Can't turn camera on

I am a new user of a Canon EOS 550D.

The camera will not switch on at all and I wondered if this was something that happens or am I doing something wrong.

Any ideas would be appreciated.

Veli

Might check the battery first. Make sure it's charged.
Check the CF door to make sure it closes.
Outside of those two, not much else controls turning on the camera that you can get to.

Yep. Charged batter, closed (SD card door), and switch to on position.

Agreed. Also there is a possibility that the charger is bad and not actually charging the battery even though it appears to. Are the battery and charger new(relatively), and are they the ones that came with the camera?

Batteries have a life span that is affected by the number of discharge/recharge cycles they have gone through. I assume you bought the camera used and you do not know its history, so the battery may have failed.

Make sure the battery door is closed tightly.

One question which may help isolate the problem. Did this camera work before and just stopped? The reason I ask is that if it was working before then the chance of it being a battery problem is less. Batteries tend not to catastrophically fail but to sort of fade away. If it suddenly stopped, then look at the camera door, the charger itself, or the camera.

Frodge wrote in post #16640533
Make sure the battery door is closed tightly.

Hit the "INFO" button a few times. That cycles through various LCD screen display modes one of which is a blank screen.

Several people have mentioned making sure the battery door is properly closed without telling you "why".

Most Canon cameras have a small interlock micro switch that disables battery power to the camera if the battery door is opened. It is there to keep us from swapping batteries while the power switch is on; this is called hot swapping. Look very closely at the battery compartment door for a small protrusion that goes into a small hole when the door is properly closed. Obviously if that protrusion is missing the camera thinks the battery is removed and will not power up.

There may also be a small switch in similar manner in the door that covers the SD memory card slot. If it is present check for a protrusion there as well.

One last thing, are you using a grip? If so remove it and try the camera without the grip.