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Oregon 450 waaaaay sluggish


rocks911

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I have a 450 I've used for a little more than a year, not a lot, but for about a year. When I need it I insert freshly charged Eneloop batteries and wait for a few minutes to find the satellites. Next I press where to and the thing takes fooooooooorever to come back with any information. When it finally does the next step also takes forever. Every level deeper into a search the slower it goes. I mean I spend 3-4 minutes waiting to find, for example, restaurants in the area. My family and friends laugh at me because my "ancient" technology is soooooooo slow and they typically have the info on their smart phones within a minute.

 

I have a hard time seating the memory card, and that has been the source of past performance problems but even after re-seating the card it doesnt perform as it used to.

 

Does it make a difference how the thing is shelved? When I'm done using it I remove the batteries and disassemble the back, is that not what I should be doing?

 

I loved this thing for most of the last year but within the last couple of months it has almost been not worth using.

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Remove any existing GPX files and the card. Then give it a master reset. See if the problem is gone. Then start adding things back, one at a time and you can then track down the cause. It should not be slow.

 

What maps are on the unit? Are they internal or on the card?

 

I just powered the unit on. 2 and a half minutes to get past the Garmin splash screen and 4 minutes 15 seconds to get a usable signal

 

I have very little in the way of maps. I have one large (1.2 Gb) image file gmapprom.img on the card (Navigator North American 2010) and a couple GPX files on the card as well. The base map is on internal memory.

 

What exactly is a "master reset"?

Edited by rocks911
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I just powered the unit on. 2 and a half minutes to get past the Garmin splash screen and 4 minutes 15 seconds to get a usable signal
Yep, slow.

 

I have very little in the way of maps. I have one large (1.2 Gb) image file gmapprom.img on the card (Navigator North American 2010) and a couple GPX files on the card as well. The base map is on internal memory.
All the maps have an .img siffix, CN @ 1.2GB is a LARGE map, takes time to load it.

 

What exactly is a "master reset"?
Equivalent to a clean load of Windows, the Garmin OS is much smaller than Windows. Be sure to backup all files, especially that 1.2GB CN. Hold the upper left touch screen while powering on.

 

You don't mention your firmware version, you should be at/near the latest: 4.x

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I have seen this happen sometimes if the SD card get jarred a little bit so it isn't making good contact. Try taking the SD card out and see if the unit boots quicker.

 

I took the SD card out and it boots in 18 seconds, otherwise it takes forever. I cant imagine what is different that would cause this. The map set I have is large but it's no larger than it has ever been and for whatever reason it takes a lot longer to do anything. Even not map related, for example I accessed the menu to see what version the software was through Setup/About and it froze trying to access the information and the back button didnt work. Eventually the about screen appeared. Without the card no problem Setup/About and information displayed withing seconds, with the card in it freezes is nonresponsive and takes forever once it does respond.

 

The "software" version is 4.20 and the "GPS software" version is 4.52 Do I need to update and if so which do I need to update?

 

I guess I'll have to a master reset. I'm wondering if I corrupted some data by not safely removing the hardware from docking with my PC, would that cause this?

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The "software" version is 4.20 and the "GPS software" version is 4.52 Do I need to update and if so which do I need to update?

The most recent one is 5.00 / 5.00. You can get it through Garmin's WebUpdater. You don't need to upgrade and it's questionable whether an upgrade would solve your issues, but it's well worth a try. Plus I've found that the 5.00 GPS firmware increases the accuracy quite a bit.

 

I guess I'll have to a master reset. I'm wondering if I corrupted some data by not safely removing the hardware from docking with my PC, would that cause this?

Everything is possible, although I wouldn't say that it's likely. Still, here's what you can do: remove everything that you've loaded onto the GPS, probably mostly GPX files and maps. Run a filesystem check on both internal storage and SD card from your OS. Properly unmount the device and do the master reset. Then load everything back.

Edited by dfx
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I took the SD card out and it boots in 18 seconds, otherwise it takes forever. I cant imagine what is different that would cause this. The map set I have is large but it's no larger than it has ever been and for whatever reason it takes a lot longer to do anything. Even not map related, for example I accessed the menu to see what version the software was through Setup/About and it froze trying to access the information and the back button didnt work. Eventually the about screen appeared. Without the card no problem Setup/About and information displayed withing seconds, with the card in it freezes is nonresponsive and takes forever once it does respond.

Possibly you have a bad SD card, do you have another to try?

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The most recent one is 5.00 / 5.00. You can get it through Garmin's WebUpdater. You don't need to upgrade and it's questionable whether an upgrade would solve your issues, but it's well worth a try. Plus I've found that the 5.00 GPS firmware increases the accuracy quite a bit.

This peaked my interest. Went to Garmin's site and could only find 4.49 Beta, here

 

Thought I might have a cached page, so I went at it from a product page, same result. What might I be doing wrong?

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The most recent one is 5.00 / 5.00. You can get it through Garmin's WebUpdater. You don't need to upgrade and it's questionable whether an upgrade would solve your issues, but it's well worth a try. Plus I've found that the 5.00 GPS firmware increases the accuracy quite a bit.

This peaked my interest. Went to Garmin's site and could only find 4.49 Beta, here

 

Thought I might have a cached page, so I went at it from a product page, same result. What might I be doing wrong?

 

Because only beta are available as downloads like this. Non-betas are available through the WebUpdater.

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Just do the master reset. It does not hurt anything. Then try with no GPX files. This should be step one. Bad GPX files do weird things.

 

The, as suggested, try a different card. Map size has no impact on boot time. GPX file size has an impact, but map size should make no difference.

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I have found that the oregon loads gpxfiles according to date. I wonder if there are too many files. I had read on another board where somebody backs up all the files then reloads them as one gpx file.

 

I was wondering if I should do that as well.

There are limits to the number of gpx files/caches that can be loaded.

It's possible to hit the gpx file limit, before you hit the cache limit.

(There is a file size limit, but only tends to happen if you use GSAK and load your caches with dozens of previous logs per cache...)

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http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=268479&view=findpost&p=4619671

It took a little bit to find the post to the speed tests I did but here it is. If I had to guess as to what you problem is, I would say it one or more of three things.

1. Slow uSD card, class 2 of less if that's possible.

2. Damaged uSD card.

3. Corrupt file(s) causing searching issues.

 

Easiest way to fix this would be to buy a new name brand uSD card. I suggest class 6 or better. Then reload all of your maps from scratch. There are definite improvements from having a better card in your unit.

 

Edit: Helps if I put the correct link in.

Edited by Bullygoat29
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I suggest class 6 or better.

I wouldn't pay the additional for a faster-than-6 card. Oregon testing by members here shows that device operation speeds up a lot between Class 2 and Class 4, not so much for Class 4 to Class 6. It appears that Class 6 is the sweet spot. Anything faster will net negligible speed gains at a considerably higher price.

 

To the OP and others: I've found my uSD card popping out during battery changes (actually lost one that way in the field), and I know some have a hard time getting it to stay put. I finally put a layer of electrical tape over the little stainless 'door' once the card was properly installed to prevent movement and having it fall out.

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To the OP and others: I've found my uSD card popping out during battery changes (actually lost one that way in the field), and I know some have a hard time getting it to stay put. I finally put a layer of electrical tape over the little stainless 'door' once the card was properly installed to prevent movement and having it fall out.

I lost the uSD card in my 550t in June when I was changing batteries. Here's my log of the experience. Since then, I've been more careful when I remove the batteries, and try to be in an area where I can find the card if it flies out.

 

I may try the electrical tape trick, thanks for the tip!

 

--Larry

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