40D Owners Be Extremely Careful

I don't know if this is a general problem, or if I just got "lucky". I basically turned my 40D into a paper weight by using the "Clear all camera settings" option. Here's what happened.

After I attached my 580EX flash and then removed it, the automatic built in flash wouldn't work even in "auto" mode. I assumed it was some sort of internal setting that I couldn't find in the menus, so I selected "Clear all camera settings" on the yellow "three dot" menu. The good news, this seemed to clear the flash problem, the bad news, no pictures. I don't mean that it erased my memory card, the camera would no longer capture any useful images. They are all black, as though the sensor has been turned off or worse.

When shooting a photo, everything seems to work as expected. Autofocus, aperature, or shutter speed selection, mirror "click", review after the shot, etc. but the resulting image is as though I have my lens cap on. I even tried "live view mode" and the LCD is black except for the white rectangle. I hear the mirror lock up out of the way, but there is no image. I tried everything to get it back to a functioning condition, but nothing worked. I had v1.0.4 firmware and upgraded it to v1.0.5, but that didn't help either (I didn't expect it to based on the description of v1.0.5, but I was hopeful).

I called Canon support and they walked me through a few things. Pretty much the same things I had already tried, and now I get to send it in for "repairs".

If anyone has experienced this, or knows of some obscure setting that gets set/cleared as a result of Clearing all camera settings, I would really appreciate some help. I don't want to be without this camera for 3+ weeks.

Did they have you do a "hard reset" ? If that didn't do it I don't know of anything off hand, although you could try removing the memory battery and then do a hard reset.
Other than that it sounds like although it appears the metering is OK it may have toasted when you the cold reset.
JS

They didn't say anything about a hard reset, and I don't find anything in the manual about how to do that. Can you explain how to do it?

I found the Date/Time battery and removed it. After a couple minutes, I put it back in and had to reset the date/time. Still no images.

-JR

That's definitely kinda scary. Please keep us up to date on what happens. And when it's all sorted out please post a review for your camera. This is useful information.

if the flash wasn;t functioning properly to begin with then maybe the "clear all camera settings" is a white herring and you have something more serious wrong with your camera.

It sounds like your sensor isn't working, I'm afraid a trip to a Canon service center is in your camera's future. How long has it been since you purchased it? Most stores have a 30 day return policy, and that would probably be your easiest option.