This a long question, but I'm trying to give a lot of details. I appreciate any help! I have a hanging light in dining room that is turned on by one of those round dimmer switches, and its on the same wall panel as a regular flip light switch that turns on the garage light on the other side of the wall. The hanging light's bulb burned out and I replaced it. It came on and stayed on for about 30 seconds and then nothing. The bulb works in other fixtures. The light switch to the garage is working fine. This is the first problem we've had in 8 years with this light.

We assumed the dimmer switch, which was kind of loose -was worn out and replaced it. The hanging light still doesn't work. I bought the replacement switch at Lowes-standard type and the only one they had for sale. The original switch probably is from 1987 when this house was built. The wires coming out of our light box that is in the wall weren't the same as the colors and so forth described in the instructions that came with the dimmer. The original dimmer switch had one red wire and one black wire coming out of it. The black wire was connected to another black wire coming out of the wall panel. The red wire on the old dimmer was also connected to a black wire coming out of the wall box. In addition, there was a beige wire screwed in the plate just below the regular switch for the garage light. This beige wired was clamped together with the black wall wire and the red dimmer wire. We assumed this beige wire was the ground wire.

Ok, the new dimmer switch has 3 wires. Two black and a green. This is what we tried: we connected the green wire to the beige ground wire. The instructions said to attach the green wire to the "bare copper ground wire". There was no bare copper wire, so again we assumed the beige was it. In addition we clamped one of the black wires from the dimmer to this combination of the green and beige wires. We attached the other black dimmer wire to the other black "wall wire" and it still won't turn on. Do you think its attached wrong, or does a light not coming on sound like something other than a problem with the switch at all, and is maybe from some other issue?

It sound like you light fixture is bad

Do you have a volt/ohm meter that you can use to take readings for us?

Have you looked at the wiring inside the light fixture to make sure there are no loose or burnt conductors?

Please tell me what wires you see in the overhead fixture.

Don't have a volt meter-as far as the overhead fixture, it just has single wire coming out of the ceiling-I haven't taken this down yet to look at it.

It may have a single cable with 2 or 3 conductors plus a bare equipment grounding conductor, but it cannot be a single wire.

At a minimum, there should be (1) Black "Hot" Conductor. (1) White "Neutral" Conductor and the bare or green equipment grounding conductor.

If the source of the power is from the ceiling, then you should find the Black conductor tied to a Red or Black conductor to feed power to the switch. The Red or Black conductor [Depends on how the electrician wired the connections] Personally, I would use the Black from the source to feed the black on the switch. The red, I would use as the return to the fixture's black. White from the fixture would connect to the White in the ceiling. The Green wire at the switch, I would connect to the equipment grounding conductor.

If power is sourced by the wall switch, then the configuration would be different. I would use Black to feed the switch, red to feed the fixture's black and white to the white on the fixture. It would not connect to the switch! The green I would connect to the equipment grounding conductor.