Symptoms

• The projector runs for a couple of minutes but then goes back to its standby state.
• There are no warning LEDs lit.

Cause

This problem is more common with smaller projectors (medium to large projectors will normally display a LED warning to indicate why the projector shuts down). When small projectors shutdown with these symptoms, it usually means that the lamp is bad.

Some newer projectors may display a series of blinking LEDs to indicate a lamp "failure to ignite" situation.

It is possible for a bad lamp to ignite and run for a short time and sometimes may even run for an extended time. These are gas filled lamps as opposed to filament bulbs so, they may behave much differently than you expect.