Whenever I try to enter the strip, the screen blacks out and there's nothing I can do except rebooting the PS3. This happened to me for the first time before the patch and the same thing is still happening now after the patch. Anyone else with the same problem? Any idea how to fix this?

Same problem here.The very first time i entered the strip my game was fine.Then i left and came back and problem has occured.This has happened to me both before and after the 1.01 patch has happened.

This bug seems to happen after you finish the quest to kill McCafferty for the bar in freeside. After you kill him on the strip, the game will no longer load the strip without freezing. This happened to me, but after surfing several forums, I found a very strange solution.

The Strip will still load without freezing if and only if your character is currently wearing the "Old Cowboy Hat." Luckily, I had the Old Cowboy Hat in my inventory already, but I believe it's found at the Crimson Caravan (maybe in the shop?). At any rate, I'm not joking - The Strip will load for me if I wear the Old Cowboy Hat and will freeze if I'm not wearing it. Bear in mind that this is still very annoying. The Old Cowboy Hat is one of the more stupid looking hats in the game, and you have to equip it EVERY time you enter The Strip - including each and every time you exit a casino - or the game will freeze.

I strongly hope this will be fixed in the PS3 patch!

I will have to check it out.I seen one or two other people post about this.Either way thank you for helping out.

It works, thank you so much ! Just buy the old cowboy hat and you are good to go !!

Damn, I thought I was the only one having this issue, I'm gonna try this cowboy hat trick, hopefully it works because I'm TIRED of resetting my PS3 over and over again!

Thanks for the answer. I am indeed having problem since I killed McCafferty. I will try the cowboy hat trick when I get home tonight.

Wearing mcaffertys hat also works until you turn it in to complete the quest
Be careful with your old cowboy hat!!
I was just wearing mine all the time so I could come and go but now it's 'broken' and since I can't wear it anymore, back to black screens.
Gotta try to find another or see if any npc can repair it.

The tricks works.I am wearing the old cowboy hat and can easily into the strip now.I did kill mccrafty before hence why i had no problem getting into the strip before.That is a really weird bug/quirk to cause such a problem.That is something they need to fix/update.

I'm having the same problem. It was starting to make me very angry. I,m glad someone found a solution otherwise I would not be able to complete the game. I just hope that they fix this in a patch soon. Well I guess im off to find that hat.. lol.. :facepalm:

In freeside down the street from the old mormon fort in freeside there is a shop called rick and mike's(or something very close to that) they have a bunch of old cowboy hats for sale.So if your looking for others to buy and/or get ones for a repair job go there.