After a long, hard week at work, all I wanted to do was spend a bit of my Saturday afternoon shooting up dirty, rotten scoundrels on GTA4. Of course, when I tried to fire it up today, I got nothing but a frozen screen.
I called up Gamespot and then tracked down the issue online. It’s a bogus fix — you have to disable half the features of the PS3 to get it working — but it’ll do for now:
- Delete the game’s install data. This is done via the PS3 options. Scroll along the cross media bar until you reach the ‘Game’ tab, now scroll up / down the list until you reach the ‘Game Data Utility’ Enter this and locate the GTA IV option. Highlight this and press triangle once, from the menu select Delete. This will delete the game’s install information.
- Delete the game’s save files. To delete any save files you will need to do the following. Scroll along the cross media bar until you reach the ‘Game’ tab, now scroll up / down the list until you reach the ‘Save Data Utility’ Enter this and locate the GTA IV option. Highlight this and press triangle once, and from the context menu select Delete.
- Disable your Internet connectivity for the PS3. To do this scroll along the cross media bar until you reach the ‘Settings’ tab, now scroll up / down the list until you reach the ‘Network Settings’. Now scroll down to the Internet connection option and press x, now select the disable option. Once this has been done unplug the ethernet cable if you are connecting to the Internet if using this.
- Disable the console’s information board. To do this scroll along the cross media bar until you reach the ‘Network’ tab, now scroll up / down the list until you reach the ‘Information Board’, highlight this and press triangle. From the menu select ‘Do not display’ Press X to confirm this.
- Disable Media Server functionality. Scroll to Settings, now scroll up / down to ‘Network Settings’ select Media Server connection. Once this has been done press triangle and change the option Disabled.
- Delete all of the system’s Internet cache. To do this scroll along the cross media bar until you reach the ‘Network’ tab, now scroll up / down the list until you reach the ‘Internet Browser’, highlight this and press X. Once you browser opens press the triangle button once, from the new menu highlight the ‘Tools’ option and press X. Scroll down the menu until you reach ‘Delete Cookies’ and press X. Confirm the files deletion. Repeat this for ‘Delete Cache’.
- Turn off the PS3 screen saver. Use the cross media bar to scroll to ‘Settings’, select ‘Display Settings’. Now highlight ‘Screensaver’ and set this to ‘Do not use’.
- Once this has been done, manually restart you PS3 by holding down the power button for 5 seconds it will beep once and then shut down. Release the power button and re-press it and hold for about 5 seconds. The system will then boot and reset all display settings. You will be prompted to reset your display settings to how you require them.
- Once restarted please try the game again, you will be prompted to reinstall.
Once the game has started please turn off the following features:
- The game’s auto-save. Press Start, Game, and locate the Auto-save option. Turn this off.
- Turn off the game’s flicker filter. Press Start, Display and locate the Flicker Filter option. Turn this off.
- Turn off the controller vibration feature. Press Start, Controls and locate the vibration option. Turn this off.
Back to blasting.
UPDATE: Ok, I’m pretty far into the game now and I think I may have run into another freeze bug, though it’s a bit different. I just blew up the mob in the Actions Speak Louder Than Words mission and I’m stuck on a cinematic view of the smoldering rubble. The day is slowly turning to night and all I can do is hit start to get to the pause screen.
Fuck. If I have to clear my saved files to fix this, I’m tossing the game. I’m too far deep.