So, my wife got me a new slim PS3 today to replace my old YLOD’ed phat (Yes, Awesome wife I know. And slim PS3 cuz I hate the looks of the new superslim). But, I digress. The issue at hand is that everything worked fine when I unwrapped it, hooked it up to the power and TV and switched it on. However, once I started the PSN store (or what is now called Sony Entertainment Network Store), nothing worked. I got the main screen/content of the store displayed but I couldn’t move around in the store. None of the buttons on the DS3 worked. I hooked up my older sixaxis and still the same. The only thing I could do was to hit the PS button which would bring up a menu from where I could quit the store app and then again everything worked fine once I was out onto XMB or in any game or for any other feature not related to the store.
Using different controllers made sure that it was not a controller issue. I suspected that it could be a bad coding issue on Sony’s part where the store is trying to communicate over some ports and the thread blocks on not being able to (since I had the router firewall on and UPnP disabled) making it look like the controller isn’t working. So, I turned on UPnP and rebooted the router but still the same issue.
But, ultimately I hit upon the solution by mistake. I kept a button pressed on the controller while the PSN store was starting up and there it was. I could now move around and use the store without any issues. So, that’s the solution folks. Just keep a button pressed before starting the store app and keep it pressed till the main screen is fully loaded. I don’t know how or why this fixes the problem and I’m going to drop a mail to the Sony customer care after writing this blog post. I hope they fix this in the next update.