Problems with Olympus FE-230

[teutonic]

Hi everyone, my name is George and this is my first post. I have an important question about an Olympus FE-230 digital camera I bought at Best Buy in March and took with me on a trip to Italy and Greece in June. The trip lasted two weeks, and about half way through, I started noticing a problem with the camera. Sometimes when i would turn it on, there would be weird, multi-colored lines running down the LCD screen, sometimes vertical, sometimes horizontal. At first I thought maybe it was just something wrong with the LCD, but when I got home and transfered the pictures to my computer, I noticed that the lines were actually in the pictures, which lead me to believe that something is wrong with the chip that takes the picture. From looking at the pictures, it seems as if this mainly happened in bright lighting conditions. In Greece, there was almost no clouds, so it was always very bright and shiny. When i turned the camera on today, i noticed that the distortions had gotten far worse, and happened even in low light. The photos attached with this post are some of the good and bad ones. I checked Olympus' support page and there wasn't anything there of help, so if anyone knows what is wrong I will greatly appreciate it.

[Greg McCary]

I am not familiar with this problem but I have had a couple of pictures come out with a similar result from using a bad memory card. The first thing I would try is taking out the card and see if it would take a couple of pictures with camera memory. I would also try a couple of fresh batteries too. Bad batteries can cause all kinds of strange problems. My problem was with a CF card in a DSLR and not a P&S though. Keep us updated.
Greg

[teutonic]

I took the memory out and ran it on internal memory but nothing changed. I'm wondering if it may have been because I was in Europe using outlets with 220V instead of the American 120V / 110V. However, I did bring a converter and used it when charging, so I don't know if that would be a factor. The Camera uses a unique Lithium-ion battery, not a disposable.

Thank you very much for your help!

[Greg McCary]

I still think that I would try a battery. At least you will know you tried everything you could. I have seen bad batteries cause all kinds of problems.