Like many of the people here I have been playing new vegas for a week or so and having the occasional crash, until suddenly the game became unplayable with constant freezing (and not being able to enter some areas).
One thing I don't like about do is hard resets on computers (in general) as this can screw up the file system (when files are being written to disk..).

After a bit of a poke around I found you can run a check on the ps3 database (which basically sounds like a filesystem to me).

The ps3 has a recovery menu (videos on youtube to show you how to access) and one the options is to rebuild the database.
After rebuilding the database on my ps3 i have gone from frequent random crashes (including being bounced out to the XMB) back to one crash in the day or so of play (with glitches like enemies getting stuck in rocks etc still present).

I didn't have to re-install or replace game saves, but I would suggest if you want to use the recovery menu you consider copying a game saves / data to a backup drive ... as is you end up selecting the incorrect options in the recovery menu you can wipe you data (also you would need to miss the repeated warnings about doing so)

Very interresting, can someone more verify?

I will verify this tonight because i have special place in the game, that is always freezing, gonna check it out after a databse rebuild.

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This is very close to teh truth i Think, all the people have freezing in totally random places, so it's not script error, i't something else.

I already rebuild database on my PS3 a few times already (even before I got the game.) Sometimes IF my ps3 does crashes badly. The next time I reboot it it starts up the "rebuild database" screen.
Which is good I guess because that mean I didn't lose any data.

While you have had success, I would beware in giving out information and advice that changes the PS3 condition. If you aren't experiencing any problems with other games - the crashes are caused by the game. Whilst you may be having better gameplay, I personally do not know the repercussions of doing "rebuild database".

Reno

Some futher detail on the reovery stuff, I am now aware this is called "PS3 safe mode".
A knowledge base artilcle on the sony support site explains in it full detail, article 1488.

The sony article is more informative and lets you know about the process and what / how it could impact on your system.

Rebuilding the database is a good idea.

It's basically like how a computer defrags the hard drive. It deletes corrupt data or re-orders data mainly so the console can load data quickly and in some cases prevent YLOD from hard drives. The console I've rented to play this game wasn't working properly (due to previous owners not turning off the console properly and in some cases corrupt data) and I ended up doing this which made my game less frequent to crashes.

The only con I could figure out is that it can delete messages sent and recieved from others.