Friend of mine had the same issue. The optics just stopped reading all sorts of disc. Finally he sent it in to sony for repair and he got it back within 2-3 weeks.

Well, I've got it in the midst of the 5 hour full system format thing right now. The quick one did nothing. If it doesn't work, I'll probably just take it back to Gamestop and put all the credit for it and the PS3 games I have towards all the 360 stuff that's on the way. (That will please the PS3 fanboys, I'm sure.)

my 60gig did the same ages ago, but my new 40gig is running immaculatly, in fact its 60 gig as i found a new sealed 60gig hd for 20quid

Theres no need to panic. Its not a common issue....no need to lose faith in the PS3 on the whole

So you're doing stuff like this because of fanboys. If you don't like your system, sell it towards what you like. You probably shouldn't have even bought it in the first place because the fact that you'd consider not even having one means you probably never even liked your purchase in the first place. I don't think even Rock_on 2008 would lose sleep over it.

No, that's what we call a "joke". See, since every fanboy tends to get riled up whenever anything is said about their system... Never mind.

But the fact is, in the very likely situation that I can't get another BC PS3, I'd probably just take the roughly $500 I'll have coming back in store credit and pay off half a dozen games coming out for the system I have that does work. Ironically enough, it's my 360.

 happened to me too but it wasnt underwarranty so dont complain just send it in it takes like a week and a half to fix and u have a 360 so u can just play that while u wait

 try what he said and if it sdoesnt work send it in if it doesnt work there is nothing you can do but send it in this only happens with the 60 or 40 gigs because the new ones bluray laser is smaller and doesnt break also if you turned it of with the back switch it probably broke the laser i did my reasearch when mine broke

Same exact thing happened to me 1-2 months ago, you'll probably get the "error 801xxxxx etc" pop up soon. This is caused by some kind of corruption that happened during an install, and it effects the actual hardware. Send it back to Sony and they'll fix it.

I got my 60gb BC PS3 fixed and shiped back in 3 weeks, make sure you tell the customer service guy that you want the same exact model back.

You get the one you send in back or an identical model. You will recieve a backwards compatible PS3 if you send a backwards compatible PS3 in whether or not its the one you sent in. I had my PS3 corrupted by a game (the game crashed and the PS3 wouldn't read discs anymore) and sent it in to Sony. It was back within a week good as new, I reinstalled the backup I made, no problem at all. They sent back a 60GB backwards compatible PS3 just like the one I sent in.