I am available to assist anyone who is experiencing any kind of error code or icon. Please contace me at Ssample@jvc.com with your concern and I will see if I can assist you in troubleshooting your problem. It may or may not actually be your camcorder. Please refer to this site when you e-mail me. I look forward to assisting you. :)

I JUST BOUGHT JVC DV CAMERA GR-D53 AND WHEN I SET FOR USE ' PLEASE WAIT , condensation, operation paused ' WARNING CAME UP. MANUEL SAYS IT WILL GO AFTER 1 HOUR , I LEFT OPEN FM NIGHT TO MORNING , IT STILL SAYS SAME THING, LIKE A JOKE , I CAN NOT USE IT!! I DONT SUGGEST ANYONE TO BUY THIS DEVICE...

I am using a GR-DVL-100 now for three years. I had no problems untill (I suspect) that I attached a Hahnel Lithium Ion battery (HL-408). Since I used this battery (as second battery device) problems started. Maybe it is coinsedence I do not know. It is good to know that more people have problems. I'll ask my lawyer if they come up with repair charges! Best regards, Perry

I bought this camera 2/03. Used it about 20 minutes the first six months I owned it. Took it on vacation and the 2nd day (taped maybe 8 minutes the first day) I got the "E04" couldn't use it at all after that. Took it to Best Buy and they sent it to JVC. It cost me about $100 to fix. Now I get "condensation, operation paused" all the time. It works for a while and then I get that stupid error. Has anyone had success in getting JVC to fix the problems they are having with these cameras?

Utter nonsense! We had the E04 problem - nothing would fix it, tape in, tape out, no joy... Read the advice on here... on reasonably hard clout on the top from the wife and -hey presto- darn thing is working... bonkers!

It really works!! The "beat the hell out of your camera" method. Fortunately, I didn't spend $$ on pro repairs. When I started getting the old 'safeguard mode' and 'clean your head' messages I searched the net and found this dicussion group. After reading everyones' messages I beat the crap out my camera as described by Ryan with one small modification - I removed the tape and left the door open, opened the view screen, removed the battery, and then I proceded to whack the camera with the battery right on the side over the speaker with 3 or 4 solid whacks. Presto it is working again without any error messages - I'll have to see how long it lasts.

Open it and close and remove battery and beat it, and ... it's working again. Thanks for the tips, mainly from Steve "Here's what i found. I was able to clear the message by opening and closing and ejecting the cassette. I also had to play with the battery at the same time. Keeping the cassette door open and then pulling out the battery. After is did this a couple of times i got the message to clear. I too haven't used my camcorder for some time and now that the error message has cleared the camcorder tells me that i need to clean the heads. Hope this helps. Below is the message i found that pointed me toward ejecting the cassette. Good Luck, i'm off to buy a tape head cleaning cassette. An error indication (E03 or E04) appears. - (E03 or E04 UNIT IN SAFEGUARD MODE REMOVE AND REATTACH BATTERY) This massage a malfunction of some kind has occurred. In this case the camcorder's functions become unusable. - Eject the cassette once and re-insert it, then check if the indication clears. When it does, you can resume using the camcorder." It really helps.

I think the issue has to do with a tape mini DV tape in the tape deck for a long period of time.. Turn the power off, open the tape bay, and lightly press the area where it says "Push here". Remove the tape and then try powering up the camcorder.

It is the video head assy. The error code you are getting refers to a fault code that the camera displays when the part has failed. E04= video head assy. I can fix it for you, email me for pricing and shipping instructions. Chris chrisveal@msn.com

This is the most ingenious idea i have ever heard. I too had the same trouble. Tried whacking and lo ! the camera worked !!