SL locked up totally, had to leave battery out for 24 hours, losing profiles

[wlaidlaw]

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Yesterday my SL locked up completely. An image was showing on the LCD of what was in front of the lens but no buttons or controls were functional. I popped the battery and waited one minute before reinserting a newly charged battery. Still nothing. I removed and remounted the lens and also removed and reinserted both cards - no improvement. On the camera from time to time, the writing LED would illuminate for a few seconds and then go out. Prior to arranging for the camera to be picked up under the professional photographer scheme, I thought I would just leave the battery out for 24 hours. One day later it sprang to life on re-inserting the battery but had lost all profiles. As I was not doing something like updating firmware, I did not have a set of profiles saved to either of the SD cards, so I have had to re-create them from memory. I did have them saved on a laptop but I have since replaced that laptop and as the new one had a somewhat smaller SSD, I had had to limit how much data I saved on it. The 1TB 2016 Touchbar 15.4" MBP's were only available to special order with a 6 week lead time, against the 500GB models, where I even got a significant discount from my usual dealer in London. 

 

I hope this is not an indication of a problematic camera to look forward to. This is the sort of thing my M8 used to do, until its electronic suite was replaced while the upgrade was being done. 

 

Wilson

[douglas fry]

Sorry to hear about your hassles Wilson, but the first thing I would do is try another battery...same issue? Then its the camera

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[douglas fry]

Sorry re read your post, you tried two batteries..I'd take it to Leica in Bruton Place in London for them to look at. 

[gerhard.hagen]

Yesterday my SL locked up completely. An image was showing on the LCD of what was in front of the lens but no buttons or controls were functional. I popped the battery and waited one minute before reinserting a newly charged battery. Still nothing. I removed and remounted the lens and also removed and reinserted both cards - no improvement. On the camera from time to time, the writing LED would illuminate for a few seconds and then go out. Prior to arranging for the camera to be picked up under the professional photographer scheme, I thought I would just leave the battery out for 24 hours. One day later it sprang to life on re-inserting the battery but had lost all profiles. As I was not doing something like updating firmware, I did not have a set of profiles saved to either of the SD cards, so I have had to re-create them from memory. I did have them saved on a laptop but I have since replaced that laptop and as the new one had a somewhat smaller SSD, I had had to limit how much data I saved on it. The 1TB 2016 Touchbar 15.4" MBP's were only available to special order with a 6 week lead time, against the 500GB models, where I even got a significant discount from my usual dealer in London. 

 

I hope this is not an indication of a problematic camera to look forward to. This is the sort of thing my M8 used to do, until its electronic suite was replaced while the upgrade was being done. 

 

Wilson

 

I had such a freeze-up only once in the field with a corrupt sd card in slot 2. The same symptoms as your camera, battery change helped nothing. Without sd card and pausing for 5 minutes figuring out what to do everything went smoothly again, though no profiles lost. i then used only the sd card in slot 1. At home sd card in slot 1 proved to be corrupt, went directly to the trash.

 

just my 2 cents

 

 

Gerhard

[wlaidlaw]

I think it is possible that there was some dirt on the contacts of SD card #1 ( A Lexar 1000x UHS II 128GB card). I have cleaned the contacts of both cards with IPA (Not the Greene King Beer). I am currently in the south of France not the UK so taking to Bruton Street not easy. If it happens again, I will get it picked up for return to Wetzlar. I have had problems with the Lexar cards and floppy read lock switches but have super glued them in the read unlocked position. 

 

Wilson

[Big John]

Have had zero issues with my SL in 12 months

[LocalHero1953]

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My SD cards occasionally get accidentally locked (clumsy fingers), but the SL tells me immediately what the problem is - it hasn't frozen..

Edited April 26, 2017 by LocalHero1953

[LD_50]

I would suspect as others have an SD card issue is to blame.

 

This was a good reminder to store profiles even when not updating firmware.

[wlaidlaw]

My SD cards occasionally get accidentally locked (clumsy fingers), but the SL tells me immediately what the problem is - it hasn't frozen..

 

Paul, 

 

 

I would agree that there is a message when the read/write lock switch gets knocked when inserting. This happened very easily on the Lexar cards compared with SanDisk, where the sliders are quite stiff. However I have super glued the slider on all my Lexar cards in the write position. There were no error messages when I got the lock up. It still seems to be behaving properly, so I am tending towards thinking it was a dirty card contact, which would explain the write LED flicking on and off. 

 

Wilson

[count_greebo]

Had a problem like that once in the field. It went away after I reseated the lens (24-90) and the SD cards plus popped the battery again.

 

cg

[wlaidlaw]

I did all that but it was not until I left the battery out for 24 hours that it rebooted. I am slightly surprised that the profiles seem to be stored in volatile memory, since I assume this is why they were lost. If they are stored in non-volatile memory, it is worrying that some set of circumstances wiped them. I have now stored a set of my profiles off the camera in my laptop, Dropbox and back up server.