canon error 99

I have been experiencing sporatic error 99 messages for the past two months with my kit lens and my EF 75-300 f4-5.6 III. I have taken just over 7,000 exposures with my camera in 10 months. Last week was my long awaited photo expedition to the San Juan Islands of Washington State. Half way through the trip my Rebel refused to take any pictures. I tried the obvious things but the error 99 message would not go away. It was consistantly making that partial , incomplete shutter trip noise. I was actually relieved that it finally broke in the last two months of my warranty so the repair would be covered. I salvaged the rest of the trip with my Minolta D7 and got some amazing IR shots that I probably wouldn't have otherwise. When I got back I called Canon and talked to Gary at 1-(800)828-4040. He asked me to try a few things before I sent the camera in. He said: 1. Carefully clean the 8 gold color lens contact pins on the camera body lens mount with a pencil eraser. Do this while holding the camera so that any eraser dust will not fall into the camera. 2. Take out both batteries. Yes, there are 2. I had forgotten about the smaller Date/Time battery. Also remove the CF memory card. 3. With the batteries removed, turn the camera switch on for 3-5 minutes. He said that this clears the memory. 4. Turn the camera off and put the batteries and CF card back in. 5. Re-attach the lens and turn it back on. I did all of this and my camera works fine now. I had to re-enter the date and time and re-select parameter 2 but my Rebel is now working again and I'm much relieved that it was something that simple all along. Gary was very courteous and knowlegable and waited patiently on the phone while I went though his procedure. He said that I could send the camera in for service if the problem came back. I just thought I would share this experience in case it might help someone else with an error 99 problem. Craig
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