a580 not recognizing tamron lens

I have both a sony a580 and tamron Tamron AF 17-50mm F/2.8 XR Di-II lens that are just a month old. Everything was working fine until now when all of sudden my camera no longer recognizes the lens. When I tried to attach them, the camera made a clicking noise like it was getting stuck or something. The noise is more apparent if the camera is switched to manual focus. What more, the camera's control like menu options and everything else are just slow with the lens attached. It takes a while to navigate from one option to the next.
I tested the camera with my old minolta lenses, sony kit lens and a cheap sigma zoom lens. They all worked perfectly without a hitch. The menu action and response are just flawless. The problems only occur with the tamron lens.
So I decided to test the tamron lens with my old sony a200. Ironically, it worked!!! The tamron worked smoothly on the a200. focusing worked fine, and there was no issue whatsoever.
I really am in need of assistance. Please advice me on how to fix this.

Thank you

hi Tom,

Thank you for the reply. I tried your suggestion but the issue still persists. I don't know what is going on with my a580 anymore. I attached the SAM kit lens that came with it and that lens didn't work either.
At first I thought that the contact was faulty because the lenses that worked only had 5 contact points whereas the ones with issue had 8. But even a 18-70 mm kit lens which had 8 contact points from my old a200 worked on the a580.

I contacted sony for assistance and the guy started saying that sony doesn't endorse the use of third party accessories and such action is not guaranteed.

Regards,

Try a factory reset on your camera. My A580 went through a period when it was getting confused over the two AF options when it shouldn't have.
I did a factory reset and its behaved perfectly ever since.

@ addy landzaat: thank you for the suggestion, I'll go and find some cleaning solution as I don't have them in hand right now. I bought the camera open box from an authorized retailer, J&R. I was careful to ask them about the warranty on this and they told me that the camera carries the original sony warranty (I have the proof from their email). So I'm holding out for the worst case scenario of sending it in for repair.
@ Hobgoblin: thank you, I reset my camera twice but it still doesn't work. Does a reset make everything go back to what it was from the factory? Cause' when I reset it, only some settings are back but the selections that I had like date, time, release w/o lens, red-eye reduction etc. are still what I set before the reset.
@ waleskeg: I know, I told him about the issue with the SAM lens and he was just like, 'okay' and that's all. They have a sony store in my area, I wonder if they'd have better service than the online support.

Have you checked 8 pins in the A580? Maybe you got some damage when mounting the lenses improperly. I did get the same problem with my A350 a couple years ago.
At that time, I had tried "hundreds of" different lenses on my A350. Some Sigma/ Tamron/ M42-Sony Adapter made some damage on my A350.
Usually the 1st pin may have some trouble(stuck, not alignment....). Then the camera does not get correct information from the lens
You may send the camera to Sony to have it fixed.

Edited by tuanle - 30 January 2012 at 00:04

Some guy on dpreview had a similar issue just after sensor cleaning. The problem happened with HSM and SAM lenses only and was fixed by Sony service.

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1037&message=40086049