How could I know what caused the Yellow Light Of Death?

Question

I had the Yellow Light Of Death (YLOD) on my PS3.

I found many videos on youtube that explain how to repair it.

I read and search a bit further and the problem may be caused by a disc error or a power supply failure or a "reflow"

How could I know what caused the YLOD ?

---

EDIT:

I followed all instructions in this video and my PS3 has rebooted!!

I don't know for how long but it works!

EDIT 2:

After 4-5 weeks, the PS3 has died again.

Asked by Luc M

Answer

The Yellow light of death is used by the PS3 to indicate a hardware failure with the consoles motherboard. On the Xbox 360 this is equivalent to the 3 part Red Ring (often known as the Red Ring of Death).

There are a lot of things which can go wrong with a motherboard, and this is by no means an exhaustive list. The most common reason for Montherboard errors in Consoles is caused by overheating. Consoles have notoriously bad air flow and push their thermal limit rather regularly. This usually results in solder (a material used to connect computer components) heating to a point where it liquefies and detaches. There are many components for which losing solder is non-fatal, but many RRoD and YLoD are caused by GPU (and sometimes CPU) becoming detached as a result of this.

Because turning off your Console will cause the solder to cool (and sometimes reattach) a common solution to these problems is to increase air flow. Alternatively when solder does become detached, it does not always re-liquefy on subsequent heating. As a result some people will suggest just the opposite: decreasing the air flow. The goal here is to re-liquefy the solder to reconnect the components. Frequently a damp towel is recommended.

While neither strategy is guaranteed to fix the problem, these home remedies do have a non-trivial success rate. The only way to guarantee a fix is to either re-solder the component yourself, or send the console in for repair (where they likely will re-solder the component).

Answered by tzenes

Check more discussion of this question.

What are the dangers of your PS3 shutting down when it's not supposed to?

Question

Various PlayStation 3 operations prompt you not to shut down your console while they are in progress. For example, you are to avoid shutting down your console while performing one of the following:

• Updating the firmware
• Installing games/patches
• Saving a game's progress

Some of these operations are quite lengthy, making me feel very uneasy until they complete (who knows when a power outage might strike?)

My question is, what are the implications of the console shutting down during such an operation? Obviously some operations are more "dangerous" than others, as I imagine losing power during a firmware update can prove very unpleasant, so please specify which interrupted operations lead to which problems.

Answer

1. Firmware are small bits of programs that internally control all the other pieces of hardware on the device. If a firmware update is interrupted, then you run into the high risk of turning your device into a 'brick' and thus make it very hard, if not impossible, to repair.

2. Its often okay to interrupt the process when installing games/patches, most software is smart enough to recognize an interruption and either continue where it left off, or restart the process. Worst case scenario, you have to reinstall the game, not a huge loss you can't recover from.

3. Interrupting saving a game can result in corrupted save game files, which means that you will lose all your progress unless you have backups.

In summary, there is a reason why that message is there. Unfortunately, its getting longer and longer, but its necessary, with a few hours lost at best and completely losing all your progress in a game or breaking your hardware at worst.

Check more discussion of this question.