Recently I got an old Canon IXUS 400 from a family member. There was a problem however. It didn’t work. When turned on, the display gave me an error message: “memory card error”. Well, actually it was in Dutch: ” Geheugenkaart fout”. So what to do with a 6 year old camera that doesn’t work? Fix it!
The solution
The problem seems to be known by Canon. It even offered free repairs. But unfortunately it doesn’t offer them for free anymore. The big community behind the internet found a solution to fix it yourself. The problem seems to originate from the software. Remember that a reset of your Windows PC can magically fix certain PC issues? The trick for the IXUS 400 memory card error is to do a reset as well. But not a soft reset by turning it off and on. You’ll need a hard reset, which can be achieved by removing the battery AND the internal battery before putting it back.
How to remove and put back the internal battery
- First of all, remove all the screws you can find. And remember where they came from 😉
- Then remove the front and back part of the casing
- Remove the battery. Mine seemed to be glued to the thing on top of it, but removing it didn’t give any issues.
- Wait a few seconds to be certain that all the power is out.
- Put the battery back
- Put the case back
- Put all the screws back
Warnings
- After all this, I still got the error message. DON’T PANIC! When formatting the memory card, it worked fine again.
- When putting the device back to one piece, I couldn’t remember where to put some small plastic thing and I was left with 1 screw and 1 hole which didn’t fit together. The camera worked as desired, except that I wasn’t able to switch between shooting photo’s and displaying them anymore. Probably the small plastic piece had something to do with this.
- If you feel uncomfortable about doing this, then don’t! You could always send it to Canon for repairs. It might not be free, but you’ll get quality.
Thanks to
I didn’t make the above pictures myselfs. The picture with all the pieces on it comes from Aline Wong. She encountered the same problem and managed to solve it. She did this inspired by Will. He made the pictures of the internal thing and marked where the battery can be found.
Hello Leendert, thanks for your article! It also helped me with the ixus400. Now after all this time with my ixus I was a little afraid it would not work anymore. It took me 10minutes to remove the internal battery and mount everything back together. The error was gone afterwards. Thank you very much!!!