These are quick suggestions. See your owner's manual for more details.
If nothing works, call Texas Instruments at 1-800-TICARES.

Symptom	Possible cause	Possible solution
The screen is blank.	Calculator's turned OFF.	Turn calculator ON. (The ON button is in the lower left corner of the keyboard.)
	Display is too dim.	Increase the contrast. (Diamond +.)
	Batteries aren't installed properly.	Remove and replace the batteries.
	Batteries are dying.	Replace the batteries.
	Batteries are dead.	Replace the batteries. If the batteries have been dead for awhile, you may also need to replace the backup battery.
The screen is black.	Display is too dark.	Decrease the contrast. (Diamond -.)
Nothing happens when you push the keys.	Calculator is BUSY. (BUSY shows at the right end of the status line.)	Wait.
		Push ON to stop the calculation.
	Calculator is PAUSED. (PAUSE shows at the right end of the status line.)	Waiting for input in a program or a graph. ENTER will usually fix things.
	You haven't pushed the right key.	Try ESC. Then try ENTER. Then try ON. Then try OFF (diamond ON is better than 2nd ON.)
	The calculator is hung up.	Try ON. If that doesn't work, then 1. Remove one of the batteries. 2. Hold down (-) and ) while you put the battery back in. 3. Keep holding down those keys for 5 seconds.
Nothing shows on the GRAPH screen.	The entire graph is outside the WINDOW you chose.	Adjust xmin, xmax, ymin, and ymax on the WINDOW screen.
	No functions are checked on the Y= screen.	Go to the Y= screen and fix it.
	No functions are defined on the Y= screen. You may have made a syntax error entering a formula, so that the calculator wouldn't accept it. In PARAMETRIC mode, you didn't define both x and y.	Go to the Y= screen and fix it.
The axes don't show on the GRAPH screen.	The WINDOW variables aren't set to show a piece of the xy-plane that includes the axes.	Adjust xmin, xmax, ymin, and ymax.
	The axes are turned off. (The chemistry periodic table program turns off the axes.)	Go to the Graph Formats menu set Axes to ON.
Zoom doesn't zoom right.	The Zoom Factors are set wrong. The defaults are 4 for x, y, and z; that means ZoomIn makes the image four times as large in each direction.	Go to SetFactors on the Zoom menu and change the Zoom Factors back to 4.
Trace gives funny coordinates.	You're getting Polar coordinates when you want Rectangular coordinates, or possibly vice-versa.	Change the Coordinates setting on the Graph Formats menu.
The calculator gives wrong answers.	The symbols you entered may not mean what you thought.	Look at the Pretty Print version of your input, in the history area of the HOME screen to the left of (or above) the answer. Writing 1/2x instead of 1/(2x) is a very common error.
The calculator just repeats my question.	The calculator doesn't know how to find the answer.	Try asking for an approximate solution by pushing diamond ENTER instead of ENTER.
	Your question may not make sense.	Using the letter e instead of the exponential function e^( and using the letter d instead of the differentiation operator d ( are common mistakes. You may also have an undefined variable you thought was defined. Check the VAR-LINK screen.
ERROR: Break	You pushed ON during a long calculation.	Push ESC and start over.
ERROR: Dimension	Or you tried vector or matrix operations on vectors or matrices of the wrong sizes.	Push ESC and start over.
ERROR: Data Type	You fed a variable into a function which was expecting a different variable type.	Push ESC and start over.
ERROR: Too few arguments	The function or command you used needs more information than you gave it.	Push ESC and start over. Check the CATALOG for a quick guide to what inputs are required.
	A variable you thought was a number or an expression is actually a function.	Push ESC and start over. Use NewProb to clear out old variables, or check the VAR-LINK screen to see which variables are functions.
ERROR: Too many arguments	The function or command you used needs less information than you gave it.	Push ESC and start over. Check the CATALOG for a quick guide to what inputs are required.
ERROR: Domain error	The function you used expected an input of a different type.	Push ESC and start over. Check the CATALOG for a quick guide to what inputs are required.
ERROR: Syntax	You didn't write it correctly.	Check the CATALOG for a quick guide to the proper syntax for that command.
ERROR: Invalid implied multiply	You wrote something like x(x+1). The calculator thinks that means x is a function and x+1 is its input.	Replace with x * (x+1).
ERROR: Undefined variable.	You tried to graph something the calculator can't understand.	Check the Y= window. In function mode, the input variable must be x. In parametric mode, the input variable must be t. In polar mode, the input variable must be theta. In sequence mode, the input variable must be n. In 3D mode, the input variables must be x and y. In differential equations mode, the input variable must be t, though it sometimes doesn't appear.
	You may have some old functions checked whose definitions no longer make sense.	Check the Y= window. You may have a definition like y1(x) = f(x) after you've deleted f. You may have some PLOTS checked after you've deleted the Data variable they came from. Clear or uncheck the bad functions or plots. Using NewProb frequently will eliminate this problem.

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