Skip update 4.45 for PS3, it may lock your console

PlayStation 3 gamers have been complaining about their consoles being bricked after installing Sony’s new update. So whatever you do, don’t accept the new v4.45 update. Don’t press X when Sony prompts you to. At least not yet.

According to Twitter feeds and forums, some users complained that they couldn’t boot their systems after installing the newest firmware update. Some PS3 owners are saying that the update makes it impossible to load the system’s XMB (Xross Media Bar). Your console will instead just be hanging on the waving ribbon home menu after booting up. Some users said that even restoring file systems didn’t resolve the issue.

So far only a handful of gamers have been affected though. As users have taken to PlayStation‘s official forum, about 23 pages of responses related to the issue have been posted.

According to Sony, the update was meant to include a Trophy notification update and general software stability. It would mainly enable users to choose whether or not there should be in-game trophy notifications.

PS3 system software update v4.45 coming soon, Trophy notification options and improved system stability are on the way

— PlayStation (@PlayStation) June 19, 2013

As Engadget reports, “the problem may only affect users with hard drives installed that are 500GBs or larger.”

This isn’t the first time Sony has rolled out a seemingly simple update that ended up endangering HDD lives. A few years ago v3.41 resulted in corrupt HDDs. Let’s hope you don’t have auto-updates enabled.

So far Sony hasn’t officially responded but has just recently rolled back the v4.45 update.