Sony Handycam DCR-SR45: Please help! Touch screen not responding!

[RyanAbella]

Not really sure if this is the best place to post this, but here goes...

I have been using the Sony Handycam DCR-SR45.(http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs...552921665291488)

Been using it for about 2 years, and out of NOWHERE, the touch screen buttons are no longer responding!

There are some very important videos on here, so if you have any information I would greatly appreciate it.

My wedding videos and my sister's ambassador trip to Japan are on this camera, so I'm very concerned.

The only thing I can think of is I was using it in a very shallow pool, but I'm 95% sure I didn't get any water on it. Even if I did, I have read of water being trapped behind touch screens, and they are still functional.

The camera looks absolutely perfect, it records properly and would probably playback properly if I could access anything without using the touch screen. I knew when I bought it that I never trust touch screens as they wear out and become less sensitive.

Does anyone have any information on how is could have possibly started not responding, and maybe how I could fix it?

Thank you I appreciate ANY responses.

-Ryan.

[glc]

Can you offload the videos to a computer without using the touch screen? If not, you are going to have to find a way to remove the hard drive to get your videos - which will finish destroying the camera.

[David M]

Have you first tried pulling the battery for a minute which might do a system reset?

There must be a way to upload the contents of the drive to external media? You may want to call Sony to find out.

If that does not work then get it into a Sony authorized repair facility with explicit instructions taped to the camera not to erase the contents of the hard drive. I would be a little nervous about doing this and would first try everything I can think of to get the wedding video out before handing the camera over to someone else.

They may be able to remove the hard drive, put it in a functioning camera and then get the wedding video out that way. Sony has pretty proprietary stuff, so it may not be a standard hard drive...no idea.

[jra64]

Edit: Craaap I left my brother's account logged in. Sorry about that, this is RyanAbella the thread starter.




Thank you for the responses =).

After a lot of run around with Sony representatives, I'm not sure how I got my touchscreen working, but I'm definitely not complaining! Here's what I did for those of you with the same problem.

Take out the battery, put it back in, connect Camera via USB to computer, switch from video to picture mode, go back to video mode, viola!

I don't know why that did it or if it reset anything or my touch screen just MAGICALLY started working again, but it looked as if one of those things has COMPLETELY fixed my touch screen. I was told that sometimes you can get a 'phantom' touch on the touch screen that is actually outside of the touch areas and you have to reset the software on the camera, but doing these things, basically did the trick. I'm not sure how long it will last, but I will post up if this isn't a long term solution. I'm backing up all my videos now and savoring the videos that could have been lost.

Thanks GLC and David M for your feedback. Don't ask me why but this solution has resolved the problem, at least for now.

[RyanAbella]

It broke again I was backing up videos and it had an error, when I tried to reconnect, touch screen didn't work =(

Anyone have any idea on what might be happening?

[David M]

No idea whats happening but if it is out of warranty I think it may be time for a new camera and I would not go with Sony this time.

Did you try once more the procedure that worked for you? Were you able to create an external copy of the wedding video?