Hi there, I have the same recorder and it's just started doing the exact same thing today

did you find a fix?

thanks

Mary M

The very same has happened to me, as of 1 January. What is going on? My equipment has worked perfectly until now, and I see others have suddenly had the same problem.

Mary.M I don't know if it will solve, but try to make the hard reset of the machine. You don't need to go to the "easy set up", just press the stop button and the power-off together, than unplug it for at least 1 minute.

I beg your pardon in advance if you already did it with no result.

Hi there, thanks for the suggestion, I tried it and nothing happens

as soon as the recorder is plugged in, the 'welcome' appears, then a few seconds later the screen goes blank

then the 'welcome' comes back and it just repeats the cycle

any more ideas, I'd be delighted to hear them!

thanks

Mary M

Folks

Interesting that there are number of us with similar faults.

For what its worth, I will share what I have done and a few more details.

My machine started playing up 18months ago - sometimes it would start up OK and sometimes it wouldn't. If it started OK - it all worked fine.

It got steadily worse - ie more likely not to start when turned on.

About 12months ago, I stripped it down to see if I could do something like change the hard drive or find a loose connection - nothing seems to have any effect, except that..

In the process, I found that it started more reliably if I disconnected the DVD drive power supply....as a temporary 'get us past christmas 2010' thing I wired up an external PSU for the DVD (it takes standard PC viltages so I used an old ATX PSU). I therefore half figured it was a PSU thing.

However, the unit continued to get less and less reliable to start, even with its external supply, and so I abondonned it and put it all back together (besides my wife was a bit fed up with wires all over the place!).

I had checked the internal PSU outputs - they were all spot on sensible voltages like 5.0 and 12.0 - I didn't have a 'scope to hand so can't comment on transients etc. But basicly the internal PSU looked OK.

So - there we go.

I was about to chuck it out last week when I googled the fault and ended up here....hoping that I had missed the obvious.

If there are any SONY moderators on the forum then:

a) does the machine need the hard disk to boot, or does its software reside in NV-RAM?

b) is there a processor reset line on one of the PCB's that I can ground to force a processor reset whilst power is 'up' in case the CPU is not getting a clean 'power-on reset pulse'?

b) is there a known history of erratic PSU operation?

c) we have particulalry low mains AC here - often nearer 200V rms rather than 220-230 more normally seen - might this be a factor.

Cheers all.

M

This sounds like a hardware crash due to a faulty hard drive.

did you turn it off wile the drive was writing.

i would remove the hard drive to see if it boots up if it was mine.