60D Won’t Turn On: Memory Cards and Magic Lantern

[JohnnyMain]

I found a fix to my problem and I’d like to share it.

Problem: After a couple of apparent failed Magic Lantern firmware loading attempts, my 60D would only turn on if I followed this specific procedure.

1. Power off unit.
2. Remove memory card and shut card door.
3. Remove battery and then reinstall charged battery. Close battery door.
4. Power on unit. Unit will only power on if no memory card is present!!!!! I was freaking out. My awesome camera was now effectively useless!!!!!

Backstory

I wanted to load Magic Lantern onto my 60D. The install failed twice. That is, I saw Install Successful dialogs after each install but when I repowered the 60D, Magic Lantern would never fire up. On my 3rd attempt I noticed the 60D stopped powering on at all. I began to panic because it felt like my awesome camera had become a paper weight.

After struggling with the unit I discovered I could power it on but only by following the exact steps above and in that order. I tried connecting the EOS utility and that did connect but there was no way to reload firmware from that program. As soon as I would open the memory card door to insert a memory card, the unit would shut off and would not power back on after the card was inserted.

I pulled the battery from the camera, and frustrated I went to bed for the night.

The following morning I had an idea: try a different memory card. And that seemed to work.

The alternate memory card had nothing but the latest firmware version 1.1.2 on it and I installed it as quick as I could. The camera seems to be working well now.

I have given up on installing Magic Lantern.

I hope the above helps.

[Ray-uk]

I would suggest that you format the problem card in a card reader directly with your computer, then put it into the camera and re-format it again there, this will remove all traces of Magic Lantern and make the card usable once more.

[JohnnyMain]

Thanks Ray-uk,

You are absolutely correct! I reformatted the "problem card" in my Mac and that seems to have fixed the issue. Prior to the reformatting, the 60D would not power on with the "bad" card.

This was news to me that the health of a memory card could impact if the unit powers on or not.

I hope this helps others who may encounter this issue.

[Ray-uk]

As I understand it when you turn the camera on it first looks for a boot-up sequence on the card, if there isn't one then it uses the boot-up sequence stored in the camera. Magic Lantern puts a boot-up sequence on the card but obviously in your case it was corrupted so the camera just locked up.

So not really the health of the card that caused the problem, just what it contained.

[Stephen]

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@Ray-uk wrote:

As I understand it when you turn the camera on it first looks for a boot-up sequence on the card, if there isn't one then it uses the boot-up sequence stored in the camera. Magic Lantern puts a boot-up sequence on the card but obviously in your case it was corrupted so the camera just locked up.

So not really the health of the card that caused the problem, just what it contained.

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You beat me to it! 

[JohnnyMain]

Thank you for the replies.

I'm now feeling a lot better about what happened.

Last night I was freaking out because I thought I had killed my camera.

[RobertTheFat]

The last thing I am is an expert on Magic Lantern, but I believe I've read (and it makes sense) that sometimes ML has to be updated to accommodate a new camera model. Possibly the version you tried to install was wrong for a 60D. That might explain why you couldn't get ML to work, although Stephen is obviously correct about why the camera still wouldn't work after you tried to uninstall ML.

[JohnnyMain]

Hi Bob,

I had clicked on the 60D link multiple times during this entire process.

They may have posted the wrong version to the download link, I don't know.

I did have to revert back to an older firmware version (from 1.1.2 to 1.1.1) to get ML to install. ML also provided a link to that version.

All seemed to go well during the install process but after following the instructions to restart the camera, Magic Lantern would never start. After pressing the Menu button, I would see the same panels I am used to seeing except the firmware version stated it was an ML version. I attempted the install process multiple times which included formating the card before each attempt.

It seeed almost simultaneaously the camera (card) began to fail the moment I decided to give up on installing ML and live with the firmware Canon provides. I went to bed last night thinking I just distroyed my camera. I feel a lot better now. I'm now beginning to suspect that I just had a bad first attempt at installing 3rd party software on my camera, and it has left a very sour taste in my mouth. 

[Stephen]

Hi JohnnyMain!

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JohnnyMain wrote:

This was news to me that the health of a memory card could impact if the unit powers on or not.

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It's not specifically the health of the card that prevented the camera from powering on, it's the way that ML requires a card to be formatted. It requires cards to be "bootable," which sort of bypasses the camera's internal firmware. When you removed the ML firmware from your card, the bootable portion of the card was still there. When you turned your camera on, it saw the information on the card, and it looked for the ML firmware that wasn't there, and it just kind of sat there waiting for instructions that weren't coming. 

This is only one reason why we don't support ML, because it can do some weird things to your camera. Since Canon doesn't make the firmware, we don't know how it does what it does, so any damage that ML might cause isn't covered by any Canon warranty. 

[TCampbell]

Magic Lantern does not actually replace the in-camera firmware.  What it does is place a firmware file on the memory card and marks the memory card as "bootable".

When the camera powers up, it will check for a memory card, check to see if the card is bootable, and if so, it will boot from the memory card if the memory card has the boot file.  Otherwise (if card isn't present, isn't bootable, or doesn't have a boot file) it will power on the normal way which is to use the Canon in-camera firmware.

This is why powering on without a card was working (your card was booting with factory Canon firmware - not magic lantern).  It's also why using a different card worked.  If you ever want to just use the camera the normal way -- just power it on with any card that doesn't have the magic lantern firmware.

Magic Lantern is very fussy about specifically which firmware version you have.  

As I view the Magic Lantern website, the version for the Canon 60D & 60Da are written for Canon firmware version 1.1.1.  

The most recent Canon 60D firmware version is 1.1.2.  The firmware version must be an EXACT MATCH (it's not the typical "this version or newer" should work... it will not work.)  This means you MUST use version 1.1.1 with Magic Lantern.  

This has to do with how Magic Lantern really works.  It's not a complete firmware.  The Magic Latern firmware actually calls the Canon in-camera firmware to do much of its work.  To do that, the ML firmware is telling the camera's process to go to a specific address of the camera's memory and execute whatever code is found there.   If you run a newer Canon firmware (e.g. if you used firmware 1.1.2 instead of 1.1.1) then the precise location (the memory address) of where all those various bits of code reside will most likely have changed -- meaning any jumps to those locations wont do what ML thinks it should do and the behavior wont be predictable (it will most likely crash the camera).

Unless you can get your hands on firmware version 1.1.1 ... I would not trust Magic Lantern to run correctly with your camera.