Canon EOS 2000D malfunction, screen will not turn on

[JAB75]

I was taking photos just fine earlier today. I turned the camera off, detached everything and put all the covers on, and put it up. I then come back a few hours later and when I turn it on, nothing happens. The screen itself itself won’t turn on but viewfinder is fine and it displays information when looking through the lens. But won’t take photos or bring up anything at all on the main camera screen itself. I also have already made sure the battery is fully charged.

[Tronhard]

Hi and welcome to the forum:
Just to check that we have missed nothing...  have you pressed the DISP button a couple of times to make sure you have not inadvertently set it to a blank screen?

[JAB75]

I sure have, so that’s ruled out. Also I haven’t found anyone else with a problem similar to mine. The main difference is that when this happens to others the camera will still take pictures but mine simply refuses. The screen also flickered a bit when playing with it this morning but I haven’t gotten it to replicate it. I believe that tells me that it’s not the display itself which is a good thing.

[HoldenWhite]

You solved my problem, Thank you so much.

[JAB75]

*Followup; when taking the SD card out, battery out, battery in, leaving SD card out the screen appears just fine and takes pictures. But it won’t yet take pictures with the *SD card so I suspect it’s that in some way.

[Tronhard · Accepted solution]

More accurately, your camera does not actually have a SIM card (which is a Subscriber Identity Module), it has an SD (Secure Digital) card. 🙂   To track down the cause of your issue...

What kind and brand of SD card are you using?   
Is it full-size or a micro-SD with adapter?   
Do you format the card clean in your camera, after transferring the images from it to a computer after each shoot?

[JAB75]

Yup it was an error with the card’s formatting. I was not in fact clearing my photos after transferring them to my computer but the strange thing is that I only took up about 10% of the cards data. Either way it was a really simple no cost repair and I now know what to do if it happens again. Thank you very much for your help!

[Tronhard]

Glad it worked for you!

Deleting files on any storage medium does not actually delete them.  There is a table which is a sort of table of contents (the FAT table) that tells the operating system where to find each file.   When one uses the delete function, it simply makes the first character of the file name a 0, which basically marks it as available to overwrite. 

The problems begin when that happens, because the next file to use that space will almost certainly not be an exact fit for that space, so some of the new file will be stored in that space and the rest put in the next contiguous location.  However, there are now two FAT entries for one file.  As files are deleted over time, this makes the FAT more and more complex until it gets corrupted and the storage medium creates an error.  These can be in the mildly challenging (as in your case) to a complete and unrecoverable loss of the whole medium.

So, the best practice is: after each shoot, copy the files to a location on a computer or other reliable device.  Then use the CAMERA'S format command to wipe the card clean - which actually resets the FAT table.  Avoid using another device to do this as each device maker has their own flavour of operating system and that too can cause the card to be unreadable if they are not fully compatible. 

This process not only avoids the risk of corruption but the read/write process may well work faster.