Game freezing, but an interesting side note...it wasn't Skyrim.

So I decided to take a break from Skyrim today and play the new COD. It was only a couple hours in and the game froze.

Now, I played Black Ops pretty religiously for a while and never got a freeze.

I'm starting to wonder if it's part of the 4.0 PS upgrade that happened about the same time everything started happening with Skyrim.

Either way, has anyone else seen other games having similar freezing problems that seemed to start after 4.0?

http://www.gamezone.com/news/users-report-system-freeze-after-recent-ps3-4-0-update

http://community.us.playstation.com/thread/3911102?tstart=0

http://community.eu.playstation.com/t5/Technical-Help/firmware-4-00-file-system-check-after-freezes/td-p/14345699

http://community.us.playstation.com/thread/3910942?start=0&tstart=0

In short, yes. Since that firmware update I've had Skyrim freeze once, Battlefield 3 has frozen 4 times, Dark Souls froze twice, ACR froze twice, it locked up once earlier today watching Walking Dead on Netflix, and it froze last night while watching Avatar on blu-ray. Every single time it's run that file system check when I turned it back on.

Honestly I'd be nervous to turn my system on at all at this point if it weren't under warranty. If it bricks then I'm sending it to Sony with a very special note.

So as long as I don't log into the PSN I don't have to worry about downloading that 4.0 right?

I'm not sure, but I believe so.

This one's pretty sneaky, it may have installed itself without your permission or anything. When you start up your PS3 does it say something about reading the manual for health stuff before the XMB pops up? Or just check the version in the XMB directly.

So now Sony want's are Systems damaged by releasing update firmwares. Isn't that nice.

Nope I don't get that message so I guess it's safe to say I don't have the 4.0 firmware thank god.

this is a very serious find i remember 4.0 and patch 1.2 were released close together and that was the first time i started over so BUMP

Less than 24 hours apart in fact. So it's very easy to see how people who are spending most of their time trying to play Skyrim, which already has issues of its own, could pin the blame on the 1.2 patch for Skyrim when they didn't notice the 4.0 firmware update install in the first place.

I'll turn off my ps3 and come back in the new year. It's ridiclious how that whole crap with 4.0 and Skyrim is turning out.

So then why is my Batman Arkham City and Skyrim experiencing crashes and freezing when I don't have firmware 4.0 installed?

Because sometimes stuff just crashes for no apparent specific reason at all. What's being discussed here is whether 4.0 is causing more frequent or more serious crashes than what is normally experienced.

Had 4.0 since release, and patched skyrim always.

I have no trouble outside of skyrim...

Not saying there are no faults in 4.0,but I think 2/4 references above had skyrim in them too.

Also many had crash / freeze issues with skyrim before 4.0

At least for me this hardly seems a causal relationship

Is there any way to delete the 4.00 update without formatting your hard drive?

No once you have the update you are stuck with it. I'm still at a loss to see what kinds of background processing could be going on...I mean it just added Vita support, like bam done...what could possibly be ongoing?

Well you know how it sometimes does the whole "restoring files" thing now and before 4.00 it never did that on freezes...

maybe somehow this is actually causing games to freeze more.

Yeah but to "just" add Vita support they actually incorporated a number of constant background processes that are always running on the system, a new file system checker that runs when the system freezes, a new startup note when your system boots up reminding you to read the manual, etc.

I'm sorry this is off-topic, but Ozone282 got me thinking..
Let's say if, after DLing 4.0, you decide to sell your PS3--for whatever reason.
Before selling it you do a complete restore to erase whatever traces you have on the machine.
Does the OS revert back to whatever firmware the system had when it was new? Or does it keep the 4.0 update?
I'm curious because if it retains 4.0, what else does it keep? Hidden bits of user info?
Maybe it does revert to the 'at purchase fw', and I'm just being paranoid..?

It keeps whatever FW you have installed. Sony does that on purpose so it's harder to pull back to an earlier firmware version for homebrew stuff.

Well. This bugs me. I would really like to know what else is kept on memory when a full restore is done.
Thank you for the info, wilco.

I highly doubt it cause I play Modern Warfare 3 and Battle Field 3 too with Skyrim and none of those game ever froze on me, not after or before Skyrim, is all Skyrim man...

True. Skyrim was freezing long before the new FW was released.

Sheesh...at this rate I might just turn off the PS3 for a few months and go amuse myself in the garden and do something constructive with my spare time. These freezes are a complete nightmare. If you bought a car and it kept breaking down, wouldn't you expect to have it fixed immediately? Sounds like Sony must have hired a few Bethesda coders! LOL!

Every single time Sony releases a new firmware it will be blamed for freezing and bricking (and solar storms, and world famine..). Personally, I doubt there is much correlation between Firmware 4.0 and freezing. Here's why:

1. There are few games outside of Skyrim that exhibit these problems. Out of about 50 games that I own, maybe 5 have ever frozen on me (and that was in some cases before firmware 4.0). Coincidentally, 3 of those 5 are Bethesda (or Bethesda-related) games: Skyrim, Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas.

2. Skyrim froze on me before firmware 4.0. My game updated to 1.2 before the PS3 updated to 4.0 and before I turned off autosave, the game would freeze every single time it tried to autosave, whereas the other non-Bethesda games (that has frozen at all) have only frozen on me on rare occasions.

i updated today. Freeze!!!!!!!!

Was freezing before as well. Now i cannot play the game i bought!

Any chance of / where to get hold of PS news on this? Accept ps.com? with says noting...

Well i have other games and a life outside, but still, i payed a lot a money for it.