Well---I put the camera on the charger for a couple of hours while I
was doing household chores. Then about 1/2 hour ago, I connected a
USB cable to my computer, and turned the camera on. To my pleasant
surprise, the camera turned on normally and there was no error
mesage. Now I have turned the camera off, disconnected the USB cable
and set it aside until tomorrow morning. We'll see what happens. I
didn't take the camera card out since I did look at the card earlier
today, and was still getting error messages after I replaced the
card. Contacts looked fine when I had it out, and I didn't see
anything that looked like dirt inside the card housing and its
contacts. So, we'll see what happens tomorrow
and will report back. Thanks for your suggeston.