General Kenobi

I turned it on this morning, it played the familar Playstation music. Then it did not go into the normal desktop, rather it just showed the blue wave that is normally in the background. And that is it. The controllers recognize that they are reaching the system. And the movie remote will eject the disc. But that is all that will happen. Any ideas???
Thank you,
The General

Walker Boh

It might be broke ... has it lost a lot of money in the market lately?

Seriously though, the first thing to try is a system re-set. Turn it on and off using the switch on the back of the unit, then hold the power button on the front until it beeps three times.

General Kenobi

OK, tried that now I no longer get the Playstation song to come on and I lost the blue wave. Just a dark screen to keep me entertained. Also the machine does not sound like it is even trying to load up anything beyond the initial fifteen or thirty seconds.
The General

Walker Boh

Is it connected through HDMI? The reset also looks at the video settings, so if the TV / receiver wasn't on, it wouldn't have seen the HDMI connection and might've reverted back to the standard composite A/V out (the cable that came with the system). Even if everything's on, it might still revert back to the composite out. Try using the original cables, or try the reset again with the TV / receiver on.

General Kenobi

It was not conected through HDMI, it had the original cables. Thought I had switched it out, oh well. Ok, tried multiple times, with both sets of cables, nada. Noticed that when I tried the reset, the first beep starts the system, the second beep sounds like it is doing something, and the third beep turns the system off and it does not come back on line.
The General

General Kenobi

How long should the reset take, wonder if the system is even trying to reset the system.
The General

Walker Boh

My bad ... it's been a while since I had to do it. It's only two beeps for the reset ... the third beep you're hearing must be it shutting down again. The three fast beeps I was thinking of is what it makes when it reboots after a game crashes. Sorry about that.

Hold down until you hear the second beep, then let go ... this resets the display settings. The one time mine was acting up and not booting up completely, this fixed it, though I'm not sure why.

If that doesn't do it, there should also be a way to get to the restore menu:
When it's in standby mode, hold down power button: beep 1 (on), beep 2 (reset settings), beep 3 (off again). Let go, press again: beep 1 (on), beep 2 (reset settings), beep-beep (loading restore menu). Be careful with this, because some of the options on the menu screen will reformat/restore your hard drive. This part I've never had to do, but they added it in a firmware update a while back.

freshticles

My first ps3 did this too. I would turn it on, the music would play, the ribbon would be on the screen, but it wouldn't go to the menu. If I waited about 10 mins it eventually would. At the time, I had it for about 3 months. I came on here, no one had heard anything about it. I brought it to Future Shop and nobody had heard of that problem there either. Luckily, I have a friend who's a manager there, so I was able to do an exchange. I think it may be busted...