What steps should I take before removing CFW from my PS3

[muh316]

My friend wanted to remove CFW from his PS3. He's caved in and wants to play online badly. I just wanted to know what steps I should take to completely remove all traces of the CFW from the PS3. I want to delete everything that had to do with his custom firmware. Is it just as simple as pressing delete or are there more internal files?

[BahumatLord]

if you want to go back to official firmware to go on PSN, you should do a complete system reset. That involves backing up your savegames and any music or videos that you have on your internal drive to an external source such as your PC or another hard drive. Make sure you have a copy of the latest official update file on a usb stick or drive in the folder PS3\UPDATE named PS3UPDATE.PUP. Format your hard drive through the system menu or the recovery menu. After that you should be able to install the latest firmware through the recovery menu. The only thing left to do would be to restore your savegames (make sure you only restore the ones for games in your region). I'm not sure about the trophy data but you should be able to back it up using the backup function on the XMB. If you don't care about that, then don't worry about it.

[bitsbubba]

sell it to someone who wants CFW and buy another

[BahumatLord]

sell it to someone who wants CFW and buy another

That's actually not a bad idea. I'm sure there are a lot of people trying to find a console capable of being modded, and yours already is. You should be able to make enough to buy a new console, maybe even one that comes with a game that you don't already have. Don't try to get rich off of it, but try to keep it pretty much a fair trade. Or another idea would be to trade it to someone who accidentally updated, or bought a console that couldn't be modded for theirs. Everyone wins