Did I somehow kill my digital camera?

Factual Questions
1

I’ve been using my Optio S40 for about a year now, but not taking many photos. I finally got my act together and decided to load them on to my laptop for storage, instead of leaving them on the camera’s 11M + 256M of storage. With the camera on, I plugged in the USB cable first to the camera, then to the computer. Sure enough, an icon popped up on my desktop (Gnome running over Ubuntu Linux). I opened the 3 or so levels of folders, copied out the images to a new directory on my HD, then deleted the files from the camera’s directory and emptied the trash. I unplugged the camera and shut it off. Later, when I wanted to use it, I turned the camera on, but it emits a faint buzzing sound, and the display is very blurry. After a few seconds, it tells me the battery is depleted, and it shuts down. Replacing the batteres does not help. Anyone have any ideas?

2

Are you sure the batteries you are replacing with are charged and/or usable in the camera?

3

I know diddly about Linux, but in Windows, you have to tell the the computer to “stop” the USB device before unplugging it.

Does Linux have this?

Does the camera have a reset button?

4

This may be your problem. According to the user manual for your camera, you should turn your camera OFF prior to connecting it to the USB port.

5

Take the battery out of the camera and if there is a backup battery take that out of the camera as well. Let the camera sit for 30 minutes then reinstall the batteries.

6

Sometimes it takes even longer than 30 minutes, but this is the best idea. You’re basically rebooting your camera.

7

Thanks for all the ideas so far; alas, no progress yet.

treis: I’m using the same sort of batteries I have in the past, fresh from the pack.

Mr. Blue Sky: I did use the “unmount” option before I unplugged the camera, alas, there doesn’t seem to be any handy button to push to set it back to defaults.

astro & Telemark: I left the batteries out of it overnight, but no dice.

Q.E.D.: Read the manual? That’s crazy talk! Although I do feel a mite sheepish now… :smack:

I did find that if I turn it on in voice-recorder mode, I can access the menus; I formatted the built-in and (I think) the removable memory, and used a reset option that returned it to factory settings (bringing back all those annoying beeps that I had turned off before). All to no avail, as it still does the buzzy/blurry/off thing.