I was suspicious first. This cannot be true; I thought, probably the manufacturer's paid posters send these messages to make sure that camera owners do serious damage to their cameras and have to buy a new one. It did not work with the first couple of bangs but then I tried more forcefully. Dropping three times on the carpeted floor worked perfectly well. Thanks for the advice.

Hi, The solution worked well for me also. I dropped my cam from almost 1/2 inch hieght on to table, lens facing table.

Excellent & totally NUTS. Just got a Sony DCR-DVD110E as a gift. Error E:61:00 once powered up for first time. Little bang on the Mouse Mat did the trick for me, while sitting here reading you guys. Hats off to the GURU.

IT WORKS Tnx

Oh well!! I still can't believe it, but it really DID work with me also. I don't know if this is important, but to complement the "solution guideline" I used my right knee! :P lol THANKS a lot for the crazy solution!!!

Holly crap! My DSC-P30 was having the same problem: Blue screen, E: 61:10 error, won't focus etc. I just tapped on the lenses while "booting" & it's now working! DOH! The stupid job I needed it for is now 3 hours behind me. @ least it works. pb in Detroit.

this is crazy!. a friend and I laughed our asses off when reading this suggestion. (I HAD) the same problem with sony cybersgot dsc-t3. He went outside,and I thought that it couldnt hurt giving it a try. It took me 8-9 tries,but holy sh!t it worked! still cant believe it.

Hey, I even don't believe it but had nothing to loose. And I just did it with my W12 and it works also again. Thanks so much and lots of Greetings from Stuttgart. Germany. Andi

great tip i want everyone to know how to handle E61 error first i turned off the camera and then turnded it on and while it was initialising i started to hit the camera on its lence side and when i got it turned on it completly ok in a first try.WOW

NEWS FLASH!! This crazy trick also works if your camera is giving the message "turn camera off and back on again" while the lens zooms in and out repeatedly! Mine was doing that and every time I turned it back on, it just did the same thing again. I found these posts, but didn't see anything useful to help me with my particular problem. It seemed as if my camera was trying to focus, so I tried it and it worked! And after 2 or 3 bangs to my knee, the message disappeared, my LCD screen focused and I was able to take pictures! It sounds like some kind of voodoo, but amazingly, it works! I hope this helps someone with a similar problem to mine. I am so excited not to have spent any money to fix my camera!