Flashing red light:(

What does this mean? I had just started a download of some store content and was sending out messages then my PS3 just shuts off and the red light flashes then goes solid. Power off then on and it turns on for about 5 seconds then shuts down and flashes. It happened about 5 minutes after boot up, fans were running. Everything seemed fine. Maybe a HDD failure?

Or am I SOL and buying a slim PS3(ew, they look nasty).

Interesting, I know no one that's had any probs with their PS3s, about 12 people I personally know. Good luck. Get it fixed

It shut off cos it got too hot, or its clogged with dust.

It's definitely NOT clogged with dust. I opened it up a cleaned it out VERY WELL a few weeks ago. It's in an open area where it can breathe well. I don't see any flashing yellow light so it doesn't seem to be YLOD.

It did shut off pretty must just as a backround DL started for the NFS demo. Possible the HDD died? it is a new HDD, not the stock 60 gig. What makes me think this isn't the problem is I cant even boot into the debug menu, if the 60 gig model even has one.

PS3 has been sitting about 2 hours now and still wont turn on. Doesnt even boot up. turns on then almost immediately off and flashing red light. Tried switching back to my 60 gig HDD and no luck. Guess I'm buying a new PS3 this friday...sucks because I wanted to use that money for a new tv...oh well. **** happens I guess.

It won't boot up. Same thing happened to me 2 months ago. I sent it to a local repair shop, it was fine for 2 weeks, then died again. Luckily they gave me a 2 month warranty, sent it again, the second time it worked for almost a month and a half, then died again. I went to the store and told them to check if another repair was possible. They told me it wasn't and gave me my money back in store credit. I bought a slim from Amazon this monday, it's supposed to arrive tomorrow.

You can look the flashing red light on youtube or google, there is some people that repair it, but eventually the PS3 dies again. Flashing red or yellow light in the PS3 is the equivalent of the ring of death in the xbox360.

If you don't have a warranty I'd recommend just buying a new one. Most repairs on that problem only fix it for a short period of time until it persists again.