Error Message PC01

Have been using Remote Assistant - it locked up so I closed it down. The camera then locked and has PC01 on te top LCD. Switching on and off did nothing. Safely Removing hardware from PC did nothing. Finally had to remove the battery to get teh camera working again.

Neither manual (as far as I can see) lists that error code.

Has anyone else found it or know what it means?

Sounds like a bad USB connection to the PC. Was everything working perfectly? Did it only let you take a few shots and then lock up? and the be OK when you switched back on.

RA doesn't get on with all USB chips. My laptop works perfectly, but my desktop doesn't, so I bought a Belkin Hub and the desktop works perfectly through that even without the power to the hub.

shim

I had taken maybe 50 shots ...

Then the application locked up and I could do nothing, so closed it down, safely removed hardware but the camera had frozen. NOTHING would recover it until battery out.

I may have to use a hub - mainly to let me work a significant way from the camera. The supplied cable is way too short to be of any real use!

The camera does lock up, because it's being sent nonsense through the USB and can't handle it. It might be worth switching the camera on and off after say 30 shots.

It's safer to always use a Hub or even extension lead so that you don't pull the tripod or laptop onto the floor.

The model I use is a 4 port Belkin F5U231 from PC world.

shim

PC01 is not an error message, it simply says it is the first camera remote assistant found.

Oggy - so why did it stay there when the PC was disconnected and could only be cleared by removing the battery?

I could do nothing else on the camera at that point.

Because the program which should have updated it had crashed.

When you connect your camera to the pc, the display will show PC. If you now start Remote assistant, it will change to PC01 if that is the first camera it finds. If you close RA, the display will revert to PC as your camera is still on the USB. If you switch your camera off with RA still running, you will get a message saying Camera 01 was disconnected. All of this relies on the camera software being still running.

Your camera basically had the Pentax version of the Microsoft "blue screen of death". A hard reboot is sometimes necessary with computer equipment of all sorts, and your K20D is essentially a mini computer with a very specialised program!

Shim's idea of quitting and restarting very 30 shots or so might be a good way to go. Who knows how efficient RA's memory handling is?

I suspect this is a problem with the K20d software rather than RA. A number of people have reported them freezing but this is the first time RA has been mentioned.

The USB problem with the K10D has been widely reported. Because it is a USB chip problem it will apply to all the cameras.

shim