The only simple thing you can try is with the cassette holder lying open and the aid of a hairdryer on its low heat setting, blow air into into the left hand side of the mechanism for about 20 seconds or so where you can see an orange/ brownish rectangular pillar, as thats the loading motor which also incorporates the sensor as part of it. Remember and leave the camcorder for about an hour after doing that as it can sometimes take that time for the memory to clear, however if that doesnt work then disabling of the sensor is the only way around the problem, and if considering, or anyone else reading this is, please note the following on the info. --------------------------------------------------------------- - AN IMPORTANT POINT CONCERNING THE MODIFICATION. The instructions given are really aimed at technically minded people of a "practical" nature who are acquaint at working on smaller electro-mechanical devices of a precision nature, or who have a flair for this sort of thing, and so in the interests of not making the situation any worse I would strongly advise anyone who does not really come into that category NOT to attempt this work, as it involves separating the case and the unscrewing the main circuit board to gain access to the board below it, this requiring the disconnection of ribbon cables etc, it is also necessary to carry out the precision soldering of two "very" narrowly spaced PCB pins, so the possession of a fine tipped soldering iron is also absolutely essential! So taking the above into consideration the qualification mentioned is really a MUST!! It should be emphasised that there are NO shortcuts into getting over this problem other than what's been aforementioned, and even if the memory reset does affect a cure it can only be adopted as a stop gap measure as the CPU could lock up again at some point in time, and unfortunately in many instances does!!