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Eplorist 500


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Posted

Anyone else who has the Explorist 500 or any of the other units in the line... Have you ever had the experience of the unit totally freezing up? No buttons work and you can not even power it down. I need to remove the battery to turn it off and then turn it back on. Today I used it for 5 hours with no problem got home and hooked it up to my PC and it froze after about 15 minutes and then froze again 5 minutes later. I think the unit is awsome and the new US Topo 3D is way cool, but I will not tolerlate this nonsense. :unsure:

Posted

happen to me and have to change the unit. but what magellan suggest from the answer i get is to try an hard-reset, you will loose every data save on the unit but not on an SD card.

 

while the unit is off press zoom out / goto / power and wait until he turn on

Posted

Happened to me once while doing something odd with it while connected to the PC. Rather than a hard reset you can turn the power off by pressing NAV + MENU + PWR. If you're lucky, power it back on and it will be back to normal with no data loss.

Posted (edited)

the strange thing is this also happened to me today I used mine explorist 600 for hours today. then I went to a autoparts store, shut it down. when I came back out and powered it back up, it locked up. wouldn't let me do a darn anything but if I pushed the "x" the burn in test appeared. nothing else, it was strange for this to happen to me right after it worked perfectly moments before. I took the battery out and reinserted and all was well.

 

who knows ?

 

I'm holding off on buying software till I figure out if there will be more upgrades or if magellan just made a buy it and forget it product line of explorist.

 

 

flir67-----

Edited by flir67
Posted

Happened once while I was trying GSAK's new feature of exporting to the explorist. Removed the battery, reinserted and no loss of data. Figure I did something wrong, but havn't been brave enough to try it again. Maybe if you upload it through the Magellan's conversion manager it would go smoother.

Posted
I used it for 5 hours with no problem got home and hooked it up to my PC and it froze after about 15 minutes and then froze again 5 minutes later.  I think the unit is awsome and the new US Topo 3D is way cool, but I will not tolerlate this nonsense. :rolleyes:

My 600 did this yesterday. Took it out and snagged 4 caches with it without a hitch.... got home, hooked it up to the old USB port and 20 minutes later-- frozen . Had to do the darned 3 finger reset. Didn't lose any information, but still rather discomforting.

 

Did you ever get support on this? Mine's only 4 days old. Should I exchange it?

 

Let me know what you figured out....

 

Thanks!

Posted

Sounds like there are some bugs in the firmware of the Explorist 4/5/600, like there have been with the GPSmap60CS, and hope they come out with an update to fix those bugs.

 

I don't see any Explorist Updates here yet.

 

The last Magellan I had bought when it had just come out on the market, was the Meridian Platinum, and even at that early time, it performed nearly perfectly. Ive had other Magellans when they had just come out on the market, and those messed up. My SporTrak Color seems to be a good unit.

 

I may wait awhile before getting an Explorist 500, but I may end up getting the Garmin 276C with it's large 320x480 pixel screen instead.

Posted

I'm having the same problem with my 500. I had it lockup at least 15 time on my trip from Ohio to Wisconsin. I was thinking it was a problem with the Mapsend program but it sounds like its firmware. Hope they get it fixed soon or I'll be stuck with a $400 paper weight.

Posted (edited)

Here is a reply I got from a support tech in regards to explorist freezing while using usb,

 

With most if not all USB devices, you will want to stop it using the "Safely Remove Hardware" service that is on Windows 2k and Windows XP.  That same feature will also prevent any "Delayed Write Failures" when the USB device is removed before the data has completely transferred.  You can also change the communications mode from File Transfer mode to Power only which will deactivate the USB hardware in the eXplorist.

I have been using mutliple USB devices and not once have I had to use the remove harware option. This has got to be addressed.

 

One other thing he told me,

 

eXplorist 4, 5 & 6 firmware updates and enhancements could possibly be available towards the end of the year.

 

I am especially discouraged from this statement. Not only is the firmware only forcasted to come out at the end of the end, its only a possibility. By that time magellan's problems for this line will be well documented and their reputation will be possibly irreversable. Makes you wonder if they care at all about customer support

Edited by D0T-C0M
Posted

I've had my 500 for a little over 2 weeks and have found about 40 caches with it. I have had no problems at all I'm also using gsak, but I haven't installed any mapping programs, since I'm using my gold hooked up with streets and trips

Posted (edited)
Here is a reply I got from a support tech in regards to explorist freezing while using usb,

 

With most if not all USB devices, you will want to stop it using the "Safely Remove Hardware" service that is on Windows 2k and Windows XP.  That same feature will also prevent any "Delayed Write Failures" when the USB device is removed before the data has completely transferred.  You can also change the communications mode from File Transfer mode to Power only which will deactivate the USB hardware in the eXplorist.

I have been using mutliple USB devices and not once have I had to use the remove harware option. This has got to be addressed.

 

One other thing he told me,

 

eXplorist 4, 5 & 6 firmware updates and enhancements could possibly be available towards the end of the year.

 

I am especially discouraged from this statement. By that time magellan's problems for this line will be well documented and their reputation will be possibly irreversable.

I do the "safely remove hardware" drill religiously and it still hangs on me about 5% of the time (1 in 20 times) when I try to power off the GPS after doing the "safely remove hardware" and getting the ok from the OS to remove it. There is definitely a bug in the firmware. Fortunately, since all I want to do is power down the unit, having to do the three-button-power off 1 in 20 times doesn't really annoy me that much. I've never, ever lost any data.

 

--Marky

 

P.S. Edit: Wanted to note that I have two 600s and they both behave identically, so don't expect different results if you send in your unit for a new one (until a new firmware release addresses this issue).

Edited by Marky

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