Skip to content
Aug 31 / kkrizka

Useful Settings in the PSP Recovery Menu

The PSP recovery menu has many interesting settings, however many go unnoticed by the average user. I’ve recently discovered several that made my PSP much more fun to use. The following post covers the settings that I found, in hope that others will find them useful.

The first step is to make sure that you are running the latest custom firmware from team M33. If you are not, you can read an earlier tutorial that I wrote with instructions about how to upgrade to it. The next step is to start the recovery menu, which I have also documented earlier. When you are in the menu, you can navigate with the up/down arrows, and you can use the X button to change the selected setting. After you have changed all the needed settings, just click the “Exit”option in the main menu, and the PSP will reboot into the XMB.

Configuration -> Skip Sony logo

This setting can will skip the Sony logo that you see when you start your PSP from a shutdown, which should speed up the boot time of the PSP a bit. However I think that the setting is useless in most cases, because I usually put my PSP into Sleep mode that does not display the Sony logo. But I have enabled this option anyways, because from time to time I do need to shut off the PSP completely.

Configuration -> Hide corrupt icons

To install a homebrew game that has been compiled for FW1.5, you have to copy two directories to your PSP memory stick. One is the actual application, and the other (the one that ends with a %) is used to help to launch it. However the second folder will be counted as another game by Sony’s XMB menu, and will be displayed as “Corrupted Data”, because it is not an actual PSP application. If you install a lot of homebrews, your XMB might become very cluttered. But this can be fixed with the Hide corrupt icons setting option on the M33 firmwares. Just enable it, and all the garbage entries in your XMB Application section will be gone. This is the most useful setting in the custom firmwares, and I suggest everyone enables it.

CPU Speed -> Speed in XMB

The processor in your PSP can run at several speeds, with the default being 222Hz. There is no way to change that in the official firmwares, but in the custom ones it is a piece of cake. I suggest that you set the speed to 75Hz, because that is the slowest possible speed. Your XMB does not need much processing power to run comfortably, so running it at 222Hz is a waste. Running at a lower clock speed does not require as much energy, and will increase the battery life of your PSP. Just press the X button after you have selected this option until you see it currently set to 75.

I run my PSP at this speed without any problems while I use it as an MP3 player. However I have not tried to watch a video, so you might experience some problems there because decoding of video requires much more power. I will cover how to change the clock speed of your PSP from the XMB in a later post.

CPU Speed -> Speed in UMD/ISO
This setting sets the speed of your CPU while you play a game from an UMD or from a dumped ISO. I set mine to 333Hz, which is the fastest possible speed, to reduce the load times in many games. This is not overclocking your PSP, so it is completely safe. It has been designed to run at 333Hz, Sony just decided to underclock it to 222Hz in order to increase the battery life. If you run your games from an ISO, the 333Hz setting is recommended because you are already saving energy by loading from your memory stick, therefore your battery life will not be affected as much.

22 Comments

Leave a comment
  1. xpand / Sep 22 2007

    Hmm… This sure was helpful.

    You made one little mistake though, the speeds shouldn’t be in Hz but in MHz.

    Apart from that this page is lookin’ good. 🙂

  2. Mintar / Jan 3 2008

    Hi Karol
    I just got the PSP slim 2001.
    I have tried to create ISO folder in PSP following some instruction from forums, but it is always failed. Now I can only play music, video, photo or an UMD game I got when I bought the PSP.
    I saw your instruction about accessing recovery menu on PSP. I did exactly what you said, but the menu doesn’t appear. It always turns on the normal screen.
    I appreciate that you can help me to deal with my PSP.
    Thanks
    Mintar

    • Karol Krizka / Jan 3 2008

      Make sure you are running a custom firmware.

      • Mintar / Jan 3 2008

        Hi Karol,
        I tried to run 3.71 M33-2, then M33-3, then M33-4 following your instruction. But after press X button, the PSP restarts and it says “The game could not be started”. And nothing changes.
        Help me please !
        Mintar

        • Ojmar / Aug 16 2008

          On the home page of your psp press select and a menu will show up. Go down to UMD ISO mode and change it to M33 Driver. This will enbale you to play ISO and CSO games.
          Hope this helps.

    • H^PSP^VD / Aug 8 2009

      u need 5.00 m33 or 4.01/3 m33 to open recovory menu i have same thing i just downgraded with pandora battery it simple ^_*

  3. Lawrence Oliver Castro / Oct 29 2008

    Your so cool Mr.Krizka, you help me a lot with pages like this, keep it up and more power.

  4. jason / Nov 3 2008

    i dont know what my psp’s problems are cause when i turn-on my unit, the recovery menu apears. i don’t know if it’s virus or my rubber keypads are thorned-off. pls. give advice . thanks.

  5. muthskhee / Feb 17 2009

    …on my psp, someone did a hard hit on it so all the settings were changes, and for some reason i dunno, i can’t play all the games in it?? what supposed to be the problem??

  6. jasim altaf / Jun 7 2009

    HI !!!
    MY PSP DOES NOT OPEN USB MODE,… AND WHEN IT OPENS THAN I CANT COPY ANY GAME IN IT. IT JUST CLOSE IT SELF WHAT BSHOULD I DO PLZ HELP THANX….

  7. cianmarf / Jan 3 2010

    Hello Karol

    How can I go to the home page menu to enable the ISO & CSO games?
    thanks

  8. tyler / Feb 17 2010

    idiot
    u need cfw and need 2 mod your psp using a pandora battery

  9. help / May 24 2010

    Hey i did that but when i play a game its only colour brown!

  10. michael / Dec 31 2010

    the umd dosent start
    HELP!!

  11. deddeeeee / Mar 4 2011

    i just installed the recovery thingyy…changed the speeeddd..but when i exited the menu..my psp was kind of slowwwww…what shuld i do to bring it to normal speedd??

  12. henri / May 20 2011

    this is idiots help

  13. arnel cartoneros / Jun 7 2011

    hi carol, thanks for your helping us in this repairing software of psp. i troubleshoot the problem of sony psp. with the problem of blank screen when it run in a both game. actually this psp brought here in my service center. which is no display. because the owner said he was accidentally fallen down. when i trouble the hardware, the next problem is the software when i tested it the game could not run. it will turn to blank screen.

    thanks i solve this. i hope you can help me other problem soon if i have problem regarding any portable devices running in a fix software.

    Best regards Arnel, my site is http://www.peers2peers.webs.com and my email is; swordspider@yahoo.com and greencomval@yahoo.com

    God Bless

  14. jay / Jun 14 2011

    my psp hangs everytime the select menu appears, the clock is running good the sound volume is good but the scroll joystick doesnt move what can i do? help pls…

    • Eunan / Sep 19 2011

      Jay, I wanted to know if u have resolved ur psp problems and if yes, d steps u took to achieve that. Please reply

  15. Dude / Feb 7 2008

    This @#$#@ sucks i got the music and the photos on my psp but it wont @#$%$^# play!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Trackbacks and Pingbacks

  1. How To Quickly Change Your PSP’s Processing Power | Karol Krizka
  2. Custom Firmware Extender 1.7 | Karol Krizka
Leave a comment
Cancel reply