there's a chance that Skyrims hard crashes are also corrupting PS3 OS files that are being accessed during game play, save functions etc etc i mean the PS3 OS software is always being accessed thats how the PS3 runs anyway if OS files are becoming corrupt this could cause crashing and other such issues through out the PS3 meaning that these issues would rear there ugly head on other things that aren't Skyrim so Netflix and other games even the XMB.
so since installing firmware update 4.00 the files that are already broken aren't getting rebuilt only files that are becoming broken after firmware patch 4.00 are getting rebuilt so these issues would carry on happening and would slowly get worse (this happens on PCs if software acts like Skyrim is doing on the PS3).
For me i Restored my PS3 back to factory settings and now the only thing that crashes is Skyrim which we all already know freezes like mad restoring the system rebuilds broken OS files.
Im thinking that the reason reinstalling firmware 4.00 via USB has also worked for others that doing this may also rebuild OS files through a function that allows us to reboot the PS3 through USB (in the result of software failure or we put new hard drives in were able to install PS3 OS via USB Port)
again this is just theory based on what i know of computers through years of experience with breaking PC OS software myself and some of the experiences iv had with the PS3 and "faulty software" yea thats my theory on all this i dunno,
restoring to factory settings worked for me and stopped all crashes that were external to Skyrim that only actually started for me after Skyrim started crashing in the first place.
out of the 5-6 years iv owned my PS3 i had never ever had a crash until Skyrim

I don't have any problem with any of my games after 4.00, just Skyrim.

I haven't had any issues with any game other than Skyrim after 4.00.

I've played Dark Souls, MVC3, Hard Corps Uprising, Dragon Age 2, Trine 2, Assassin's Creed Revelations,
Dynasty Warriors 7 Xtreme Legends, and Rayman Origins. Each game played as it should- with no hiccups,
crashing, or freezing since the patch.

Skyrim is the only game (before and after patch) that I've had of recent that refuses to work with me.

Only Skyrim Freezes on me and not often as it is. I just got the Trophies I could get with the ongoing problems and decided to put Skyrim down to focus on other games. They have worked quite fine for me.