If you have already contacted Sony about the problem, you may already know that their fee for repairing the problem is not cheap. If you have a warranty that is still good on the unit, you may want to go ahead and send it in since it will not cost you anything other than the cost of shipping. Just be aware of a few details that tend to catch unsuspecting gamers off guard when they receive their console back:
1. Sony does repair your ps3 yellow lights of death very quickly. You can expect to wait at least six weeks before you hear back from them, and it could be several months.
2. They will erase the memory from your system, so you will lose any gaming data saved in your console. There is no way to avoid this.
3. You may receive a different refurbished console back, rather than the exact one you originally sent in.
If you don't have a warranty currently covering your unit or you don't want to accept the above conditions that come with sending the unit in to Sony, you have the option to repair yellow light of death right in your own home in much lesser time.
It may sound risky to fix your own PS3 system, but thousands of people have already done it with great success with the help of http://www.ylod.net/
When you do it yourself you don't have to pay few hundreds bucks or wait six weeks to play your games again and you don't have to worry about erasing everything saved on your hard drive!
First, check your system over for clues of what may have caused the yellow light of death on your system. The most common cause is overheating, which often occurs when a console is placed on the floor with the fan vents against the floor or possibly against a wall. The system needs adequate ventilation to function properly, and when that vent is blocked off overheating naturally occurs over time.
If your console is on the floor or in a bad situation for ventilation, fix this right away. Also check if the vent area is clogged with dust, which can also cause internal issues over time.
Next, try unplugging the console from the wall for about half an hour, then plugging it back in. If this doesn't fix the ps3 YLOD problem, take out the hard drive on the side for a couple minutes then put it back in. If you have access a working hard drive from someone else's PS3, try to put theirs into your system to see if it works. If it does, then you need to replace your hard drive.
If none of this works, you will need to repair yellow light of death with an online program that walks you through the process step by step.
You can find a rundown and review of the best programs at http://www.ylod.net/
