On Thu, 16 Jan 2014, N_Cook wrote:

Otherwise trusty meter, whenever I try on a Weston Cell it is always the same
voltage registered. But now on the ohms scale will sometimes read 10 or 12
meg with no probes in place. Good battery.
Something to do with the screen shielding? Without any metal covering, ie the
top cover removed and no replacement for the now missing sticky backed foil
over the shielded tinplate box, the meter will not pass POST, all segments
lit on display permanent and no beep on changing rotary sw setting, normal ?.
So start with cover in place , turn to ohms, and remove cover , it goes to
the floating 10s of megs. Twizzle sticking does not show suspect switch ,
preset or anything, and gradually drifts to over-scale, 30M.
Something going leaky with age?

My DMM acted like that at one point, and I took it apart, thinking the
switch was dirty. But no.

It turned out the fuse was bad. It still had continuity, but not zero
ohms. A new fuse fixed the problem.

Michael