Garmin Zumo just died

[wonderings]

  So everything has been working great on my  new Zumo 550. But today when I turn my Zumo on in the car, it doesnt turn  on, completely dead. It wasnt a dead batter because it always charges in the car, and I never use it without being plugged in the car. I tried it on its own, just on battery power, and again nothing. This unit has never been dropped, left out in the cold, never faced the elements. It has only been used in my car. Anyone had this problem? Is there anything I can do?

thanks

[Sport-Touring]

[CBRXXBLACKBIRD]

How long have you had it? Can you still return it for a exchange?

[wonderings]

its only  been 2 weeks. I will be phoning Garmin in a few minutes when they open. The shitty thing is, I am leaving for Michigan tomorrow, and was excited that I wouldnt have to worry about getting any maps, or using mapquest.

perfect timing zumo  

[Bigfoot]

My Garmin quit working on my wife when she was driving in Boston.  I have the 2630.  Turns out there is a reset that worked fine. After it did it a 2nd time though I said enough and returned it for a new one.  

[Raptor]

My 2720 did that a couple of times.  I found the little slide-in plug on the back was not "slid-in" all the way...both times.  Now I just check it more often and no more problems.  

[CBRXXBLACKBIRD]

If a reset don't work I would run back to store and exchange it.

[fasterbusa]

That really is unfortunate.
However, the good news is that as long as you have a left hand, you can find your way around in Michigan!
Hope that helps!   (of, so maybe not so much)

[wonderings]

the reset didnt work, I am going to try one other thing tech support told me over the phone when I get home. As to running to the store where I bought it, its a little far away. I am near Toronto, the store is in Calgary, so a good 30 hour drive is in store   All I can hope is the suggestion they gave me works, if not, well I have been without a gps unit for over 10 years of driving so whats another few weeks.

[lemansiii]

Bummer.

Well, my 2820 has recently started locking up, and once it restarted on it's own.  So I will be calling Garmin soon.

Also, my email questions to Garmin support have not been answered, so that sucks.

However, I have heard that they have great support and will replace units with little to no arguement.  I would think that they are working you through a couple of steps and then they will move to shipping you a new unit.

Let us know how this works out, and what your thoughts on their support are.

Scott

[CBRXXBLACKBIRD]

Wow 30 hr drive to a store  

[RBEmerson]

Talk to Garmin!  Their phone screening is a PITA to get past (expect at least a 10 minute wait - I assume they're trying to filter out the "nuisance" calls that can be sorted out on-line or aren't worth spending time on) but once you get a real live hooman bean on the phone, they're helpful, cooperative, and really do try to sort out problems.  You can try using their support e-mail although, probably for this issue, a call may make more sense.  

[DNA]

Talk to Garmin!  Their phone screening is a PITA to get past (expect at least a 10 minute wait - I assume they're trying to filter out the "nuisance" calls that can be sorted out on-line or aren't worth spending time on) but once you get a real live hooman bean on the phone, they're helpful, cooperative, and really do try to sort out problems.  You can try using their support e-mail although, probably for this issue, a call may make more sense.  

+1 What he said.
My quest 2 died on week 3 (note a similarity ) and after a ridiculous wait - they had me send it in and replaced it with a new unit.

[wonderings]

I had no problems getting a hold of anyone on the phone, I was actually amazed at how quickly they picked up. No wait times at all   Anyways, they gave me the option of sending my unit back, once they receive it they will ship me a new one for next day delivery. Was very happy I didnt have to fight at all to have this problem fixed.

[Thunder7]

Garmin customer support rocks. I'll take the occasional wait over talking to Apu's retarded cousin's who work for Magellan.

[RickC1957]

I had only one problem with the 2610...this summer at on the way back from the Nationals, the 2610 was dead....blew the inline fuse...a couple minutes later all was well. I know this is really dumb....is there power to the unit? I'm not being a smart ass....I always check the really simple things first...especially with dead electronics....my first question is "Is there power to the unit?"

[HIGHLANDER]

Copied from the Zumo forum, hope it helps you out??

!!HARD RESET!!

this is from Garmin, I posted this on page 5 of bugs and features
Also on "BIG FIX" By performing a hard reset this way, I noticed a lot of little things were fixed. "NOTE" during the hard reset, it will ask you. Do you want to wipe out everything, as indicated below, you need to answer yes. But, something I was not expecting after it read built itself, you can import all your old files again, it apparently doesn't wipe out that part of it.

Thank you for contacting Garmin International!

I am happy to help you with this. I recommend resetting the unit to clear user memory, along with deleting possible corruption. This reset will erase your saved Favorites. First turn the unit OFF, then HOLD your thumb on the furthest bottom right hand corner of the screen, push as far into the corner as you can on the screen itself. While holding your thumb/finger on the screen press and hold the POWER ON button until you see the ZUMO splash screen, once the splash screen is up you can release the power, but continue to hold your thumb in the right corner of the screen for another 5 - 10 seconds, you should see a window that pops up and asks "Do you really want to erase all user data?", make sure to answer YES to this window, if you don't see this window, then turn unit OFF and try the above instructions again, ensuring your thumb is in the furthest portion of the bottom right hand corner of the touch screen.

After the reset is successful, please place the unit in an open sky view location, stationary, for a minimum of 20 minutes to rebuild satellite memory. This should correct the issue.

[RBEmerson]

Wonderings, how's it going with the Zumo?

FWIW, re: "satellite memory" - what's going on is every GPSR (GPS receiver) keeps a set of data for computing where all of the GPS satellites will be at any given time.  That is, an ephemeris for each of the satellites or a collection of ephemerides .  GPS is all about knowing a) the exact time of day (to a level of accuracy where the [varying] speed of the Earth's rotation is a very real factor) and b) knowing where the satellites are in the sky.  From there the GPSR says "I got signals from satellites 1, 7, 11, 15, 22, 23 with unique timestamps at [some specific time] - doing a little trig based on the sats' positions in the sky, the time of day, and my last known position, I now know I'm at latitude xx.xxx and longitude yyy.yyy".  The amazing thing is this is all knocked out at least once a second as long as the GPSR's up and running!  

Anyway, the point of leaving the GPSR outside from 15-20 minutes after doing a hard reset is to let the GPSR re-acquire the GPS satellites' ephemerides (data that was lost during the reset).  Part of the data sent from each GPS satellite is the system ephemerides.  The GPSR first has to listen for signals on two specific radio frequencies, identify them, collect the time of day, and then start bringing in the ephemerides once the GPSR is "convinced" it's hearing real data.  

What the heck, while I'm running on, here's an answer to "why doesn't my GPSR use all of the satellites it says it can see?"  That is, the status display may say there are several satellites above the horizon but only a few of them are marked as being used.  If a satellite is at a low elevation in the sky (close to the horizon) or almost directly overhead, the fixes obtained will be too "noisy" or imprecise.  In part this is, for the low elevation satellites, because their signals have passed through a longer path through the Earth's atmosphere (signal paths are "bent" or altered when passing the ionosphere - a very high layer in the atmosphere populated with charged particles - the bending makes the timing of the satellites' signals too imprecise for good fixes).  For satellites high overhead, the signal path is shorter but, and this applies to low and high elevation satellites, the trig computations are out at the ends of their ranges where small changes in input give large changes in output.  For that reason satellites that are somewhere between high and low elevation give the best results.  The GPSR, therefore, ignores low and high satellites.  

[wonderings]

Well I sent the unit back yesterday, and sending it across the border is a bitch. Anyways, I tried what Highlander recommended with no luck. Guess I got a lemon, anyways the good part is, as soon as they receive my unit in the mail, they will air mail for next day delivery to me. Again I was very pleased with Garmin for how they handled this, though I dont think I should have to pay for shipping my unit out to them, oh well. Better this happens now then when I need it on a bike trip.

[Against The Wind]

My 2720 did that a couple of times.  I found the little slide-in plug on the back was not "slid-in" all the way...both times.  Now I just check it more often and no more problems.  

Me too.  (If I had to do it all over again I would purchase from Radio World in Toronto. Having a local retailer is a good thing)

[Mr Sunshine]

Wow 30 hr drive to a store  

It is Canada.