Restricted mode on eos camera

Question

I recently purchased a Canon EOS 40d of the internet and when I got it home, it is in a restricted mode and asking for a password. How do I go about removing the password. I contacted the seller and he said this was why he was selling it.
Thanks in advance,
Matt

Answer 1

Skirball wrote:
RobertTheFat wrote:
MatthewBurak wrote:
I recently purchased a Canon EOS 40d of the internet and when I got it home, it is in a restricted mode and asking for a password. How do I go about removing the password. I contacted the seller and he said this was why he was selling it.
Thanks in advance,
Matt
What kind of bizarre misfeature is that? I have a 50D, and I don't believe it has any such mode. Have you tried taking out the battery and reverting the camera to its factory settings? What does the manual say on the subject? If the camera didn't come with one, you should be able to find it on the Canon Web site.
I think it's some kind of display model mode, and specific to certain models like the 40D and 1d3.  I don't know much about it, but looked around because I was curious...  don't waste your time taking out the battery or formatting your drives.   Send it back if the seller didn't explicitly state it was in restricted mode.  Even if he did, but wasn't completely upfront about it's condition I think you have grounds to return it.  Otherwise, it has to go in to Canon, and that's going to cost more than it's worth.
Matthew,
I don't disagree at all with Skirball's advice. If you can get your money back, you can rid yourself of a headache and start fresh. There must be lots of inexpensive 40Ds and 50Ds around. But if you need or want to give it one more shot, ...
The obvious way to impose a restrictive mode on a digital camera is to monkey with the firmware. If they did it by physically re-writing the image in the camera's memory, then you'll have to find a way to restore it to a factory version. This could be pretty hard, and it would almost certainly involve at least a direct USB connection to a computer. I don't see how you could make it re-write the firmware from a card if you couldn't first get by the password.
But another way that firmware mods are sometimes done is to write them on the CF card and fool the camera into looking there first. (A few years ago there was a very popular firmware mod, with versions for a variety of cameras, that worked that way.) But that kind of mod works only if the card is in the camera. So if your camera came with a CF card, and you've tried it only with that card installed, try putting in a freshly formatted card from another camera. Maybe you'll get lucky.
If all else fails, call Canon before you pitch the camera. (I've found their shop in Jamesburg, New Jersey to be very customer friendly.) If they happen to have a quick backdoor method of re-writing the firmware, maybe the repair wouldn't be all that expensive.
Bob
Boston, Massachusetts USA