Holy crap… do I ever want to throw my PS3 out the window right now!

First off, allow me to apologize in advance. This is going to be a rant… actually, no… not a rant. A rant doesn't even describe what I want this to be. This will be a full-on b!tchfest!

Also, I just want to say that whoever out there thinks that Firmware updates can't screw up your system (oh, and I know there's some of you out there), if you're going to come on here and make me even more angry after what I'm about to say, please refrain yourself. I'd appreciate it.

Okay, here it goes; so I updated my PS3 to version 3.41 yesterday (July 27th) like I'm sure so many of you did. At first, I didn't really notice any difference. I mean, did anything even change anywhere on the XMB or elsewhere? About a half-hour later is when I noticed the real difference.

I went on to the PS Store and it was running ridiculously slow all of a sudden. I thought it was just the network, but it continued throughout the day and the remainder of today. Tonight is where it really came down on me.

I just finished a television show and went to exit back to the XMB. It wouldn't let me. All that was allowed was the option to turn off my system. No big deal. I'll just restart it, right? Wrong. I hit the 'turn off' option and the screen went dark and the power light on my system started to flash a hundred miles an hour. I walked up to my system and held to the power switch to continue the restart but nothing would happen. It was frozen and flashing. Not wanting to turn the main switch off in the back of the system, I tried unplugging my unit from the wall.

When I restarted the system, I was told that my system had turned off wrong and then I was instructed on how to properly turn off a PS3 (thanks for the help on that one, Sony). I continued on only to have my system freeze again a half-hour later. No way was this happening again.

Same thing again; frozen and blinking green lights. Remembering that Sony and my PS3 did not like the way I tried to solve the problem last time, I decided to try the main switch on the back of the console. Click — click. Turn the power back on…

“Your system has received corrupted data. Restore of your PlayStation 3 is about to begin.” Oh, yeah… I knew exactly what this message meant. It meant that I was about to loose 350GB worth of saved memory off of my PS3 (I upgraded to a 500GB hard drive a couple years back). All fifty or so of my downloadable games, demos and videos were about to vanish. Hours upon hours of game saves were about to wave goodbye, too. Add on to that the hundreds of movies, television shows and CDs that I had saved on to my system. Yes, my night was/is officially ruined.

Now, I can't point my finger at Firmware update 3.41 and say, “Uh-huh… it was you!” No, no — can't do that. I have no proof. For all I know, it could've been anything. All I know is that was the last official change of anything that my system had received and it was after that that my PS3 decided to turn for the worse.

At the moment, my system is still restoring. It has been frozen at 48% for about 45 minutes now. How come? I have no idea. However, I do know that whenever my console eventually begins to work again, it will be a long, long week of anxiety-inducing downloading. Wish me luck… and good luck to you proud PS3 owners who have version 3.41.