Canon 17-55 Error Message

Happy New Year Everyone.

I've appreciated the information here and have received good advice in the past. Yesterday, I continuously received the following message while shooting with my 7D and 17-55, "Err 01: Communication between the camera and the lens is faulty. Clean the contacts".

I've tried other lens and there is no problem. I don't believe it's the contacts on the body. I've tried cleaning the contacts on the lens with rubbing alcohol, but I continue to get the error message.

I've also notice the error occurs at focal lengths greater than 30mm.

Any help or suggestions is appreciated.

I've read on other sites it may be the IS, but I've have not found any confirmation of the repair that acutally addressed the error message.

Just when I wanted to take advantage of the rebates to get a new lens...

I had the same thing happen on my girlfriends Sigma 18-250mm OS lens on a 450D. Also tried cleaning the contacts but that didn't do much and I wondered how they would be dirty anyway since the lens is always on the camera. It turned out to be a broken contact cable that bends when you zoom. Similar to this: http://doekle.nl/canon_17_85_IS_repair.html Your case sounds a lot like that. This site also has info and links to similar cases: http://martybugs.net/blog/blog.cgi/gear/lenses/Canon-17-85mm-Lens-Issues.html

Hope those help. The repair cost me around 130€ including parts since the lens was out of warranty. A bit steep IMO but the checking and estimate was 80€ so the added 50€ wasn't that bad. If I had known the cause earlier I might have tried to repair the lens myself if I had found cheap parts in eBay.

EDIT: In your case the lens is much more valuable though so might be better to have it fixed than poke around yourself.