Solution to PlayStation Home D4001 Error

I had a PlayStation 3 a few years ago, but I didn’t use it all that much.  I thought PlayStation Home was a neat concept, but apart from that, I didn’t do much with my PS3.  So, after a while, it just gave up on itself.  It froze up and never worked again.  Recently, I went out and purchased a PlayStation 3 “Slim” model…  mostly for BluRay!  But when I got it, I wanted to see what advancements had been made in PlayStation Home.  So I downloaded the installer file and when I tried to connect, BAM.  I got the D4001 error.  It wasn’t helpful or useful, it was a generic error code with no additional information.  I posted in the official PlayStation forums for support multiple times over, never to get anywhere.

Finally I sat down late at night and decided to crack down and figure this one out.  When you read the solution you might roll your eyes, but continue to the bottom to understand where the underlying problem was.  After literally months of frustration and hours of constant troubleshooting, I found my problem.  It seems as though the DNS I had set as my primary (PSU.edu’s 128.118.25.3) was not working correctly (appears to be entirely offline).  My secondary DNS (Google’s 8.8.8.8) was working for PSN, but for some reason PSHome ignores the secondary DNS setting!

In my network connection settings of my PS3, setting my PRIMARY DNS to 8.8.8.8 and leaving my Secondary DNS as all 0’s has resolved the issue, I am signed in to PlayStation Home for the first time in over a year.

Why didn’t it work when I used the easy / auto-config?  Because auto-config settings on the PS3 pull their settings from your home router.  My router had been set up with the same default DNS structure, 128.118.25.3 was my primary, preferred DNS!!  I was creating my own problem.

I have since moved not only my PlayStation but my router and my entire home network on to OpenDNS and have had no problems.

This may not be the solution for everyone, but I sure hope it helps a few of you out!