Wow - The hairdryer trick worked!!! Brilliant!!! My model is DCR-TRV17 just FYI.

Hitting of my sony with flat hands solved the problem c3140!!! Great solution!!! thank you very much!!!

hI I hAVE A DCRTRV330 3 YRS OLD, HAVE SAME PROBLEM DID WHAT MANUAL SAID , NO JOY CALLED SONY OUT OF WARRANTY, TOOK YO A STORE BY ME SAID A SENSOR(CHIP) UNDER DRUM NEEDS TO BE REPLACED, $175, SONY 285 IF THEY DO IT, NO I DONT HAVE A MANUAL BUT TRY EURAS.COM(EURPOEAN WEB SITE SHOULD BE ABLE TO DOWNLOAD MANUAL).GOOD LUCK, I STILL DID NOT FIX MY CAM

Thank you Thank you THANK YOU! I've been fighting with my TRV103 for a year now because of Jumpy video and the C:31:40 error code. I had it repaired at a local shop and after a $230 repair bill it still didn't work for more than a few months. I've been able to get intermittent operation by using canned air but even that failed after a while. The Shaking solution has worked. Now my plan is to keep this thing on life support just long enough to dump everything to DVD and then I will let it retire. Thanks again for the suggestions. Bart

Well I didn't believe it would work until I tried it. Thanks so much to you who suggested shaking the camcorder! The problem was the flashing error code C:31:40 on my Sony DCR-TRV340. I shook it and banged on the sides with my open hand. But this didn't solve the problem by itself. I also opened the cassette compartment and blew warm (not hot) air from my wife's hair dryer for about 30 sec. I thought I was wasting my time, but it worked. The playback was somewhat jumpy on several tapes. But when I played back a fresh recording it worked fine; and so did the old tapes. Sony said they would give me an estimate after I sent it to them. I could see a $295 charge coming (website noted as much). Thanks again for your posts... hopefully this 3yr old camcorder has enough life to get all my old tapes played and burned to CDs!

Hey Guys and Gals, I recently had the same error message from my cam, and contemplated throwing it off a high building when I couldn't record a family birthday party. LOL, anyway, I tried what was suggested in this forum, meaning I "tapped", smacked, shook, jostled, and prayed that the error message would go away and the cam would work again. Initially, the tape holder finally closed, but then locked up again, giving me an error message of "C:32:21", so I repeated the above procedures, and now all is well and the cam works like it used to. Thanks to all for posting the remedies.

With some gentle shake it WOORKS!!!!. Same code 31:40 same Sony Dig8. I don't now the problem, but with your advice it works. Tanks!

I got a message similar to that, so I tried shaking the Handycam and lightly hitting it on the sides, when finally one day it worked fine.