Projector messed up

[t3h l337 n3wb]

I turned on my projector today, and after the blue Infocus screen came up, there was no image from my source (receiver hooked up to various devices). I tried changing brightness and contrast, making sure the cables were connected correctly, and manually switching inputs. When I tried accessing the menu to restore factory defaults, the menu wouldn't display correctly. I saw a flicker of it, then it disappeared. What could be causing this problem? I did leave the lamp on overnight one day, but the blue screen still displays normally and there's no lamp error light, so it shouldn't be burned out. Whenever I'm not using the projector though, I never turn it off. I just press the button on the remote control that turns the lamp off, so the fan keeps spinning. Could that be what caused the problem?

 

[Rubycon]

The fan is spinning all the time?

That will lead to a LOT of dust unless your airspace is VERY clean.

 

[t3h l337 n3wb]

Okay, so I guess I should turn the fan off. Would dust clogging cause this problem?

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

I don't know why infocus decided to design it that way so that the fan stayed on all the time. I didn't have a dust problem with mine but the color wheel did start to sound really annoying.

I did follow a guide to getting the dust off my DLP chip, but that was mainly for if you had a "dust blob" problem.

I'm not sure what to tell you about the problem you're having. The menu not showing up makes it sound pretty serious.

 

[t3h l337 n3wb]

Well, it WAS a refurb that I bought about 1.5 years ago from Staples. Maybe I should just stay away from refurbs...

 

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Maybe you can find something searching in the 4805 threads on AVSforum?

 

[Rubycon]

Dust is not good and having a fan run 24/7 will make the problem far worse than it has to be. Could it cause a failure? Sure it could but no guarantee that the failure in your specific case was caused by it.

And yes colorwheel motors can get that same pesky whine like some hard drives. It's annoying in smaller rooms where the PJ may be a few feet above the viewer's ears. In larger rooms it's not a problem. Not too many people putting 20k lumen Christies in 12x20 rooms either.