Speedlite 550EX Flash - Flashing Screen

Hi!
My Canon Speedlite 550EX Flash was working great for a long, long time. After a while I got following problems/s:

When I turn it on the screen flashes with some random features from it, then, when the screen stabilizes and everything looks OK I can't use it, because it won't charge itself from the batteries. Either it won't at all, or it takes looooong time to charge and after one shot it's dead.

I tried cleaning the batteries and everything, didn't worked for me.

Thank you in advance

Isn't this caused my wide angle diffuser thing?

Yes, but that is different from what this sounds like. If you forget the wide angle diffuser when you bounce the flash, it will flash the whole display to remind you about that your are cascading two light spreading features, something which often is unintentional.

But here it sounds like the flash has gone to the never-never land of electronics.

Neverland of electronics? Does it mean it's totally dead? Or that it just went crazy? Which I don't know if it's such a difference.

kornomanus wrote in post #11982625
Hi!
My Canon Speedlite 550EX Flash was working great for a long, long time. After a while I got following problems/s:

When I turn it on the screen flashes with some random features from it, then, when the screen stabilizes and everything looks OK I can't use it, because it won't charge itself from the batteries. Either it won't at all, or it takes looooong time to charge and after one shot it's dead.

I tried cleaning the batteries and everything, didn't worked for me.

Thank you in advance

What do you mean by cleaning the batteries? Did you try new or freshly charged batteries?

@moeronn: yes, of course I tried new batteries. But I read somewhere that I should clean the batteries&the battery cave (or how you call it in English, where the batteries belong) and not to touch the tops of the batteries. So that's what I did.