Camera says batteries are low but batteries are new

Sounds like a memory card problem. Try using A 512mb San Disk SD Card. Not a San Disk SDHC card. see if that doesn;t help you out. Good-Luck

Lithium batteries do go back. Try a new battery or two.

This is a common problem with this model...happens to me too. I find that turning it off and then on corrects it for awhile.

this is not malfunction.
According to its manual, just turn it off ,wait for one minute and
turn it on again. It'll reset th camera. You need to reset the date/time.

The battery charge indicator is temperature sensitive. If you switch off and on again, do you still get the low battery warning? Have you tried with a second set of batteries - either rechargeable, or lithium or alkaline. I would do this in a warm room, and try it with new alkaline cells. You lose some of the functions, but if the indicator say charged, and you can take a shot, then the body is OK.
Call me old-fashioned, but I use a multimeter on all NEW batteries to make sure they are functional - I bought a card of cheap LR44s and the first three were either dead or low on voltage.

Try cleaning the battery contacts in the camera with a cotton swab lightly dampened with rubbing alcohol.

HI. this seems to be a battery scanning fault in the programming. try to reset the board by pulling the battery and removing all power of 30 minutes. completely drain all power from this unit for 30 minutes. if this message continues after you have rest the programming, this will confirm a serious fault within the internal program. you will have to send this device back to a pentax repair terminal for reprogramming.

Hi there - these are older posts, but I just experienced this problem (it appears to be pretty common). The fix I discovered (that works), is to insert your batteries (make sure they're fresh), and then press and hold the "on" button plus "Menu" button, together at the same time. Hold until the firmware resets (a message will pop up on screen and the camera will reset). Voila! It works again for as long as the batteries are in and operational. Also note that in my case, if the batteries are taken out, I have to go thru the reset process again, but at least I have the camera back up and running. Hope this helps others!!

EINAI SKETH MALAKIA H PSIFIAKI

Have exactly the same prob, my camera worked for 3 years without any probs, except that the alkaline batteries didn't have a long life...tried rechargeable batteries as well, but since three weeks ago it simply says, "batteries depleted", nothing works, tried everything...sending it to Pentax after the warranty is over is far more expensive than buying a new cam...really sorry for that, but don't think I gonna buy a new Pentax again...