Tom, I was talking about the lock on the card, not the "hold" button on the recorder. I had the problem twice and both times I had locked the card, forgot to unlock it before hitting record, and after I got the msg on the unit about the card lock, I powered down the unit, popped out the card, moved the switch, put the card back in, fired the deck back up, and got the error msg you are seeing. Only after pulling the batteries and leaving the unit off for a few min, then putting the batts back did it seem to clear up. Hope this helps.